"a new meta-analysis spanning the attraction and relationships literatures (k97) revealed that physical attractiveness predicted romantic evaluations with a moderate-to-strong effect size (r .40) for both sexes, and earning prospects predicted romantic evaluations with a small effect size (r .10) for both sexes. Sex differences in the correlations were small (rdifference .03) and uniformly nonsignificant."

"Despite the fact that men and women consistently exhibit sex differences when rating the appeal of physical attractiveness and earning prospects in an abstract ideal partner, the meta-analysis found no sex differences in the association of these two traits with evaluations of an attraction partner or current romantic partner"

"We conducted a meta-analysis that sampled from a body of work spanning the attraction and close relationships literature, the marriage and family studies literature, and the evolutionary psychological literature. If a study assessed data that could be used to calculate (a) the association between physical attractiveness and a romantic evaluation for both sexes and/or (b) the association between earning prospects and a romantic evaluation for both sexes, it was deemed appropriate for the meta-analysis."

"Specifically, relevant physical attractiveness IVs were the items physically attractive (regarding the face or body), attractive, physical appearance, nice body, good-looking, sexy, sensual, and validated multi-item measures of physical attractiveness (e.g., the physical attraction scale; McCroskey, McCroskey, & Richmond, 2006; the estimating physical attractiveness scale; Swami, Furnham, Georgiades, & Pang, 2007). Relevant earning prospects IVs were the items financially secure, good job, successful, good earning/financial prospects/potential, ambitious, career-driven, the target’s personal (not household) income, and validated multi-item measures of earning prospects (the financial dominance scale; Bryan, Webster, & Mahaffey, 2011). Relevant romantic evaluation DVs were measures of romantic liking, attraction, satisfaction (relationship or sexual), commitment, trust, intimacy, love, passion, wanting to date/get to know someone better, reporting a good connection/interaction with someone, feeling emotionally bonded to someone, and including the other in the self."

"A meta-analysis indicated that participants’ romantic evaluations of a partner whom they had (at least) met face to face tended to be more positive to the extent that the partner was physically attractive (N 29,414) and had good earning prospects (N 50,113). Importantly, however, these associations did not significantly differ by participant sex; that is, physical attractiveness tended to inspire positive romantic evaluations about equally for men (r .43) and women (r .40), and earning prospects tended to inspire positive romantic evaluations about equally for men (r .09) and women (r .12)."

"Especially intriguing was that physical attractiveness seemed to be more important when participants were reporting on partners with whom they were not yet romantically involved rather than dating and marriage partners, yet physical attractiveness actually increased in importance as relationship length increased among participants reporting on dating and marriage partners. In conjunction, these two findings suggest a possible curvilinear relationship between attractiveness and romantic evaluations over time: When people initially consider someone as a potential romantic partner, attractiveness is very important, and the association between attractiveness and romantic evaluations drops once the relationship has been formed. Yet as two people remain together in a relationship, the association of attractiveness with romantic evaluations slowly begins to increase again."

http://static1.squarespace.com/static/504114b1e4b0b97fe5a520af/t/5365a745e4b0cbe1c025abd7/1399170885689/Eastwick2014PBull.pdf

tldr: looks matter far more than money for men and women, and there are no gender differences in degree of preference. the common belief that women care more about money and less about looks is not reflected in this meta study.

what are your thoughts on this study? how does it confirm or contradict red pill or non red pill beliefs?