Face Research Laboratory, School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK.
Br J Psychol. 2012 Aug;103(3):317-29. doi: 10.1111/j.2044-8295.2011.02076.x. Epub 2011 Oct 3.
Changing circumstances alter the costs and benefits of choosing different mates and are thought to be reflected in women's mate preferences. Indeed, several lines of reasoning, and some prior studies, suggest that individual differences in women's preferences for cues of men's underlying health will be more apparent among partnered women than among unpartnered women. The current study shows that preferences for male faces with masculine shape cues, characteristics that are thought to signal men's underlying health, are positively correlated with partnered, but not unpartnered, women's reported reproductive ambition (i.e., their desire to become pregnant). These findings (1) present new evidence for systematic variation in women's mating strategies, (2) suggest that partnership status may be important for potentially adaptive variation in women's mate preferences, and (3) suggest that reproductive ambition may influence women's mate preferences. Alternative explanations for these findings, focusing on the possible effects of a range of variables that may be correlated with reproductive ambition in partnered women and influence their masculinity preferences, are also discussed.
变化的环境改变了选择不同伴侣的成本和收益，这被认为反映在女性的伴侣偏好中。事实上，有几条推理线和一些先前的研究表明，女性对男性潜在健康线索的偏好存在个体差异，这种差异在有伴侣的女性中比在没有伴侣的女性中更为明显。本研究表明，对具有男性体型特征的男性面孔的偏好，这些特征被认为可以暗示男性的潜在健康，与有伴侣但没有伴侣的女性报告的生育愿望（即她们想要怀孕的愿望）呈正相关。这些发现：（1）为女性交配策略的系统变化提供了新的证据；（2）表明伴侣关系状态可能对女性伴侣偏好的潜在适应性变化很重要；（3）表明生育愿望可能会影响女性的伴侣偏好。还讨论了对这些发现的其他解释，重点是可能与有伴侣的女性的生育愿望相关并影响她们对男性化特征的偏好的一系列变量的可能影响。
