Chinese Female Mating Preferences

As a complex social, cultural and psychological phenomenon, Mating Preference has become a hot topic in sociology and psychology in recent years. The studies of mating preference, which first commenced in western countries, are in order to explore its internal significance and mechanism from the perspective of sociology and psychology. Theoretical frameworks of mating preference have been continuously improved after decades of development; as a new research perspective, evolutionary psychology has been widely welcomed in this field because its better cross-cultural explanatory power. Through the specific and rigorous measurement methods, foreign psychologists integrated different research paradigms to study human’s mating preference behavior systematically.Since the late1970s, Chinese scholars initiated the relevant studies of mating preference in China. However, their main research methods were content analysis of marriage personals and self-report questionnaires; and due to their underdeveloped theoretical frameworks, their empirical studies were lacking convincing theoretical support. Therefore, on the basis of the in-depth studies of the evolutionary psychology, the present study learns from the western research paradigms and measurement methods in order to conduct in-depth researches and discussions on the issue about Chinese female mating preference.Based on the reviews of the research results at home and abroad, the present study has been devoted to the exploration of the content, structure and influencing factors of mating preference among contemporary Chinese females, which are as follows:(1) Female college students and female occupational groups have been surveyed by the Chinese Female Mating Preference Questionnaire (CFMPQ), which developed by the present study under the theoretical framework of evolutionary psychology. The three dimensional factor structure of Chinese female mating preference has been confirmed by exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. They are Good-Genes, which refer to the good innate qualities of the male, such as good looking, strong body and clever mind:it represent male’s characteristics and clues of good genes. Good-Provider, which refer to the good socio-economic status of the male:it represent male’s capacity and resources to provide good parental investments to the future generations. Good-Father, which refer to the gentle and loyal personality traits of the male; it represent male’s good character bases and willingness to provide parental investments to the future generations.(2) Female college students have been surveyed by the CFMPQ and the Personal and Family Statuses Questionnaire (PFSQ), which also developed by the present study. The results showed that the mating preference of female is influenced by their urban-rural differences, whether they are the only daughter, ages, educational statuses, relationship statuses, health statuses, household incomes and fertility willing.(3) In order to further clarify the influential mechanism of the economic, health and fertility statuses on the female mating preference, the present study was carried out three experiments to explore the influences of the states of economy, the threat of diseases, and reproductive statuses. The results indicated that the females with lower economic status prefer the males with "Good-Provider"; the females under the threat of diseases prefer the males with "Good-Genes"; the females facing fertility and child-rearing situation prefer the males with "Good-Father". The experiment results also showed there are slight difference between above-threshold and sub-threshold. Females in explicit measurements often showed preference in males with "Good-Father", but in implicit measurements, females of all groups attach more importance to the socio-economic status of males.