Sex survey reveals reasons behind why we find certain people attractive

But researchers argue it’s not all what it seems.

Speaking to NCA NewsWire, behavioural economist Dr Stephen Whyte said the research supported several stereotypes, but what women and men preferred in a partner changed at various life stages.

“Male and females place more weight on things like attractiveness when they’re in peak fertility, during that 18 to 40 age bracket,” he said.

“But that tapers off with age, and the inverse of that is people show greater preference for things like personality.”

He said people entering the dating market in their 20s or 30s were largely motivated by reproduction, which explains why younger participants favoured looks.

As part of the study, Queensland University of Technology reserachers explored how attractiveness preferences varied across different age brackets.

To do this they studied data collected from thousands of Australians aged between 18 and 65 who had participated in an Australian sex survey.

Researchers asked participants to rate the importance of nine characteristics linked to sexual attraction: age, attractiveness, physical build/features, intelligence, education, income, trust, openness and emotional connection.

They were asked “to what extent do you find a person’s (specific trait) influences how sexually attractive you find them?” and were told to answer questions on a scale of zero to 100 from not at all (0) to extremely important (100).

“Firstly, we found males regard both attractiveness and physical build as more important characteristics for sexual attraction relative to all other traits compared to women,” Dr Whyte said.

“Both sexes regarded income as the least important factor, but females do place a higher importance than men on education and intelligence, although men regard openness as slightly more important that the females surveyed.”

As they age both men and women’s preferences aligned more closely, with both genders placing greater importance on openness and trust.

“Lots of these (findings are) stereotypes. And that’s not a bad thing,” Dr Whyte said.

“What’s great about this study is that it shows men and women care about the same things. It’s just that they care about the same things at different life stages.

“This is why we see these stereotypes evolve because we say that ‘women behave this way’ and ‘men behave this way’. We all behave these ways, it’s just accentuated at different stages of our lives for different reasons.”

Dr Wyte said previous studies often included a limited age distribution that was skewed to young Australians and didn’t offer a true picture of how things evolved.

“We have taken data from a much larger age range to judge how the pattern of sexual preferences may differ with age,” he said.