Men and women clearly have different strategies for picking sexual partners, but the reason why differences exist is less clear. The classic explanation for these differences has been that men's and women's brains have evolved to make certain choices, but a new study in Psychological Science, a publication of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that evolution is only part of the answer.
男性和女性在选择自己性伴侣方面有着明显差异的策略，但这种差异存在的原因却不是十分明朗。对这类差异性存在的一种经典解释就是男性和女性的大脑进化促使他们做出某种选择，但心理科学协会的一个分支机构在心理科学方面提出的一份新研究，表明大脑进化仅仅是这答案的一部分。
To be a 'success' in evolutionary terms, women need to have access to resources for raising offspring, and men need to have access to fertile females. Researchers have argued that women tend to prefer partners who have an ability to invest resources in their children (i.e., wealthy men), and men tend to prefer partners who appear fertile (i.e., young women) because evolutionary adaptations have programmed these preferences in our brains.
在进化过程中为了成为一个“成功”的人，女性需要寻求途径去获取繁衍后代的资源，而男性则需要获得能够不断繁衍后代的女性。研究学者指出，女性往往偏向于那些有能力把财富资源留给子孙后代的男性伴侣（富有的男性），而男性则更喜欢那些不断繁衍后代的伴侣（年轻女性）因为进化论已经把这些特征深深刻在我们大脑中。
But in the modern world, 'success' is not necessarily tied to offspring, so researchers Marcel Zentner and Klaudia Mitura of the University of York in the UK hypothesized that the influence of evolutionary biases on mate choice would decline proportionally with nations' gender parity, or the equality between men and women.
但在现在社会，“成功”与繁衍后代没有必然联系，所以英国约克大学的研究学者Marcel Zentner和Klaudia Mitura假设说，进化论偏见对选择伴侣的影响会随着国家的性别平等或男女平等成比例减少。
"There was accumulating evidence that gender differences in mental abilities, such as math performance, vanish in gender-equal societies, " said Zentner. But he and his fellow researchers wanted to see if they could observe the same trend for selecting sexual partners.
Zentner 说，“目前社会上不断呈现关于智力能力上的性别差异的事实，像数学方面的表现，在性别平等的社会在渐渐消失。”但他和他的下属想要了解到，他们是否能发现在选择性伴侣上是否会有同样的趋势。
Zentner and Mitura had 3, 177 respondents complete an online mate preference survey from 10 countries ranking from a low (Finland) to a high (Turkey) gender gap in terms of the Global Gender Gap Index (GGI) - a measure that was recently introduced by World Economic Forum to iron out shortcomings of earlier gender parity measures. The participants were asked in their native language whether certain criteria - such as as financial prospects and being a good cook - were important considerations when choosing a mate.
Zentner 和Mitura 有3177个受访者完成了一份网上求偶偏向研究，这份研究针对10个在全球性别差距指数方面从低（芬兰）到高（土耳其）的性别差距较大的国家。性别差距指数，是一项检测衡量指标，这项指标近年来由世界经济论坛提出的，主要为了消除早期采取性别平等。受访者被问及他们选择配偶时是否遵循某些标准——比如财政状况及是否是位优秀的厨师，这些标准在选择配偶时是考虑的重要方面。
They found that the gender difference in mate preferences predicted by evolutionary psychology models "is highest in gender-unequal societies, and smallest in the most gender-equal societies, " according to Zentner.
根据Zentner，他们发现在求偶倾向方面性别差异由进化心理模式主导，进化心理模式在性别不平等社会里占据最高地位，而在大部分性别平等社会则占据最低位置。
These results were confirmed in a second study based on mate preferences reported by 8, 953 volunteers from 31 nations. Again, Zentner and Mitura found that there were fewer differences between men and women's preferences in more gender-equal nations compared to less gender-equal nations.
这些成果在第二份研究中得以证实，这份研究是在报道来自31个国家的8953名志愿者求偶偏向调查基础上得来的。与此同时，Zentner 和Mitura发现，与性别不平等国家相比，性别平等国家中男女求偶偏向的差异相对较少。
Because increasing gender equality reduces gender differences in mate selection, these studies indicate that the strategies men and women use to choose mates may not be as hardwired as scientists originally thought.
由于性别平等要求的增加减少了在求偶领域的性别差异，这些研究表明，明智的男女往往选择那类不再像科学家最初认为的具有硬件条件的配偶。
"These findings challenge the idea proposed by some evolutionary psychologists that gender differences in mate-preferences are determined by evolved adaptations that became biologically embedded in the male and female brain, " says Zentner.
Zentner说，“这些发现违背了一些进化心理学家提出的观点——求偶倾向的性别差异主要是由进化适应性决定的，进化适应性渐渐生物化嵌入在男女性大脑中。”
"Indeed, the capacity to change behaviors and attitudes relatively quickly in response to societal changes may itself be driven by an evolutionary program that rewards flexibility over rigidity."
但是他也补充道，进化的根源目前还没有彻底废除掉。“的确，应对社会的改变，改变行为和态度的能力相对较快，可能能力本身是由灵活性远胜于刚性的优势的进化模块驱使的。”
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