physical appearances

https://health.howstuffworks.com/relationships/love/love-at-first-sight-study-says-just-lust.htmLinks to an external site.

One of the first factors that contributes to attraction between two people is physical appearance. This may be obvious since before we know much of anything else about a person, we often first know what the person looks like. Physical appearance may also lend us some clues about the fertility of a person and thereby serve an evolutionary purpose. When evaluating the appearance of a potential mate, we tend to prefer certain physical traits like facial symmetry. Watch this video (Links to an external site.) to get an idea of how facial symmetry contributes to attraction. Likely, this symmetry gives us a hint that the person we are evaluating has fewer genetic irregularities and thus genetically likely to be fertile (see Simmons et al., 2004 (Links to an external site.)). Facial symmetry does not, however, predict overall health such as our propensity to get viruses, but it does correlate with other traits like intelligence (see this article (Links to an external site.) summarizing research by Nicholas Pound).

We also tend to like those of the opposite sex who display pronounced sex-typical appearances. Men tend to like very feminine looking women and women tend to like very masculine looking men. This can even be extend to the pitch of the voice of the other person. Women generally like low voices in men while men generally like high voices in women. Watch this video (Links to an external site.) on masculinity/femininity in gait and this video (Links to an external site.) on masculinity/femininity in voice pitch.

Despite the fact that many people may agree on how attractive different individuals are, we don’t all pursue the top-rated individuals. Instead, we tend to pursue people with similar attractiveness ratings to ourselves. This is called the Matching Hypothesis. This can actually apply to traits outside of physical attractiveness as well as we tend to pursue people with similar levels of education and of similar socioeconomic status. Watch this video (Links to an external site.) that explores the Matching Hypothesis in relation to physical attraction.

Answer the following questions:

What are the implications of the matching hypothesis for mate selection?

Are there benefits that we have the tendency to select those like us as mates?

Are there downsides to this?