Chinese mate preferences: Cultural evolution and continuity across a quarter of a century
Introduction
Mate preferences acquire scientific importance for several key reasons. First, mate preferences influence who is chosen and who is excluded from mating, thus influencing the current direction of sexual selection (Darwin, 1871). Second, mate preferences of one sex determine which members of the opposite sex are considered to be high and low in mate value, which influences variables ranging from the desirability of the mate one can attract to social status within the group (Buss, 2003). Third, mate preferences of one sex influence which mate attraction and mate retention tactics will be effective in members of the opposite sex—tactics that embody the desires of the individual a person is trying to attract or retain (Buss and Shackelford, 1997, Schmitt and Buss, 1996). Fourth, some mate preferences may be evolved psychological adaptations, representing important solutions to cardinal problems of mating such as choosing a mate who is fertile or a mate willing and able to invest in offspring (Buss, 1989). Fifth, mate preferences reveal important cultural values, and when examined over time, can be used to assay the cultural evolution of values (Buss, Shackelford, Kirkpatrick, & Larsen, 2001). For all these reasons, the study of human mate preferences represents an exceptionally important and necessarily ongoing scientific endeavor.
China is especially interesting for studying mate preferences because it has undergone dramatic cultural changes over the past 25 years. Prior to 1989, China was relatively closed to Westerners; since then, it has become increasingly open. Economically, wages and variance in wages were low compared to those in Western cultures. Wages have risen as a majority of businesses have shifted from being state-owned to becoming privately owned. Consequently variance in wages has increased. In the mating domain, sexuality has become less restricted and premarital sex more common. A key question is whether Chinese mate preferences have changed to reflect these dramatic cultural changes. Has the increased variance in economic resources across individuals led to increased importance attached to a mate’s resource capacity? Has the loosening of sexual restrictions led to decreased importance Chinese individuals attach to virginity in mates? These are key questions addressed by the current study, which seeks to contribute to knowledge about cultural evolution as well as cultural continuity and universality (Heine & Norenzayan, 2006).
The dramatic cultural changes in China also make it a scientifically interesting culture for testing key evolutionary hypotheses about gender differences in mate preferences. Because fertility cannot be observed directly, evolutionary psychologists hypothesized that men value physical appearance in mates because appearance provides a wealth of observable cues to fertility (Buss, 1989, Symons, 1979). Because human fertility is sharply age-graded, evolutionary psychologists hypothesized that men have evolved preferences for young mates (Symons, 1979). Because reproductive biology involves the heavy obligatory parental investment of nine months of pregnancy, evolutionary psychologists have hypothesized that women have evolved preferences for mates able to acquire resources and willing to invest resources in them. These sex differences are hypothesized to be universal across cultures (e.g., Badahdah and Tiemann, 2005, Buss, 1989, Gottschall et al., 2004, Khallad, 2005). This study was partly designed to examine whether these sex differences persist in a culture that has undergone dramatic changes over the past quarter of a century.
Section snippets
Participants
This study consisted of two groups of participants. The modern sample, with data gathered in 2008 in the city of Shanghai, totaled 1060 individuals—475 males and 585 females. These data were collected from 30 different work units—companies, factories, and universities. Participation was voluntary. This sample was compared with a Chinese sample gathered from four major cities (including Shanghai) in the mid-1980s, consisting of 500 individuals—265 males and 235 females—who were part of the
Age and mate preferences in a partner
Table 1 shows the participants’ ages, the ages at which they preferred to marry, and the age difference preferred between self and spouse. The 2008 sample was approximately three years older than the 1983 sample. We correlated age with mate preferences for the 2008 sample (we were unable to perform these correlations for the earlier sample due to the manner in which the data were transcribed prior to sending them to the last author). The correlations were uniformly low; only two exceeded .20.
Discussion
Several limitations must be noted. First, the samples are not representative of the vast and diverse country of China. Second, the 2008 sample was roughly three years older than the 1983 sample, so differences between the two samples could be partly due to age rather than to actual cultural change. Given the exceptionally low magnitudes of the correlations between mate preferences and age within the 2008 sample noted earlier, however, there is no reason to believe that this affected the results
Conclusions
China is a country that has undergone substantial cultural changes over the past quarter of a century—economically, religiously, and sexually. The current study suggests that some mate preference changes, such as an increase in the importance of resources and religiosity in a mate and a decrease in the importance of virginity in a mate, may be hallmarks of these cultural changes. In addition to demonstrating the evolution of cultural values, the current study provides robust support for several
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