This chapter focuses on women’s preferences in mate selection, which have evolved as a suite of adaptations designed to solve women’s problems associated with reproduction. We first summarize basic differences in women’s reproductive rate and metabolic costs associated with reproduction that have shaped women’s mating preferences. We then summarize women’s short-term-mating preferences, designed primarily to identify mates who possess “good genes” cues that would ensure healthy offspring, followed by a summary of women’s long-term mating preferences, designed primarily to identify mates capable and interested in investing in women and offspring. We discuss how women’s ovulatory cycle, in which conception risk varies across their monthly cycle, modulates women’s mating preferences, particularly short-term mating preferences. This is followed by a summary of how environmental factors, such as the presence of resources or threatening conspecifics, modulate women’s mating preferences, indicating the context-sensitivity of women’s preferences. Finally, we discuss how individual differences in women’s personality traits further modulate short-term and long-term mating preferences.

This chapter focuses on the behaviors employed by men in the service of attracting mates, which we discuss as having emerged to solve specific reproductive problems faced by women. We consider behaviors employed by men to attract mates in short-term mating and long-term mating contexts, given the differential valuation on certain behavioral repertoire that emerge. In short-term mating, we specifically consider behavioral displays of dominance with their dispositional and situational antecedents before discussing men’s pursuit of distinctiveness and humor use, behaviors ostensibly indicative of good genes. In long-term mating, our discussion centers around the desirability of different resource displays and benevolence. We further discuss cues ostensibly diagnostic of paternal investment ability and an interest in monogamy. Our final section addresses how modern mating markets present adaptive problems for men (e.g., online dating, appearance enhancing behaviors) and how men seek to solve the new problems that have emerged.