IU professor researches dating, mating

WASHINGTON – Science is confirming what most women already know: When given the choice for a mate, men go for good looks.\nAnd guys won’t be surprised to learn that women are much choosier about partners than they are.\n“Just because people say they’re looking for a particular set of characteristics in a mate, someone like themselves, doesn’t mean that is what they’ll end up choosing,” Peter M. Todd, a professor of a cognitive science program at IU said in a phone interview.\nResearchers led by Todd report in Tuesday’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that their study found humans were similar to most other mammals, “following Darwin’s principle of choosy females and competitive males, even if humans say something different.”\nTheir study involved 26 men and 20 women in Munich, Germany. Participants took part in “speed dating,” which allowed researchers to look at a lot of mate choices in a short time, Todd said.\nThe research concluded that men appeared to base their decisions mostly on the women’s physical attractiveness. Men appeared to be much less choosy, as well. They tended to select nearly every woman above a certain minimum attractiveness threshold, Todd said.\nWomen made more discriminating choices, the researchers found. The scientists said women were aware of the importance of their own attractiveness to men, and adjusted their expectations to select the more desirable guys.\n“Women made offers to men who had overall qualities that were on a par with the women’s self-rated attractiveness,” Todd said. “They didn’t greatly overshoot their attractiveness because part of the goal for women is to choose men who would stay with them.”\nSo, it turns out, the women’s attractiveness influenced the choices of the men and \nthe women.