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WHEN it comes to romantic liaisons, evolution has honed our preferences. Just as a peacock impresses with his feathers, so heterosexual humans look for the telltale signs of a good mate that will boost their reproductive fitness. Women want masculine, dominant men – protectors and providers, with high testosterone levels and good genes that can be passed on to offspring. Men go for physically feminine women, whose hourglass figures signal top-notch fertility. At least, that’s what we are often told. If you’ve always thought it sounded a bit simplistic, you were right.

Increasingly, research is revealing that the rules of attraction are far more nuanced. Our preferences are personal and flexible, shaped by factors such as our environment, social status and economic prospects. It’s time to question the stereotypes and rewrite the rulebook.

1 Women find wealth and status alluring

When asked to rate the importance of qualities in a partner, men rank attractiveness more highly than women do, and women rank wealth and ambition more highly than men do. But what people say they want and what they actually choose do not necessarily match up. that although participants in a speed-dating event showed the expected gender differences beforehand, once they sat down with potential partners both sexes placed most importance on physical attractiveness, followed by personality and then earning prospects.

What men and women prioritise often depends on the type of relationship they are looking for, says Steve Stewart-Williams at Swansea University, UK. “For one-night stands and other short-term relationships, women usually put a lot of weight on how good-looking the guy is – often more than men.” A woman’s own earning potential also plays a part. In an online survey of over 4000 women, that women who were in control of their financial affairs were more interested in a partner’s physical attractiveness than the size of his bank balance. Separately, that the more feminist a woman’s attitudes were, the less importance she placed on a partner’s earnings, and the more she liked men who were “kind and understanding” and “creative”. “[Western] women are likely to have different mate preferences compared with previous generations,” she says.

2 Men prefer airheads

Marilyn Monroe was an intelligent woman, but you wouldn’t have guessed it seeing her perform “Happy Birthday Mr President” at Madison Square Garden in 1962. She’s not the first female to play down her smarts to appeal to a man. Which is odd, because most men actually prefer intelligent women, at least as long-term partners. What gives?

“Most men prefer intelligent women, at least as long-term partners”

Cari Goetz of California State University in San Bernardino believes the allure of stupidity lies in the perception that intellectually challenged women are sexually available. Her team found that men were attracted to images of women who looked immature, intoxicated, reckless, promiscuous, eager for attention, unintelligent and young. “,” she says. when they want sex rather than a committed relationship. But found wide variation among men, with those lacking empathy and wanting uncommitted relationships being most likely to fancy dumb women. Even they moderated their behaviour when in a relationship.

3 Women go for macho men

that men with more masculine faces, voices and even body odour are more attractive to women – when they are ovulating. Most of the time, however, most women, in Western societies at least, . The thing is, , but also with good genes. So it makes sense that a macho hunk should be most attractive to a woman when she can get pregnant.

For most of women’s lives, though, that’s not the case – which might help explain why . , focused on maternal care. “Women experience a substantial drop in their oestrogen and testosterone levels post-partum,” says Kelly Cobey of the University of Stirling, UK. These hormones are thought to affect the way women judge attractiveness.

Another line of research hints that any preferences for macho men may be diminishing as the world becomes more sanitary. Lisa DeBruine at the University of Glasgow, UK, and her colleagues found that women who are most sensitive to signs of disease, “those who were more grossed out by things like touching a bloody cut or stepping in dog poo”, tend to prefer more masculine faces. , women who live in parts of the world where disease risk is high are more attracted to masculine facial features than are women living in healthier places. DeBruine thinks that good genes are especially important where a strong immune system is needed for healthy offspring.

But even where disease is rife, macho men aren’t necessarily preferred. When Carlota Batres of St Andrews University, UK, compared women in El Salvador with and without internet access, she found . Many factors might account for this, but Batres suspects that poverty is influencing their tastes. Previous research reveals that women primed to think about resource scarcity prefer good-dad, “nurturing” traits, which are associated with more feminine-looking men, she says.

4 Women choose men who resemble their father

There is some truth in this. A team led by of the University of Stirling, UK, found that . What’s more, women also tend to prefer older men if their own fathers were relatively old when they were born, and men whose face shape matches their father’s – particularly if they had a good relationship with their dad. The thing to realise is that being more genetically similar to your partner isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For a start, your offspring have a better chance of inheriting groups of genes that work well together if you and your partner have these genes in common. And there’s another potential genetic benefit. “Shared genetics between partners can lead to offspring that are more related to their parents than would happen if they mated at random,” says Little. All this might help explain his finding that men’s partners tend to have the same hair and eye colour as their opposite sex parent too.

5 Treat them mean to keep them keen

Acting cool sends the message that you have plenty of other options, so it makes sense that it might persuade someone to pursue you. But if you want a committed relationship, it’s a bad idea, , because it is likely to attract someone who avoids attachment.

