Page 55 - Demo

Multimodal mate choice533IntroductionChoosing a partner is an extremely important decision, not only because a good relationship is one of the main predictors for a happy life (Soons et al., 2009), but also from an evolutionary perspective. Selecting a suitable partner might result in healthy offspring; whereas, a wrong choice might result in loss of fitness (Buss & Schmitt, 2019). However, humans typically lack explicit knowledge about the quality of potential partners when meeting them for the first time. This raises the question of how people distinguish between preferred and non-preferred mates based on brief interactions (Kurzban & Weeden, 2005). Evolutionarybased theories posit that humans evolved partner preferences for physical traits that are indicative of mate quality, such as facial attractiveness, sound of voice, and olfactory pleasantness (Grammer et al., 2003). Therefore, humans might initially filter potential partners on the basis of these traits and then only select the suitable individuals (Dixson, 2012; Fisher, 1998). Here, we investigated how different sensory modalities influence this initial filtering by combining a naturalistic speed-dating event with multimodal rating tasks to disentangle the effects of scent, facial attractiveness, and the attractiveness of the voice on dating success.It is well known that attractive humans experience numerous benefits in human societies. For example, individuals that are considered attractive might receive a more positive evaluation of their personalities, have higher chances of being hired for a position, and tend to go on more dates than less attractive people (Little, Jones, et al., 2011). Interestingly, visual attractiveness seems to transcend cultural boundaries, as people from different cultures seem to largely agree on attractiveness ratings (Langlois et al., 2000). Not only do people agree on what is attractive, but visual attractiveness is central in human mate choice for both men and women (Buss & Barnes, 1986; Rhodes, 2006). Previous research has shown that facial attractiveness predicts female and male attraction to a partner (Feingold, 1990; Luo & Zhang, 2009), also in speed-date settings (Asendorpf et al., 2011; Sidari et al., 2021). It has been suggested that choosing an attractive partner might help to ensure offspring with good quality, as different aspects of facial attractiveness may indicate optimal health or genetic quality (Rhodes, 2006; but see Foo et al., 2017). Thus, visual attractiveness is an important part of human mate choice.Tom Roth.indd 53 08-01-2024 10:41