Recent research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences This suggests that what people look for in a romantic partner changes depending on their economic circumstances and broader economic equality between men and women. The findings provide evidence that as women gain more economic power, their traditional tendency to prefer wealthier partners may fade. This adaptability shows the flexibility of human romantic desire.
Scientists have debated for decades why men and women often prioritize different traits in romantic partners. In many cultures, women tend to prefer partners who can afford it. Men tend to prioritize youth and physical beauty.
Some scientists argue that these differences stem from human evolution. This perspective suggests that ancient survival needs shaped the modern psyche. Because our female ancestors faced the physical demands of pregnancy and lactation, they may have evolved to seek out partners who could provide them with material resources.
Other scientists have suggested that these preferences are the result of cultural expectations. This perspective suggests that the traditional division of labor between men as providers and women as homemakers produced these desires. According to this view, people simply adapt to the roles assigned to them by society.
Previous research on this topic has relied primarily on looking at natural differences in different countries. In the real world, many cultural and economic factors come into play, so these observational methods have caused significant disagreement. For example, wealthier women may report different preferences, but they also tend to live in wealthier and more equal societies.
“While it is well established that, on average, women are more concerned about a suitor’s money than men when dating, the extent to which gender inequality explains this gender difference is highly debated,” study author Macken Murphy, a PhD student in Kandis Blake’s lab at the University of Melbourne, explained.
To address these academic questions and public concerns, the research team designed a new test. “This has been a 36-year-old debate, relying primarily on correlational evidence, and we felt it needed experimental investigation,” Murphy said. “Additionally, there is a contemporary concern that if women stubbornly prefer to stay financially ‘married’, they have fewer options as they become wealthier. We wanted to know whether women would loosen that preference.”
To determine the exact cause of these preferences, researchers tested a concept known as behavioral ecology. This concept proposes that humans flexibly adjust their behaviors and desires to the current environment to maximize their chances of success. The scientists wanted to see whether changing an individual’s income or the overall economic balance between men and women would directly change what people want in a mate.
Researchers recruited 807 participants from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. They specifically selected English-speaking participants between the ages of 18 and 45, representing the typical human reproductive period. After excluding those who failed the attention check or did not meet all study criteria, the final sample included 602 individuals with an average age of 32 years.
Each person was asked to imagine themselves living in a virtual society called Stamora. Scientists randomly assigned each participant to one of 45 different economic scenarios within this virtual world. These scenarios varied in two main ways.
First, the scenarios altered participants’ personal income percentiles relative to other participants of the same gender. There are five possible income levels ranging from the 10th percentile to the 90th percentile. Second, the level of economic inequality between men and women varied across scenarios.
The gender inequality conditions included five different ratios of male and female income. In some versions of the virtual society, men earned twice as much as women. Other versions have women earning twice as much as men, or men and women earning exactly the same average income.
Participants then answered a series of questions about their ideal long-term partner in this virtual environment. They rated the desirability of 35 different characteristics on a scale of 0 to 10. They focused specifically on resource-related characteristics, such as being ambitious, having a good job, and being financially stable.
Participants also ranked the importance of certain characteristics to each other. Because of this, they had to decide whether financial security was more important than physical attractiveness or other qualities. Finally, they shared their preferred age range in potential partners.
Furthermore, participants indicated how important it was for their partner to be financially better off than them. This concept of seeking a wealthier partner is often referred to as “marriage.”
The scientists found that when participants were assigned a low personal income, they showed a stronger desire for a partner with more financial resources. Poor people prioritized characteristics such as having a good job. They also rated mating as much more important.
The overall economic balance between men and women also influenced these desires. When participants were placed in a society where homosexuals were economically disadvantaged, their preference for a wealthy partner increased. When women were given more resources than men in virtual societies, the usual differences between what men and women wanted in a partner were significantly reduced.
The scientists noted that participants seemed to be highly aware of this strategic flexibility. Many reported that they consciously prioritized resources when assigned poor economic circumstances and focused on love and character when assigned wealth. For the research team, the extent of this change was surprising.
“When women were making more money than men, men and women were equally interested in ‘getting married’ financially,” Murphy told SciPost. “We were surprised by this. This was a short-term manipulation of gender economic inequality that favored women and lifelong gender economic inequality that favored men. So we expected the movement, but we didn’t expect the gender gap to disappear.”
These findings show that “humans strategically adjust their romantic partner needs based on their environment, choosing the partner who best fits their situation,” he said. “In this case, we seem to be strategically adjusting how much we want financially successful partners based on how much money we need.”
Preferences for economic resources turned out to be highly adaptive, while other romantic desires remained unchanged. Although preferences for physical attractiveness did not change as a result of changes in the economic environment, another static characteristic caught the researchers off guard.
“I was surprised that there was no change in age preferences,” Murphy said. “In reality, it’s well-documented that when women earn more money, the age difference narrows. So we expected age difference preferences to be smaller in a hypothetical environment where women earned more money. But that wasn’t the case. Regardless of the gender of the economy, women wanted someone a little older and men wanted someone a little younger.”
Despite these results, scientists caution against drawing extreme conclusions from the data. “Our study does not suggest that men’s and women’s mate preferences would completely swap if gender economic inequality were reversed. It only adds to the evidence that our mate preferences are strategically flexible,” Murphy said.
Because this study is based on a simulated society, questions naturally arise about the extent to which these stated preferences translate into real-life dating behavior. “The first concern with these kinds of experiments is that they don’t reflect what happens in the real world, and I agree that we should be cautious,” Murphy said. “However, it is noteworthy that these effects are consistent with the cross-cultural literature, which broadly shows that as gender equality increases, men and women’s desires for a wealthy mate become more similar.”
He pointed to real-world examples that mirror the experimental results. “Marowiecki-Jaffe’s study of conservative Haredi Jews is also noteworthy, where women are more likely than men to be the primary breadwinners, and men, on average, care more about the financial status of their potential partners than women. Previously, such cases could be described as correlation but not causation, but our experiment suggests causation.”
In the future, researchers plan to investigate the broader effects of this romantic flexibility. They aim to investigate how changes in preferences affect actual dating behavior. As women continue to gain economic power around the world, understanding these changing power relations can help clarify whether public concerns about wealthy women struggling to find partners are rooted in reality.
The study, “Partner Preferences for Resources Adapts to Income and Gender Economic Inequality,” was authored by Macken Murphy, Sylvia K. Harmon-Jones, August G. Harrington, Robert C. Brooks, and Kandis R. Blake.
