One in about 200 men living today is a direct descendant of Genghis Khan, Emperor of the Mongol Empire from the 13th century AD. That’s about 18 million men worldwide who can be traced back to him thanks to their unique Y-chromosome sequence. But we know of at least ten other men who left a genetic legacy so large that it can rival Genghis Khan’s. What we can learn here is the simple truth that men living in circumstances freed from any socio-economic constraints did what men in comparable circumstances still tend to do today, that is have sex with a large variety of young women (think Mick Jagger or Prince Andrew). So at least at first glance it seems that the question of what men want is not terribly difficult to answer.
More of a challenge is the question of why men would ever commit to just one woman in the first place. From a genetic perspective, all a man would need to ensure maximal propagation of his genes is casual sex with as many fertile women as possible. There must have been powerful evolutionary advantages for men to develop psychological traits that led them to devote years of investment into one woman or, conversely, the genetic costs for not doing so must have been exceedingly high. Taking into consideration that half of our male ancestors did not succeed in reproducing at all, it becomes clear that the incurred costs are more than theoretical.
Because women always were the gatekeepers of men’s reproductive success, they held a valuable currency that they only exchanged for men with traits of their choice. This produced an asymmetry of the sexes in their ability to obtain desirable mates which allowed women to lay out the evolutionary ground rules in the mating game, rules that are still being adhered to today. For women to consent to sex, men had to develop psychological qualities matching female preference, two of which were, and still are, reliability and commitment.
There are indeed numerous reproductive benefits for men with an inclination to enter long-term relationships, first and foremost the higher likelihood of obtaining a mate at all, as the odds of attracting a mate increases with commitment. Repeated and exclusive sexual access to a woman, the ability to fend off mate poachers, the prospect of fathering children and increased survival chances and reproductive success of these children are all benefits directly linked to male commitment.
When it comes to long-term mate choice, men are not only as stringent as women in their wants but look for similar traits too. Commitment, dependability, intelligence, emotional stability and health are all qualities indicative of successful parenthood and highly valued by men. But while women have developed a penchant for men’s status and resources, men have evolved a preference for female attractiveness because of the bounty of fertility cues conveyed by physical features. Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder; it is a cryptogram for the internal reproductive capabilities of women, and lacking any other signs of female fertility, men use beauty as the key to decipher it.
There are a number of physical cues of youth and health encoded in beauty: symmetrical face and body, lustrous hair, full lips, smooth skin, and animated youthful behaviours indicative of high energy levels, to name just a few. But what men are attuned to most is the female waist-to-hip ratio (divide hip size by waist size) due to its direct correlation to youth and reproductive potential. Studies spanning more than three decades have found that the vast majority of men rate a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7 (classic hourglass figure) as most attractive. The fact that even congenitally blind men expressed this preference in numerous haptic experiments demonstrates that waist-to-hip ratio as gene fitness indicator is universal and not the result of Western culture or white Anglo-Saxon chauvinism.
But men do not seek attractive women simply for reproduction. Men seek women with high mate value because it increases their social status. What seems like a circular argument—women preferring men with status and men seeking status via attractive women—is in reality a powerful signal to same-sex competitors and other women. Men strive to obtain status to control resources which allows them to exclude other men from these resources and in doing so restrict their competitors’ access to women. Viewed through this lens, the fierce male–male competition in business, from the corporate office floor to Wall Street, begins to carry a different meaning.
The economics of the mating market dictate that men willing to commit can obtain a more desirable mate because women generally prefer long-term over short-term relations. The more attractive a woman is, the more bargaining power she has vis-à-vis her suitors, which largely translates into more commitment. If a prospective mate does not accommodate an attractive women’s preference, she will have an advantage over a woman with less mate value in finding another suitor.
For high-status men the situation is not much different. Multiple studies have shown that wealthy men tend to marry physically attractive women. Men only lower their standards somewhat when it comes to casual sex with no strings attached. While it is evident that men, even when in healthy relationships, sometimes pursue women for short-term casual hook-ups, what is less obvious is the fact that the women consenting to those short-term casual hook-ups hardly ever end up as their wives. Men tend to seek different psychological qualities in a short-term lover than in the prospective mother of their children, and there is surprisingly little overlap between them.
Human psychology has evolved over millions of years and is especially potent when it comes to our emotions and choices related to reproduction. How we feel, what we think, the decisions we make or how we react to situations in our ordinary lives, all can be traced to psychological programs designed to ensure our reproductive success. These programs are all-pervasive and disregard any demarcation line we humans think exists between our survival and, say, business or consumption. What is so fascinating is that once we understand how our mind really works, how fine-tuned of a tool it really is and how much can be achieved by understanding the underlying mechanisms that govern it, once we understand all of that we can truly unlock our full potential not merely in theory but in concrete and practical steps.
