Cross-cultural research on long-term mate preferences in Muslim-majority countries is scarce. The research described here aims to examine the KASER (kindness/dependability, attractiveness/sexuality, status/resources, education/intelligence, and religiosity/chastity) model of mate preferences in Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey (N = 1,089). We examined structural validity, measurement invariance between men and women, sex differences, cultural differences, and Big Five personality correlates of these dimensions of mate preferences. Findings supported preregistered hypotheses regarding sex differences in mate preferences. Multilevel models suggested that the magnitude of sex differences was invariant across cultures. Personality correlates of mate preferences varied across cultures, but agreeableness consistently predicted the preference for kind and dependable partners across cultures. In sum, sex differences in mate preferences within and across three Muslim-majority countries described here replicate previous findings, but evidence for personality correlates of mate preferences is mixed, variable across cultures, and in need of further examination in non-Western samples.
AbeleA. E.CuddyA. J. C.JuddC. M.YzerbytV. Y. (2008). Fundamental dimensions of social judgment. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38, 1063–1065.
2.
AfhamiR.Mohammadi-ZarghanS.AtariM. (2017). Self-rating of religiosity (SRR) in Iran: Validity, reliability, and associations with the Big Five. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 20, 879–887.
3.
AtakH. (2013). The Turkish adaptation of the Ten-Item Personality Inventory. Nöro Psikiyatri Arşivi, 50, 312–319.
4.
AtariM. (2017). Assessment of long-term mate preferences in Iran. Evolutionary Psychology, 15. doi:10.1177/1474704917702459
5.
AtariM.ChegeniR. (2017). The Dark Triad and long-term mate preferences in Iranian women. Personality and Individual Differences, 104, 333–335.
6.
AtariM.ChegeniR.FathiL. (2017). Women who are interested in cosmetic surgery want it all: The association between considering cosmetic surgery and women’s mate preferences. Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology, 3, 61–70.
7.
AtariM.JamaliR. (2016). Dimensions of women’s mate preferences: Validation of a mate preference scale in Iran. Evolutionary Psychology, 14. doi:10.1177/1474704916651443
8.
BatesD.MächlerM.BolkerB.WalkerS. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67, 1–48.
9.
Bech-SørensenJ.PolletT. V. (2016). Sex differences in mate preferences: A replication study, 20 years later. Evolutionary Psychological Science, 2, 171–176.
BentlerP. M. (1990). Comparative fit indexes in structural models. Psychological Bulletin, 107, 238–246.
12.
BotwinM. D.BussD. M.ShackelfordT. K. (1997). Personality and mate preferences: Five factors in mate selection and marital satisfaction. Journal of Personality, 65, 107–136.
13.
BourdageJ. S.LeeK.AshtonM. C.PerryA. (2007). Big Five and HEXACO model personality correlates of sexuality. Personality and Individual Differences, 43, 1506–1516.
14.
BoysenG. A. (2017). Stigma toward people with mental illness as potential sexual and romantic partners. Evolutionary Psychological Science, 3, 212–223.
15.
BrislinR. W. (1970). Back-translation for cross-cultural research. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 1, 185–216.
16.
BuckelsE. E.BeallA. T.HoferM. K.LinE. Y.ZhouZ.SchallerM. (2015). Individual differences in activation of the parental care motivational system: Assessment, prediction, and implications. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108, 497–514.
17.
BussD. M. (1984). Marital assortment for personality dispositions: Assessment with three different data sources. Behavior Genetics, 14, 111–123.
18.
BussD. M. (1989). Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 12, 1–49.
19.
BussD. M.BarnesM. (1986). Preferences in human mate selection. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 559–570.
20.
BussD. M.SchmittD. P. (1993). Sexual strategies theory: An evolutionary perspective on human mating. Psychological Review, 100, 204–232.
21.
ByrneB. M.ShavelsonR. J.MuthénB. (1989). Testing for the equivalence of factor covariance and mean structures: The issue of partial measurement invariance. Psychological Bulletin, 105, 456–466.
22.
ChaudharyN.Al-ShawafL.BussD. M. (2018). Mate competition in Pakistan: Mate value, mate retention, and competitor derogation. Personality and Individual Differences, 130, 141–146.
23.
ChegeniR.PirkalaniR. K.DehshiriG. (2018). On love and darkness: The Dark Triad and mate retention behaviors in a non-Western culture. Personality and Individual Differences, 122, 43–46.
24.
ChenF. F. (2008). What happens if we compare chopsticks with forks? The impact of making inappropriate comparisons in cross-cultural research. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 1005–1018.
25.
CheungG. W.RensvoldR. B. (2002). Evaluating goodness-of-fit indexes for testing measurement invariance. Structural Equation Modeling, 9, 233–255.
26.
Conroy-BeamD.BussD. M. (2016). Do mate preferences influence actual mating decisions? Evidence from computer simulations and three studies of mated couples. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 111, 53–66.
27.
CortinaJ. M. (1993). What is coefficient alpha? An examination of theory and applications. Journal of Applied Psychology, 78, 98–104.
28.
CostaP.T.McCraeR. R. (1992). Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-r) and the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI): Professional manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.
29.
DienerE.SeligmanM. E. (2002). Very happy people. Psychological Science, 13, 81–84.
30.
EastwickP. W.FinkelE. J. (2008). Sex differences in mate preferences revisited: Do people know what they initially desire in a romantic partner?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 245–264.
31.
FletcherG. J. O.SimpsonJ. A.ThomasG.GilesL. (1999). Ideals in intimate relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 72–89.
32.
