Preferred Signs of Attraction in Men and Women

The above graph represents the results of the Attraction Triangle Game.

Essentially, the game is to pick two out of three signs of attraction in a potential mate at the expense of the other; with the outcome having three possible choices as listed below and shown in the Attraction Triangle:

- Good Looks and Emotional Stability, but NOT Intelligent

- Intelligent and Emotionally Stable, but NOT Good Looking

- Good Looking and Intelligent, but NOT Emotionally Stable

The point of this particular experiment was to find out which preferences in a mate that an average man or woman would prioritize over others. From here we could then infer all sorts of different theories on attraction and mate selection.

Of course, if one could have their way, a person would obviously choose to have the perfect mate, one that exhibits all of the best signs of attraction that could be possible. However, this game, and life in general will not always provide you with the best possible choice. Sometimes, in our dating and relationship lives we all have to make priorities in the various attraction qualities that we are willing to accept in a long term relationship.

There’s no doubt that men are visual creatures and the results of this survey only goes to prove that further with over 80% of the men choosing the two options that include “Good Looks.” As much as we’d like to think that ultimately looks don’t count in the long run, it is certainly a high priority for those men in the selection process. Though this shouldn’t be much of a surprise as we already know many of the biological reasons in which men would prefer looks over other qualities; it is simply in our DNA.

Also, it appears that many men are willing to forgo intelligence in favor of good looks and emotional stability. Basically, the average guy wants a woman who is attractive with little drama. Not too surprising.

What’s interesting is that even though both genders prefer emotional stability in their mates, the women had the complete opposite of men in terms of choosing intelligence over looks. With over 60% of women choosing intelligence and emotional stability, I think it’s safe to say that looks really aren’t that important for men; it’s really more about matters of intelligence, confidence, etc.

These results also seem to match up with evolutionary theory, in that women tend to focus on mate selection based on the ability to help in child rearing.

However, I tend to wonder what the results would be like if the survey wasn’t based on long term mate selection, but rather a short term “hook-up.” My guess is that their preferred signs of attraction would switch to “Good Looks and Intelligence,” but who knows. What do you guys think?

Nervous that my data would be skewed, for whatever reason, towards those that read seduction and pick up artist blogs, I paid for a bunch of traffic from Loveawake to the survey in order to get more responses from average men and women.

You can view the data here for those of you that want to do your own number crunching. Note that results might be slightly different do to the fact that I am continuing to collect data for future use. Thus the charts in this post represent approximately the first 110 men and 110 women to respond.

What Do You Think of the Results?

So what do these results say about men? What about women? Let me know what you think in the comments below.