Ways of selecting romantic partnersThere has always been a belief that men and women differ in their ways of selecting romantic partners in terms of characteristics in their mates.
For example, men have always been perceived to place more importance in size of breasts in women. Likewise, women have been perceived to place more importance on height of the men they are interested in and their build. This study is to find out whether these social stigmas are true in a typical large college campus dealing with subjects that are around the age of 18~19 years. Surveys were used to have the subjects rate the importance of characteristics of men and women that are typically looked at when either sex are looking for romantic partners.
The research in question is, ”Gender Differences in Selecting Romantic Partners. ” There were previous researches and surveys done on this subject. There are five such studies that best relate to the research topic. The first appeared in Sex Roles. The article was titled “Sex Differences in Factors of Romantic Attraction.
” The second appeared in Psychological Reports and was titled, “Men’s Preferences in Romantic Partners: Obesity vs. Addiction. ” The third appeared in College Student Journal and was titled, “College Students’ Homogamous Preferences for a Date and Mate. ” The fourth appeared in Sex Roles titled, “Pursuit of Nontraditional Occupations: Fear of Success or Fear of Not Being Chosen?” The last article appeared in Psychological Bulletin titled, “Gender Differences in Mate Selection Preferences: A Test of the Parental Investment Model. ” The first article, “Sex Differences in Factors of Romantic Attraction” was written by Jeffrey S.
Nevid. His studies method included an anonymous survey in a college classroom consisting of only heterosexual males and females around the age of 19 to 22 years. The author wanted to see if the popular belief of males placing such physical aspects such as breast size and buttocks size influenced their choice of romantic and sexual partners. He also included females in his studies. In his survey, many physical attributes were presented and the numbers showed that when choosing sexual partners, both men choosing romantic partners, personal characteristics were given more importance than physical.
The second article, “Men’s Preferences in Romantic Partners: Obesity vs. Addiction” was written by Sarah Sitton and Sharon Blanghard. The studies conducted by the two women were done using classified ads. The study was done to compare how many men would chose a recovering controlled substance addict to an obese woman. The result showed that while both attributes were considered very negative characteristics in which many men would avoid in their mate, the recovering addicts received more responses that those of the obese women. However, the men who responded to the addict ads were also admittedly recovering from substance abuse while the obese women in turn received responses from other obese men.
In conclusion, men and women tend to seek out mates who are similar in characteristics (Walster, Aronson, Abrahams, and Rottman (1966)) and social desirability. The third article titled,”College Students’ Homogamous Preferences For a Date and Mate” was written by David Knox, Marty Zusman, and Wandy Nieves. A large group of graduate students in a south-eastern university reported the degree to which they preferred selecting a dating and marriage partner who was similar to them in each of ten background characteristics. The results in this study indicated females preferred to date a man who was similar to them in education and occupation and preferred to marry a man who had these similarities as well as religious values, and desire for children.
Only men emphasized physical appearances in both dating and marital partners. Both sexes believed that homogamy is with happy and lasting relationships. The fourth article titled, “Pursuit of Nontraditional Occupations: Fear of Success or Fear of Not Being Chosen?” was written by Karen S. Pfost and Maria Fiore. To determine whether fear of success reflects realistic expectations of the negative consequences id deviance rather than a motive, reactions to “gender inappropriate” .
