The Oklahoma Center for Evolutionary Analysis, 33086Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA.
Department of Psychology, 8166University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Evol Psychol. 2021 Jul-Sep;19(3):14747049211032351. doi: 10.1177/14747049211032351.
Ecological conditions provide information about available resources for one's environment. In humans, this has been shown to influence reproductive behavior, as individuals may engage in trade-offs between partner quality and investment. For instance, many women may trade-off preferences for men with physical features indicative of social dominance and health over physical features indicative of commitment and investment. The current study explored women's preferences for formidable men under safe vs. harsh ecological conditions. Across three studies, U.S. university women ( = 1,098) were randomly assigned to a perceived harsh or safe ecological condition. They were asked to rate the attractiveness of men's body types (i.e., muscular vs. less muscular). Findings revealed that in general, women rated stronger men as more attractive than weaker men irrespective of the ecological condition. Evidence for preference as a function of ecology appeared only when a two-alternative forced-choice task was used (Study 3), but not in rating tasks (Studies 1 and 2). Study 3 showed that women had a relatively stronger preference for stronger men for short-term relationships in a resource scarce ecological condition. This research provides some evidence that perceived ecological conditions can drive women's preferences for men with enhanced secondary sex characteristics as a function of mating context. These findings are consistent with previous research indicating the importance of physical characteristics in men's attractiveness, and it adds to the existing literature on ecological factors and mating preferences.
生态条件提供了有关环境中可用资源的信息。在人类中，这已被证明会影响生殖行为，因为个体可能会在伴侣质量和投资之间进行权衡。例如，许多女性可能会在具有社会支配力和健康特征的男性与具有承诺和投资特征的男性之间权衡偏好。本研究探讨了在安全和恶劣生态条件下女性对有威慑力的男性的偏好。在三项研究中，美国大学女性（n=1098）被随机分配到感知到的恶劣或安全的生态条件中。要求她们对男性体型（即肌肉发达与不太肌肉发达）的吸引力进行评分。研究结果表明，一般来说，无论生态条件如何，女性都认为更强壮的男性比较弱壮的男性更有吸引力。只有在使用二选一强制选择任务（研究 3）时才会出现偏好作为生态功能的证据，而在评分任务（研究 1 和 2）中则没有。研究 3 表明，在资源匮乏的生态条件下，女性在短期关系中对强壮男性的偏好相对更强。这项研究提供了一些证据，表明感知到的生态条件可以驱动女性对具有增强的次要性特征的男性的偏好，这取决于交配环境。这些发现与之前表明男性吸引力中身体特征重要性的研究一致，并补充了关于生态因素和交配偏好的现有文献。
