https://psychcentral.com/blog/do-looks-matter-in-a-relationship
“Research shows the perception of whether someone’s face is attractive may be shaped by environment rather than genes. Furthermore, people tend to disagree about who has an attractive face as much as they tend to agree” Individual Aesthetic Preferences for Faces Are Shaped Mostly by Environments, Not Genes: Current Biology
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https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3130383/
“Being more or less attractive has important social consequences and people do generally agree on who is and who is not attractive. Beauty is not just a simple social construct—attractiveness appears to be ingrained in our biology. While some aspects of face perception might be innate, other aspects are clearly influenced by experience; it seems unlikely that individuals are born with a representation of what a perfect partner looks like.”
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https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10713733/
“Women, more than men, prefer long-term partners with the ability to acquire and confer resources, while men, more than women, prefer partners with high reproductive value, indicated by attractiveness and relative youth (Walter et al., 2020). Two theories explain the gender differences in mate preference.”
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https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9463505/
“Accordingly, women are more likely to be long-term oriented while men reported that they are more short-term oriented”
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https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8056007/
“Women preferentially desire, as short-term mates, men who possess cues to good genes, but value social stability and economic security above traits relating to fertility and physical appearance for long-term relationships.”
“Many studies showed that knowing characteristics of a person changes the perception of attractiveness. For example, both laboratory and naturalistic experiments show that personality and other non-physical characteristics affect physical attractiveness judgments.”
“Men and women have different selection pressures and thus value different characteristics in a potential partner. As women value highly other features besides physical attractiveness, in a mating situation such as a speed dating, they will allocate more cognitive resources to process more information of an attractive men – overestimating the duration of that date.”
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https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4011637/
“Evolutionary psychologists were among the first to propose that men and women differ in their preference for physically attractive mates. Throughout human evolutionary history, male reproductive success should have been determined by men’s ability to obtain female mates who were highly fertile. Because youth and physical appearance (e.g., large eyes, smooth skin, full lips—qualities that are perceived as highly attractive in today’s society) are strong indicators of female fertility (Symons, 1979; Williams, 1975), men who were attracted to and able to obtain physically attractive female mates likely produced more surviving offspring than did men who did not prefer and seek out physically attractive female mates. Given that physical attractiveness was not a strong marker of male fertility, in contrast, women would not have benefited as much as men from mating with attractive partners and thus should not have evolved as strong a preference for physically attractive partners. As Buss (1989, p. 2) put it, “male fertility, to the degree that it is valued by females, is less steeply age-graded from puberty on than is female fertility and therefore cannot be assessed as accurately from physical appearance.” Thus, it follows that humans would have evolved such that partner physical attractiveness is more central to men’s relationship preferences and evaluations than it is to women’s.
Consistent with this idea, a robust body of empirical research demonstrates that, when asked about their ideal mate, heterosexual men indicate a stronger preference for physical attractiveness than do heterosexual women. For example, across a nationally representative United States sample, men stated stronger preferences for a physically attractive partner than did women (Sprecher et al., 1994). Moreover, Buss (1989) demonstrated that this sex difference generalized across 37 cultures. Providing the strongest evidence that men more strongly prefer a physically attractive partner than do women, Feingold (1990, 1992) reported that the sex difference held in meta-analyses using five different research paradigms.”
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https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S109051381730315X
“Mate choice theory suggests that because females invest more energy directly into reproduction than males, they should be more sensitive than males to cues indicating the resources possessed by a putative mate (Buss, 1989, Buss, 2015, Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1989, Hewlett, 1992, Trivers, 1972). Previous studies (Souza et al., 2016, Swami et al., 2007, Swami and Tovée, 2005) have suggested physical attributes of males rated as more attractive by females are not strongly linked to fertility, but may rather indicate the ability to acquire and retain resources in intra-sexual competition.
This model predicts that females should also be more sensitive to direct indicators of resources (wealth). Several previous studies (Buss, 2015, Dunn and Hill, 2014, Dunn and Searle, 2010, Shuler and McCord, 2010, Souza et al., 2016) have indicated that females are sensitive to such cues. For example, in Brazil, a stronger preference by females for mates who had good financial prospects was found (Souza et al., 2016).
Other studies also demonstrated that social context alters male attractiveness, such as ownership of luxury possessions like expensive cars or apartments (Dunn and Hill, 2014, Dunn and Searle, 2010, Shuler and McCord, 2010). Based on these previous studies, as predicted, male economic status seems likely to play an important role in mate selection. However, no previous study has quantified and compared the magnitude of this economic status effect in both males and females.”
