Evaluation for the 16 Marker:

One strength of the evolutionary explaination is that it has real-world application. Buss
(1989) questioned 10,000 adults in 33 countries about mate choice preference- what they would look
for in an ‘ideal’ partner. He found that females preferred resource-based characteristics (such as a
good career), whereas males preferred physical attractiveness and youth. This was true across all the
countries surveyed. This supports the difference in mate choice preferences related to anisogamy.
This suggests that this explanation can be applicable to humans as well, as Buss observed in his
study.
Furthermore, this study can be backed up further by Clark and Hatfield (1989). They found
that when male and female university students were propositioned by an opposite-sex stranger on
campus, 75% of males agreed to the request to spend the night together, whereas no females did.
This supports the evolutionary theory that females are much choosier than males when it comes to
selecting a mate.
One major limitation of the evolutionary theory is that the theory does not account for major
social and cultural changes which may affect reproductive behaviour. There is some evidence of
changes to mate choice preference following changes such as the lack of female dependency on a
partner. Therefore, mate choice is likely to be influenced by more factors than just evolutionary
preferences.