(G)old Diggers

High-earning women seek older, hotter men as mates.

Financially successful females are more likely to seek older, but very attractive males, says a Scottish study examining women, earning potential, and mating behaviors. Psychologists at the University of Abertay Dundee maintain that as women’s earning power increases, their tastes in partners change, leading them to desire better looking, older men.  

The research team, led by Dr. Fhionna Moore, contends that as females’ financial security grows, their ability to choose a mate who is more physically attractive, but does not necessarily have to provide economically, increases. Previous research has indicated that women place importance on males’ socioeconomic status (SES) and ability to provide, while men value female physical beauty, youth, and fecundity.   

“Across species we know that there is flexibility in mating behavior, as individuals adjust to perform the most appropriate behavior in response to the environment,” Moore tells demodirt.com.

“A lot of work on humans has focused on consistency in mate preferences, for example, sex differences in mate preferences, with men preferring younger attractive partners and women preferring older wealthy partners,” she explains. “There had been some evidence to suggest that women may adjust their preferences in response to their financial autonomy, which led us to explore specific effects of different dimensions of resource control, such as financial independence, on partner preferences.”

The study team expected high-earning females to follow the male example—thereby preferring young, handsome men regardless of their financial standing.

Some results were a surprise, as the preferred age difference hadn't changed, as the researchers had expected. High-earning women actually preferred even older men.

“Our findings relating to age preferences are more complicated: in one study we found evidence that control of resources was related to preferences for a younger partner age, whereas in the most recent study this relationship was reversed,” Moore tells demodirt.com. “This may reflect differences in the methods, but at the moment I'm not convinced either way by the effects on age preferences and need to look at this more carefully.”

Evolutionary psychologist Daniel J. Kruger, PhD, says age connotes specific qualities that may be important to women seeking a mate.

“We can design our experiments so that these things are allegedly independent but the fact is that male age has been pretty consistently tied with status, independent of everything else,” Kruger explains. “As someone ages, they gain experience, knowledge, and seniority; even if they don’t supposedly have more money, age is one of those cues that implicitly indicates status.” 

In terms of reproduction, an attractive older guy is desirable for other reasons. 

“If he can age gracefully, it shows he has high quality genes,” he notes. 

Like Kruger, Moore explained that the preference for older males signals female attraction to men of power, regardless of the female’s own financial status. More financial independence, the researchers conclude, means women enjoy greater confidence when dating and are more likely to pursue powerful and attractive older men.

Mating behaviors and SES have long been studied, with often consistent results stating that women prefer status in a mate, while men want a beautiful one, Kruger says. The Scottish research is interesting, he notes, because “it contrasts with other work in that [the researchers] claim women are not that sensitive to financial contributions.”  

Moore agrees that the new research contradicts earlier findings.  

“Some previous research had shown that women's income was related to more traditional mate preferences, that wealthy women preferred even older, wealthier partners, so it was really a hunch that control over finances (as opposed to amount of resources) would cause women to express less traditional preferences,” she says.  

As women become more financially powerful, study results on attraction have reflected their changing tastes.

“In a number of studies we have now found that women who are financially independent express stronger preferences for physical attractiveness and weaker preferences for wealth—so financial autonomy is important and conceptually different to income,” Moore maintains. 

Previous studies, Kruger adds, include research on female Harvard medical students and their mate preferences, which revealed that even if women expect to be high earners, they still prefer their male mates make a lot of money.

“There aren’t too many studies on this issue but one of the other ones tried to answer the same question: what happens when women don’t need a male partner to contribute financially—and there was a study of women who were Harvard medical students,” he explains. “These women are going to be in very prestigious high-paying careers, and will be at the top of the SES ladder."

When compared with their peers who were not enrolled in medical school—and presumably not on as reliable a track to future financial success—the study found that the female medical students had higher preferences for what their prospective partner should be making in terms of salary.

“The notion is that people aren’t perfectly rational about this,” Kruger contends. “It would be great if the women were bringing home a financial contribution, and they could have a househusband—it does happen, but it is not incredibly common.”

The male role of provider and female role of nurturer are so hardwired that even when circumstances permit a reversal, the scenario is unpopular or widely undesirable. However, with sex roles and finances being so dynamic, things are changing.

This is a “new frontier” in research, Kruger says. “There is not much human history where women have had a lot of the same opportunities that men have, and have been so free to choose their mates.”

What we know now is that male and female behavior—allowing for individual differences—could largely be universal. While the study was done in Scotland, findings may apply to men and women elsewhere; Moore says that similar behavioral patterns emerge in non-industrial societies, and that these effects can be observed in other societies.