Fatal attraction

Men prefer to marry women who are their assistants at work rather than their colleagues or bosses.

A study carried out at the University of Michigan and published in the current issue of 'Evolution and Human Behaviour' has revealed that men are more likely to want to marry women who are their assistants at work rather than their colleagues or bosses.

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"These findings provide empirical support for the widespread belief that powerful women are at a disadvantage in the marriage market because men may prefer to marry less accomplished women," said Stephanie Brown, lead author of the study and a social psychologist at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR).

Brown along with co-author Brian Lewis from UCLA tested 120 male and 208 female undergraduates by asking them to rate their attraction and desire to affiliate with a man and a woman they were said to know from work.

Brown and Lewis found that males were most strongly attracted to subordinate partners for high-investment activities such as marriage and dating.

"Our results demonstrate that male preference for subordinate women increases as the investment in the relationship increases. This pattern is consistent with the possibility that there were reproductive advantages for males who preferred to form long-term relationships with relatively subordinate partners," explained Brown.

"Given that female infidelity is a severe reproductive threat to males only when investment is high, a preference for subordinate partners may provide adaptive benefits to males in the context of only long-term, investing relationships---not one-night stands," she added.

Brown further added that the current findings are consistent with earlier research showing that expressions of vulnerability enhance female attractiveness. "Our results also provide further explanation for why males might attend to dominance-linked characteristics of women such as relative age or income, and why adult males typically prefer partners who are younger and make less money," she concluded.