Beauty and Status: The Illusion of Exchange in Partner Selection?
Beauty and Status: The Illusion of Exchange in Partner Selection?
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DOI：
10.1177/0003122414536391
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发表时间：
2014-08-01
影响因子：
9.1
通讯作者：
McClintock, Elizabeth Aura
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
McClintock, Elizabeth Aura
长期以来，学者们一直对浪漫伴侣选择中的交换和匹配(分类交配)感兴趣。但许多对交换的分析，特别是那些考察美貌和社会经济地位的分析，都无法控制伴侣在这些特征上相互匹配的倾向。因为伴侣的理想特征在伴侣之间和个人内部都是正相关的，忽视匹配可能会夸大跨特征美貌地位交换的证据。此外，之前的许多分析都假设了一种性别交换，即女性用美貌来换取男性的地位，而没有测试男性是否会利用美貌来吸引地位更高的女性。之前的分析也没有充分调查不同类型的夫妇之间美貌地位互换的盛行程度。我使用了国家青少年健康浪漫伴侣纵向研究样本的数据，这是一个大的(N=1,507)具有全国代表性的约会、同居和已婚夫妇的概率样本，以调查浪漫伴侣交换身体吸引力和社会经济地位的频率(不包括这些特征的匹配)。我发现，控制配对几乎消除了所有美貌交换的证据。讨论的重点是美貌地位交换最有可能发生的背景，以及这些结果对基于市场和社会生物学的伴侣选择理论的影响。
Scholars have long been interested in exchange and matching (assortative mating) in romantic partner selection. But many analyses of exchange, particularly those that examine beauty and socioeconomic status, fail to control for partners' tendency to match each other on these traits. Because desirable traits in mates are positively correlated between partners and within individuals, ignoring matching may exaggerate evidence of cross-trait beauty-status exchange. Moreover, many prior analyses assume a gendered exchange in which women trade beauty for men's status, without testing whether men might use handsomeness to attract higher-status women. Nor have prior analyses fully investigated how the prevalence of beauty-status exchange varies between different types of couples. I use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health Romantic Pair Sample, a large (N = 1,507), nationally representative probability sample of dating, cohabiting, and married couples, to investigate how often romantic partners exchange physical attractiveness and socioeconomic status, net of matching on these traits. I find that controlling for matching eliminates nearly all evidence of beauty-status exchange. The discussion focuses on the contexts in which beauty-status exchange is most likely and on implications these results have for market-based and sociobiological theories of partner selection.