Fascinating new research reveals how sexual desire shapes long-term partner preferences

People often say they want long-term partners who are kind, dependable, and emotionally supportive. But despite those intentions, many still place a surprising amount of importance on physical attractiveness—even when seeking committed relationships. A new study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology sheds light on this apparent contradiction by identifying a key psychological driver behind these preferences: sexual desire.

Researchers found that people were more likely to prioritize physical attractiveness in a long-term partner when they experienced heightened sexual desire. The link held across gender and individual differences and appeared to be driven by both a person’s general level of sexual desire and whether that desire was activated in the moment.

The findings add a new layer to decades of research in evolutionary psychology, which has long suggested that people prefer attractive partners because beauty signals traits such as fertility and genetic fitness. But while those theories explain the long-term evolutionary advantages of mating with attractive partners, they rarely address what triggers people to seek out those traits in real-time. The current research fills that gap by showing how fluctuations in sexual desire can shift people’s romantic priorities.

The study was led by psychologist Sierra D. Peters and colleagues at Rhodes College. The researchers were interested in moving beyond static explanations of mate preferences, which often rely on broad sex differences or cultural trends. They wanted to explore the moment-to-moment motivations that shape how people evaluate potential partners—particularly in the context of long-term relationships.

“I have always been interested in the traits people desire in romantic partners and why,” explained Peters, an assistant professor of psychology. “There is a lot of research showing people want attractive long-term partners (especially men), but the why has not been as widely studied. At an ultimate level, attractiveness signals desirable qualities like health, fertility, and reproductive potential.”

“However, I was interested in what takes place at a very proximate affective and motivational level that leads people to select attractive partners — what do they feel that drives them to choose attractive partners.”

In the first of three studies, the researchers surveyed 554 adults on their romantic preferences using a budgeting task. Participants were asked to allocate a limited number of points to different qualities they might want in an ideal spouse, including attractiveness, creativity, liveliness, commitment, and social status. They also completed measures of sexual desire and sociosexuality, a personality trait that reflects a person’s openness to casual sex.

As expected, men were more likely than women to prioritize physical attractiveness in a long-term partner. But importantly, the researchers found that much of this sex difference could be explained by differences in sexual desire. Men reported higher levels of sexual desire than women on average, and those with stronger sexual desire—regardless of gender—tended to assign more value to physical attractiveness. This pattern held even after controlling for sociosexuality and relationship status, suggesting that sexual desire plays a central role in shaping people’s partner preferences.

To test whether activating sexual desire could change people’s priorities in the moment, the second study used an experimental design. Over 1,000 undergraduate participants were randomly assigned to recall and write about a time they experienced strong sexual attraction or, in a control condition, a time they felt happy and excited. Afterward, participants completed the same budgeting task used in the first study.

Those primed with sexual desire allocated significantly more points to physical attractiveness in a long-term partner compared to those in the control group. This effect was found in both men and women.

Interestingly, women in the control group did not prioritize attractiveness above chance levels, but once sexual desire was activated, their preferences closely resembled those of men. The researchers also confirmed that the priming task successfully elevated participants’ current feelings of sexual desire, suggesting that the changes in mate preferences were not due to unrelated mood effects.

“When people feel sexual desire—whether it be chronically or acutely activated in a given moment—they place a priority on the physical attractiveness of potential romantic partners,” Peters told PsyPost. “This is the case in both men and women. This means that in situations or at times that women are feeling more sexual desire than they typically do, their preference for attractiveness will more closely resemble men’s, on average.”

In the third and final study, the researchers tried the opposite approach. Instead of activating sexual desire, they attempted to suppress its relevance by asking 469 participants to imagine that their long-term partner would not be a sexual partner. They were told to assume that sex outside the relationship was culturally accepted and emotionally harmless. Under these conditions, participants again completed the budgeting task.

As predicted, removing the relevance of sexual desire led to a drop in how much participants prioritized physical attractiveness. Compared to a control group, participants in the “sex-removed” condition allocated fewer points to attractiveness and more to other traits such as status and commitment. The results suggest that when sexual desire is not part of the equation, people place less emphasis on beauty in their ideal long-term partners.

Together, the three studies show that sexual desire—both chronic and situational—can influence how much value people place on physical attractiveness in long-term relationships. This influence appears to operate across genders and individual personality differences, highlighting the role of sexual motivation in shaping romantic decision-making.

“This research is among the first to demonstrate that partner preferences can vary dynamically across situations; in this case, with how much sexual desire a person is feeling in the moment,” Peters explained. “These findings contrast with traditional evolutionary perspectives that often depict such preferences as relatively invariant across situations.”

There are limitations to the research. The studies relied on self-reported preferences using hypothetical scenarios, which may not perfectly reflect how people choose partners in real life. People’s responses could also be influenced by social norms or personal biases. The researchers acknowledge that sexual desire is likely only one of several forces shaping mate preferences. Cultural expectations, social learning, and other psychological motivations may also contribute to how people evaluate potential partners.

Future studies could explore how preferences for attractiveness change over time in actual relationships and whether other motivations, such as parenting or emotional bonding, similarly shape partner selection. The researchers also noted the potential for using implicit measures to study partner preferences, which could bypass some of the limitations of self-report data.

Looking forwards, “I would like to examine the situational variability of other partner preferences and the affective and motivational mechanisms that drive them,” Peters said.

The study, “The evolved psychology of mate preferences: Sexual desire underlies the prioritization of attractiveness in long-term partners,” was authored by Sierra D. Peters, Jon K. Maner, and Andrea L. Meltzer.