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Attraction and Human Mating

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Evolutionary Perspectives on Social Psychology

Part of the book series: Evolutionary Psychology ((EVOLPSYCH))

Abstract

This chapter outlines an evolutionary social psychological view of attractiveness in humans. Attractiveness is a fundamental part of the human social world, and to understand why certain traits are attractive we must consider a biological view. In an evolutionary view, our preferences serve a function: To drive us to mate with partners who will impart some benefit to us. In the chapter, I review work highlighting the impact of attractiveness, review several traits of individuals that have been found to impact attractiveness, and discuss some sources of variability in preferences consistent with an evolutionary perspective. Overall, the chapter addresses how evolutionary theory can be married to the complexity and variation of human preferences to present a fuller understanding of what we find attractive, why we find it attractive, and why, despite broad agreement, we see a wide variety of personal preference differences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Natural Sciences, Psychology, Stirling University, FK9 4LA, Stirling, Scotland, UK

    Anthony C. Little Ph.D.

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  1. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Virgil Zeigler-Hill

  2. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Lisa L. M. Welling

  3. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

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Little, A. (2015). Attraction and Human Mating. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Welling, L., Shackelford, T. (eds) Evolutionary Perspectives on Social Psychology. Evolutionary Psychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12697-5_25

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