GebauerJ. E.BleidornW.GoslingS. D.RentfrowP. J.LambM. E.PotterJ. (2014). Cross-cultural variations in Big Five relationships with religiosity: A sociocultural motives perspective. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107, 1064–1091.
33.
GebauerJ. E.LearyM. R.NeberichW. (2012). Big Two personality and Big Three mate preferences: Similarity attracts, but country-level mate preferences crucially matter. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 1579–1593.
34.
GoslingS. D.RentfrowP. J.SwannW. B. (2003). A very brief measure of the Big-Five personality domains. Journal of Research in Personality, 37, 504–528.
35.
HenrichJ.HeineS. J.NorenzayanA. (2010). Most people are not WEIRD. Nature, 466, 29.
36.
HillS. E.BussD. M. (2006). Envy and positional bias in the evolutionary psychology of management. Managerial and Decision Economics, 27, 131–143.
37.
HuL. T.BentlerP. M. (1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling, 6, 1–55.
38.
KambleS.ShackelfordT. K.PhamM.BussD. M. (2014). Indian mate preferences: Continuity, sex differences, and cultural change across a quarter of a century. Personality and Individual Differences, 70, 150–155.
39.
KawamichiH.SugawaraS. K.HamanoY. H.MakitaK.MatsunagaM.TanabeH. C.…SadatoN. (2016). Being in a romantic relationship is associated with reduced gray matter density in striatum and increased subjective happiness. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1763.
40.
KhanB.AhmedA.AbidG. (2016). Using the ‘Big-Five’ for assessing personality traits of the champions: An insinuation for the sports industry. Pakistan Journal of Commerce and Social Sciences, 10, 175–191.
41.
KlineR. B. (2010). Principles and practice of structural equation modeling (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
42.
LeeK.AshtonM. C. (2004). Psychometric properties of the HEXACO personality inventory. Multivariate Behavioural Research, 39, 329–358.
43.
LewisD. M.Al-ShawafL.YilmazC. (2015). The openness-calibration hypothesis. Personality and Individual Differences, 81, 53–60.
44.
LiN. P.BaileyJ. M.KenrickD. T.LinsenmeierJ. A. (2002). The necessities and luxuries of mate preferences: Testing the tradeoffs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 947–955.
45.
MacCallumR. C.BrowneM. W.SugawaraH. M. (1996). Power analysis and determination of sample size for covariance structure modeling. Psychological Methods, 1, 130–149.
46.
MeltzerA. L.McNultyJ. K.JacksonG. L.KarneyB. R. (2014). Sex differences in the implications of partner physical attractiveness for the trajectory of marital satisfaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106, 418–428.
47.
OishiS. (2007). The application of structural equation modeling and item response theory to cross-cultural positive psychology research. In OngA. D.van DulmenM. H. M. (Eds.), Oxford handbook of methods in positive psychology (pp. 126–138). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
48.
R Core Team. (2017). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Retrieved fromhttps://www.R-project.org/
49.
RevelleW. (2017). Psych: Procedures for personality and psychological research. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University. Retrieved fromhttps://cran.rproject.org/package=psych
50.
RosseelY. (2012). lavaan: An R package for structural equation modeling. Journal of Statistical Software, 48, 1–36.
51.
SchmittD. P. (2005). Sociosexuality from Argentina to Zimbabwe: A 48-nation study of sex, culture, and strategies of human mating. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28, 247–275.
52.
ShackelfordT. K.SchmittD. P.BussD. M. (2005). Universal dimensions of human mate preferences. Personality and Individual Differences, 39, 447–458.
53.
SotoC. J.JohnO. P. (2017). The next Big Five Inventory (BFI-2): Developing and assessing a hierarchical model with 15 facets to enhance bandwidth, fidelity, and predictive power. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113, 117–143.
54.
SouzaA. L.Conroy-BeamD.BussD. M. (2016). Mate preferences in Brazil: Evolved desires and cultural evolution over three decades. Personality and Individual Differences, 95, 45–49.
55.
SteigerJ. H. (1990). Structural model evaluation and modification: An interval estimation approach. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 25, 173–180.
56.
ŠtěrbováZ.BártováK.NovákováL. M.VarellaM. A. C.HavlíčekJ.ValentovaJ. V. (2017). Assortative mating in personality among heterosexual and male homosexual couples from Brazil and the Czech Republic. Personality and Individual Differences, 112, 90–96.
57.
StroutsP. H.BraseG. L.DillonH. M. (2017). Personality and evolutionary strategies: The relationships between HEXACO traits, mate value, life history strategy, and sociosexuality. Personality and Individual Differences, 115, 128–132.
58.
SugiyamaL. S. (2005). Physical attractiveness: An adaptationist perspective. In BussD. M. (Ed.), The handbook of evolutionary psychology (pp. 292–343). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
ValentineK. A.LiN. P.MeltzerA. L.TsaiM. H. (2019). Mate preferences for warmth-trustworthiness predict romantic attraction in the early stages of mate selection and satisfaction in ongoing relationships. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. doi:10.1177/0146167219855048
61.
WangS.ChenC. C.DaiC. L.RichardsonG. B. (2018). A call for, and beginner’s guide to, measurement invariance testing in evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary Psychological Science, 4, 166–178.
62.
YouyouW.SchwartzH. A.StillwellD.KosinskiM. (2017). Birds of a feather do flock together: Behavior-based personality-assessment method reveals personality similarity among couples and friends. Psychological Science, 28, 276–284.
63.
ZhangL.LeeA. J.DeBruineL. M.JonesB. C. (2019). Are sex differences in preferences for physical attractiveness and good earning capacity in potential mates smaller in countries with greater gender equality?Evolutionary Psychology, 17. doi:10.1177/1474704919852921
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