“Playing hard to get is likely to attract “avoidants” who want to keep partners at arm’s length”

Psychologists have found that the more secure a child is in their emotional bond with a parent, the more they are able to go out into the world with confidence. Levine believes adults have attachment styles too, which influence their behaviour in relationships. Securely attached adults aren’t afraid of commitment and are good at communication and compromise, so they don’t feel the need to play games and tend to avoid people who do. Playing hard to get is likely to attract “avoidants” who value their independence and want to keep partners at arm’s length.

6 Domesticated men aren’t sexy

If you’re a woman, does a man pushing a vacuum cleaner round turn you on? Do you fancy a bloke wearing an apron or kitchen gloves? suggests the answer is likely to be “no”. It revealed that couples with more traditional divisions of labour in the home – where men did jobs like DIY and mowing the lawn – had more sex than those in which men did their share of the cooking and cleaning. Women in the less egalitarian partnerships also reported being more sexually satisfied.

However, the study was based on interviews carried out in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and things might be different today, with women bringing home an increasingly large slice of the bacon. If they want to have babies as well as put in the hours required in the boardroom, then they are going to need someone to help shoulder responsibilities on the home front. So . When he and his colleagues analysed a 2006 survey, they found that couples who shared the housework had at least as much sex as those with more traditional roles. “In the 80s, egalitarian couples were at the forefront of change,” he says. “Today’s couples have those examples to look to. It makes it a lot easier, resulting in higher-quality relationships.”

7 Men prefer an hourglass figure

Feminine features such as big eyes, pert little noses, small chins and a curvy hourglass figure signal high levels of oestrogen and are linked to fertility and health. So, all else being equal, it makes sense for men to be especially attracted to the likes of Beyoncé and Kim Kardashian. However, all else is not equal.

Although many studies suggest a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7 is most attractive, . Elizabeth Cashdan at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City points out that they have higher levels of testosterone and cortisol, which may help them outcompete their wasp-waisted counterparts when resources are scarce. Indeed, the waist circumference of Playboy models has risen during periods of recession, according to .

Similarly, that had been morphed to make them more feminine or masculine, those from less well-off countries had less of a preference for femininity. “Women who are highly feminine are perceived to be less dominant and less effective in competing for resources,” says Urszula Marcinkowska at Jagiellonian University, Poland, who led the study. In addition, men who had to cope with high levels of pathogens during childhood are likely to have lower testosterone, a hormone linked with a preference for ultra-feminine women.

8 First impressions are all-important

on a range of qualities, at the beginning of the first semester and again at the end. Initially there was a high degree of consensus on how attractive individuals were, reflecting research showing that people are pretty much in agreement about somebody’s “mate value”, or appeal as a partner. However, after just one term of getting to know each other, his students had increasingly divergent opinions about the attractiveness of their peers. Eastwick puts this down to a quality that affects our perception of attractiveness and that can only be assessed once we get to know another person’s foibles: he calls it “uniqueness”.

It’s well known that partners tend to be matched in terms of physical attractiveness. However, Eastwick’s latest research reveals that this is less true for those who got to know each other well before starting a relationship than for those who began dating soon after meeting. Here, unique appeal is likely to have made up for any attractiveness deficit, he says.

9 Women want commitment

For men, promiscuity offers the possibility of having many babies. That is not the case for women, but they may benefit in all sorts of other ways, from getting better genes and more resources for their kids to improving their own social network and prospects. Whether or not women choose this approach depends to a large degree on the social consequences, which are linked to factors such as religion and economics.

“As the gender pay gap decreases in the West, attitudes to promiscuity are relaxing”

A team led by a correlation between female economic independence and acceptance of promiscuous behaviour – both male and female. “As the gender pay gap has decreased in the UK and other Western countries, and women have become more financially independent, the relative costs of engaging in promiscuity versus pair bonding have gone down, and so cultural rules against promiscuity have become more relaxed,” he says. This could help explain that women in the UK report having eight sexual partners on average over their lifetime – almost twice as many as a generation ago.

10 Men want casual sex

When it comes to sociosexuality scores – a measure of a person’s propensity to have sex without commitment – men trump women. But it’s not that simple. There is huge overlap in the scores of the two sexes, and more variation within them than between them.

Promiscuity is just one mating strategy. Many men invest a lot in their offspring, which is good for the kids and so their own reproductive success. The costs and benefits of these different approaches and also on a man’s individual qualities. Durante thinks that we figure out our mate value at some period in adolescence, and it’s then that many men realise promiscuity is not a great option for them. Even the most attractive males are likely to settle down at some point, notes Stewart-Williams. “These men – the most eligible bachelors, the highest-status males in our species – often do what male chimpanzees never do: they fall in love.”

This article appeared in print under the headline “Snog, marry, avoid?”