I have heard it said that most men know within about seven seconds whether they are attracted to a woman or not. In any case, it is well-accepted that men (in general) are more visually oriented then women in the mate selection process.
To say that this just shows that men are shallower is just useless gender stereotyping. The question is: if they are more visual, why? Or equally relevant why are women less visual? And if the female selection criteria does not appear to weight physical/visual appeal so heavily, then what other criteria are they using?
First the obvious merit of using visual criteria is that physical attributes have been quite important for most of human evolution. Strength, agility, foot speed, youth, and energy are all obviously valuable attributes that have made both males and females genetically desirable and clearly made sense as mate selection criteria. For the most part these attributes were discerned using visual evaluation. Even the typical male infatuation with large breasts is obviously based on the fact that they promise excellent nutrition for her offspring.
Men are more visually oriented because given the males best ‘impregnate and leave’ reproductive strategy, the best criteria for selecting genetically desirable females were primarily visually observable physical attributes. For a male who engaged in a typical ‘impregnate and move on‘ strategy only young, strong, fast, and healthy, females had a chance of surviving pregnancy and protecting the offspring without him.
The male impregnate and leave strategy, however, leaves relatively little time and energy for complex evaluation of potential mates. A quick visual evaluation is sometimes all that is possible, and usually, all that is necessary. The consequences of looser evaluation are not serious. When in doubt, impregnate and move on.
Actually, one might initially think that easily observed physical attributes would have been more important in a male. The specialized male tasks such as protection and hunting are readily visible and therefore ought to be important for women as a mate selection criterion. To some extent this is true in the sense that many women are strongly attracted to such visible physical attributes. However, because so many males developed a reproduction strategy based on impregnating as many females as possible and moving on, the visible male attributes were not the most important criteria for a woman. It would not matter much that the baby had great physical genes, because if the father did not stick around for long the child would probably not live long enough to benefit from them. This may be the reason why male persistence works as a seduction strategy. It demonstrates ‘the tendency to stick around‘ which is not readily visible but is a male trait that is very important to female reproductive success, and only becomes apparent over time. Hence these visible attributes became less critical.
So an even more critical determinant of a female’s genetic reproductive success was whether males would remain present long enough to protect children instead of going off in search of another receptive female. Thus a genetically mediocre male who stuck around would enhance the female’s reproductive success rate substantially. It therefore became critical that the female could assess the degree of likelihood that a male will not disappear after impregnating her. In other words, how devoted and faithful would this one be? This type of criteria could not be determined visually and would take time to assess. In fact, it is easy to see why some women assess ‘devotedness’ partially by abstaining from sexual activity until significant assessment and bonding occurs. “No sex before love” epitomizes what is a sound female reproductive strategy. It is evident in many other mammals besides humans and has probably been common for a million years.
Although in recent human history the physical presence of the father has significantly diminished as a critical factor for survival of offspring, ‘devotedness’ survives in the minds of women as an important criteria in mate selection. It has always been more important than the mere physical attributes for her genetic success rate. Women are less visually oriented and more personality oriented in using mate selection criteria because, given male reproductive strategies, male personality traits such as ‘devotedness’ (how much do you love me?) were more critical factors in determining female reproductive success. No wonder women ask; “Do you ‘really’ love me”. And no wonder men always say yes.
Once again, men are the way they are and women are the way they are, because it has been in their (respective) interests to be that way.
Posted by Scott in Sociobiology, Sociology