The big, the rich, and the powerful: physical, financial, and social dimensions of dominance in mating and attraction.
Dominance is a key feature on which romantic partners are evaluated, yet there is no clear consensus on its definition. In Study 1 (N=305), the authors developed scales to measure three putatively distinct dimensions of dominance: social, financial, and physical. In Study 2 (N=308), the authors used their scales in a mate-selection paradigm and found that women perceived physical dominance to be related to both attractiveness and social dominance. For both sexes, attractiveness predicted desirability for a one-night stand, whereas attractiveness and agreeableness were predictors of desirability for a serious relationship. In Study 3 (N=124), the authors surveyed romantic partners in monogamous relationships and found that although aspects of a partner's dominance-financial for women and social for men-played a bivariate role in relationship satisfaction, agreeableness was the strongest predictor of current and future relationship satisfaction and the only significant predictor of relationship dissolution.
University of New Mexico, Department of Psychology, Albuquerque, NM 87131-1161, USA. abryan@unm.edu
Angela D
AD
Bryan
Gregory D
GD
Webster
Amanda L
AL
Mahaffey
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001318:Authoritarianism; D001504:Beauty; D003380:Courtship / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008149:Love; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011209:Power, Psychological; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012928:Social Desirability; D012930:Social Dominance; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult