ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the logic and evidence of men’s long-term mating strategies. It deals with the theoretical background for the evolution of men’s mate preferences. The chapter also examines the content of men’s mate preferences. It explores the effects of different social and ecological contexts on men’s long-term mating strategies. The chapter analyzes why ancestral men faced the adaptive problem of identifying a woman’s fertility. It explains the evolutionary theory of men’s evolved standards of female beauty. The chapter describes why men face the problem of “paternity uncertainty” and discusses the two theories for the links between men’s testosterone and their mating strategies. The chapter considers the fact that desires rarely show a one-to-one correspondence with actual mating behavior. It also explores the impact of men’s long-term mate preferences on behavior through personal ads, responses to personal ads, actual marriages, size of tips in restaurants, money paid for wedding engagement rings, and patterns of intrasexual competition.
