Neural Bases Of Mate Choice:Mating Strategy, Sex Difference, And Self-assessment

Mate choice is a major choice for human, choosing who accompany with you for life will affect you for your entire life. So mating choice is a hot topic. Early sociologists put forward some theories and principles through researches, such as the social exchange theory, the mating market theory, the "close to" principle, and the "similar marriage" principle to reveal the mating behavior. But how do these models and principles come from? Evolutionary psychologists launched a series of studies from the perspective of evolution to explore the psychological mechanism of human mate choice. They through human mating behavior having an evolutionary basis. They put forward parental investment theory, sexual strategies theory, good-gene theory and dual-model theory.Mate choice contains long-term and short-term mate choice. Long-term mates is someone you try to maintain long-term relationships with and want to get married. Short-term mates is someone you refer to the short-term relationship or just want to date several times or just for one night, never consider developing a long-term relationship with or get married (Little, 2008). According to the research results of evolutionary psychology, men and women have significantly differences in the process of mating choice. Sexual selection theory of evolution thought that enhances the individual reproductive success of body shape quality, psychological quality and behavior quality will be passed to their children and be preserved. But men and women reproductive advantage and investment of reproduction are different, they will be more willing to choose a mate who can increase the chance of successful reproductive. These make the difference of male and female mate choice. Both in long-term and short-term mate choice, male pay more attention to women’s physical attractiveness, while female focus on men’s physical attractiveness in the short-term mate choice, and focus on men’s social status and good personality in long-term mate choice (Stewart, Stinnett, & Rosenfeld, 2000). In addition, men and women may also accept long-term partners, but men are more willing to accept short-term partners (Li & Kenrick,2006).Due to the mate choice in internal and external research mainly focused on the questionnaire survey method. A lot of researches were try to let participants to make choice in many value dimension or sequence the importance on multiple value dimensions. This kind of research method is single and also has limitations. This study use the laboratory behavior experiment and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), to explore gender differences in mate choice, mating strategies and neural mechanisms. This research hypothesis: experiment 1, in the long-term mate choice, men pay more attention to women’s physical attractiveness, while women pay more attention to the social status of the male, In the short-term mate choice, men still pay more attention to women’s physical attractiveness, while women think of men’s physical attractiveness and social status are equally important. Experiment 2, in the long-term mate choice, men focus on women’s physical attractiveness, personality and social status, while women focus on social status of men. In the short-term mate choice, men focus on women’s physical attractiveness, women focus on men’s personality traits. The activations of attractiveness may be in middle occipital gyrus and amygdala, the activations of relevant personality traits may occur in the inferior occipital gyruss and cingulate gyrus. The activations of relevant social status may occur in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. This study also hypothesis that men and women in all kinds of partner choice process will make self assessment, related activation may occur in the Medial prefrontal cortex and Posterior cingulate gyrus.