Dr. David Buss

her reproductive value.

Now, not that men think about that consciously.

I mean, men don't walk down the street and see a woman and say, oh, I find her attractive because I think she must be very fertile.

They just find those cues attractive.

We know now, based on the last 20 years of scientific research,

studies that the cues that men find attractive in women are not at all arbitrary.

Things like clear skin, clear eyes, symmetrical features, a low waist to hip ratio, full lips, lustrous hair.

All these are qualities that are associated with youth and health and hence have evolved to be part of our standards of attractiveness.

And so it's not just that men are these superficial creatures who evaluate women on the basis of appearance.

There's an underlying logic to why they do so.

And as I said, relative youth, this age thing is one of the largest sex differences you find in long-term mate selection with women preferring somewhat older men and men preferring somewhat younger women.

It's also expressed in preferences.

So say a 25-year-old man would say prefer a woman who's 20 or in her early 20s.

35-year-old man might prefer a woman who's in her late 20s or early 30s.

50-year-old man might prefer a woman who's, say, 35 to 38.

So marriage and long-term mating are things other than reproductive unions in the modern environment.

And if you get too large an age gap, then essentially you're in different cultures.

And if the cultural gap gets too large, you don't understand each other.

Yeah, well, so basically both men and women do deceive.

So we have the modern cultural invention of online dating.