Couple
Men and women have different mating preferences since they evolved differently, a study suggests. Pixabay

Men are from Mars and women are from Venus, however, this does not explain why each has a different idea of a perfect partner, mating preferences and likelihood of reproducing. A study, led by a team of researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, indicated these differences might have something to do with how men and women evolved.

During the study, the researchers looked at the gender differences in mating preferences in 4,764 men and 5,389 women based in 33 countries. The researchers found distinct mating differences persisted among the individuals belonging to 37 cultures, even when their country promoted gender equality policies.

Based on the findings, David Buss, a co-author and psychology professor , concluded men and women do not have the same underlying psychology and differ in mate preferences.

"Many want to believe that women and men are identical in their underlying psychology, but the genders differ strikingly in their evolved mate preferences in some domains," Buss said in a statement.

"The same holds true in highly sexually egalitarian cultures such as Sweden and Norway as in less egalitarian cultures such as Iran."

The researchers further said if the mate preferences of an individual is known, the team could predict the sex of the individual with 92.2 percent of accuracy. The team said the patterns of preferences are more linked to gender than any other individual characteristic.

"The large overall difference between men's and women's mate preferences tells us that the sexes must have experienced dramatically different challenges in the mating domain throughout human evolution," said lead author and researcher Daniel Conroy-Beam.

Conroy-Beam further said men are evolved to seek physically attractive and younger mates while women look for older mates with good financial position, higher ambitions and future prospects. The complete details of the study have been published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.