What women want?
A US researcher has tried to use biology to explain the differences in what women write in lonely-hearts personal ads in big cities versus small cities.
In the study published in the behavioural studies journal, Ethology, graduate student Kevin McGraw claims that it's all about what kind of mate women want.
Where resources are at a premium - in expensive, big cities like San Francisco and Boston - so are the men who can provide them, says McGraw of the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University.
In such densely populated places, personal ads indicate that material comforts provided by males seem more important to women than do the emotional or intellectual aspects of a relationship.
But in medium- and smaller-sized cities, the biologist's reading of newspaper personal ads found the opposite: women place more emphasis on emotional aspects or personal interests of potential mates, and less on materialism, argues McGraw whose usual research is on the effects of diet, genetics and physiology on birds' plumage colour and the like.
Such theories are used to explain the mate choice of female birds and other animals. In crowded, resource-scarce environments female birds look for males with the potential to materially care for them and their offspring.
McGraw studied the language in lonely-hearts personal columns in newspapers from 23 US cities to learn about the desired traits in thousands of "Women-seeking-Men" advertisements.
Comparing human mate-choice strategies to those of other animals, McGraw says women seeking resource-rich men use phrases like "financially stable" and "professional and intelligent."
However he does admit there were some difficulties in judging emotional aspects of interest to women -- such as honesty, compassion and sincerity -- in non-human animals.
After two months of research, McGraw concluded, "In densely populated and resource-demanding environments, birds and women may not be all that different."
"This study emphasises the flexibility of mating strategies, depending on the environments individuals find themselves in," he says. "The rich guys don't always win. And the nice guys don't always finish last -- although they might have to move to be found by the right mate."
McGraw found that the desire for physical attractiveness did not vary with geographic location or city size.
Interestingly, New York City was not included in the study apparently because the city's daily newspapers publish too few lonely hearts ads to offer a representative sample.
Women in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago and Miami rated men who are good providers over men who are good listeners. However, money was much less important to women in St. Louis and Kansas City, New Orleans and Montgomery, Alabama.
The research is published in a paper titled "Environmental Predictors of Geographic Variation in Human Mating Preferences," in Ethology (Vol. 108, pp. 303-317).