Women’s desire for wealthy partners drops when they have more economic power

A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that what people look for in a romantic partner changes depending on their financial situation and the broader economic equality between men and women. The findings provide evidence that the traditional tendency for women to prefer wealthier partners might fade as women gain more economic power. This adaptability points to a high level of flexibility in human romantic desires.

For decades, scientists have debated why men and women often prioritize different traits in romantic partners. In many cultures, women tend to prefer partners with financial resources. Men tend to prioritize youth and physical beauty.

Some scientists argue that these differences stem from human evolution. This perspective suggests that ancient survival needs shaped modern minds. Because ancestral women faced the physical demands of pregnancy and nursing, they may have evolved to seek partners who could provide material resources.

Other scientists suggest these preferences are the result of cultural expectations. This perspective proposes that the traditional division of labor between men as providers and women as homemakers created these desires. According to this view, people simply adapt to the roles society assigns them.

Past research on this topic has mostly relied on observing natural differences across various countries. These observational methods have led to heavy disagreement because many cultural and economic factors are mixed together in the real world. For instance, wealthier women might report different preferences, but they also tend to live in wealthier, more equal societies.

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“It is well-established that, on average, women care more about a suitor’s money than men do when dating, but the degree to which gender inequality explains this sex difference is quite hotly disputed,” explained study author Macken Murphy, a PhD student in Khandis Blake’s lab at the University of Melbourne.

To address these academic questions and public anxieties, the research team designed a new test. “It’s a 36-year debate, one that has relied mostly on correlational evidence, and we felt an experimental investigation was necessary,” Murphy said. “Additionally, there is a modern concern that if women inflexibly prefer to ‘mate up’ financially, then as women get richer, they’ll have less options; we wanted to see if they relax that preference.”

To isolate the exact causes of these preferences, researchers tested a concept known as behavioral ecology. This concept proposes that humans flexibly adjust their behaviors and desires to their current environment to maximize their chances of success. The scientists wanted to see if altering a person’s income and the overall economic balance between men and women would directly change what they want in a mate.

The researchers recruited 807 participants from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. They specifically selected English-speaking participants aged 18 to 45 years old, as this range represents the typical human reproductive window. After removing individuals who failed attention checks or did not meet all study criteria, the final sample included 602 people, with an average age of 32.

Each person was asked to imagine themselves living in a virtual society called Stamola. The scientists randomly assigned each participant to one of forty-five different economic scenarios within this virtual world. These scenarios varied in two main ways.

First, the scenarios altered the participant’s personal income percentile compared to others of their same sex. There were five possible income levels, ranging from the tenth percentile to the ninetieth percentile. Second, the scenarios changed the level of gender economic inequality.

The gender inequality conditions featured five different ratios of women’s to men’s earnings. In some versions of the virtual society, men made twice as much as women. In other versions, women made twice as much as men, or the two sexes earned exactly the same average amount.

Participants then answered a series of questions about their ideal long-term partner in this virtual environment. They rated the desirability of 35 different traits on a scale from zero to ten. They focused specifically on resource-related traits like being ambitious, having a good job, and being financially secure.

The participants also ranked the importance of specific traits against one another. This forced them to decide if financial security was more important than physical attractiveness or other qualities. Finally, they shared their preferred age range for a potential partner.

Additionally, participants indicated how important it was for their partner to be better off financially than they were. This concept of seeking a wealthier partner is often referred to as mating up.

The scientists found that when participants were assigned a lower personal income, they exhibited a stronger desire for partners with financial resources. Poorer individuals placed a higher priority on traits like having a good job. They also rated mating up as much more important.

The overall economic balance between men and women also influenced these desires. When participants were placed in a society where their own sex was economically disadvantaged, their preference for a wealthy partner increased. When women were given more resources than men in the virtual society, the usual differences between what men and women want in a partner shrank significantly.

The scientists noted that participants seemed highly aware of this strategic flexibility. Many reported consciously prioritizing resources when they were assigned poor financial conditions and focusing on love or personality when assigned wealth. The extent of this shift was striking to the research team.

“When women made more money than men, both men and women were equally interested in ‘mating up’ financially,” Murphy told PsyPost. “That surprised me; it’s a short manipulation of gender economic inequality favoring women versus a lifetime of gender economic inequality favoring men, so while I expected movement, I didn’t think that sex difference would go away.”

These findings indicate that “humans strategically adjust what they want in a romantic partner based on their environment to pick the best mate for their circumstances,” he explained. “In this case, it seems we strategically adjust how much we want a financially successful partner based on how much we need the money.”

While preferences for financial resources proved highly adaptable, other romantic desires remained static. Changes in the economic environment did not alter preferences for physical attractiveness, and another static trait caught the research team off guard.

“I was surprised there were no changes to age gap preferences,” Murphy said. “In the wild, it’s pretty well-documented that when women make more money, age gaps get smaller, and so I thought we would see age gap preferences get smaller in virtual environments where women made more money. But they didn’t, women wanted someone slightly older, and men wanted someone slightly younger, regardless of the gendered economics.”

Despite these results, the scientists caution against drawing extreme conclusions from the data. “Our research does not suggest that men and women would totally swap mate preferences if gender economic inequality were reversed; it just adds to the evidence that our mate preferences are strategically flexible,” Murphy noted.

Because the study relies on a simulated society, there are naturally questions about how well these stated preferences translate to actual dating behavior. “The first worry with this sort of experiment is that it won’t reflect what will happen in the real world, and I agree we should be cautious,” Murphy said. “However, it’s worth noting that these effects are consistent with the cross-cultural literature, which broadly indicates the sexes become more similar in their desire for a mate with money when gender equality is higher.”

He pointed to real-world examples that mirror their experimental results. “It’s also worth highlighting Malovicki-Yaffe’s research on conservative Haredi Jews. There, women are more likely to be the primary breadwinners than men, and on average, men care more about the finances of potential mates than women do. Before, you could say cases like this were correlation-but-not-causation; our experiment suggests causation.”

In the future, the researchers plan to investigate the broader consequences of this romantic flexibility. They aim to explore how changing preferences might influence actual dating behaviors. As women continue to gain economic power globally, understanding these shifting dynamics will help clarify whether public concerns about wealthy women struggling to find partners are grounded in reality.

The study, “Partner preferences for resources adapt to income and gender economic inequality,” was authored by Macken Murphy, Sylvia K Harmon-Jones, Auguste G Harrington, Robert C Brooks, and Khandis R Blake.