A worldwide preference matching paper by Paul Eastwick found no sex differences in how trait assessments predicted overall romantic evaluations of partners, with partner sexual skill ranking highest.
"So the directionally correct summary is that he had people assess their romantic partners on various traits and then saw how much those assessments correlated with their overall romantic evaluations of them. And in that he found no sex difference. Um and he also found some weird findings like that the number one thing people wanted was someone by that measure was someone good in bed." (said at 1:09:44)
In a large-scale registered report involving 10,358 participants across 43 countries examining ideal partner preference matching across 35 traits, Paul Eastwick and colleagues did find gender differences in how stated preferences related to revealed romantic evaluations. Specifically, for physical attractiveness, both men's and women's stated preferences underestimated revealed preferences (they evaluated attractive partners more favorably than predicted by their stated ideals), while for earning potential, men underestimated and women overestimated revealed preferences. Furthermore, the study did not find that partner sexual skill or being "good in bed" ranked highest among traits in predicting romantic evaluations.
- contradicts: A worldwide test of the predictive validity of ideal partner preference matching. (Journal of personality and social psychology 2025)
"Comparisons between stated and revealed preferences shed light on gender differences and similarities: For attractiveness, men's and (especially) women's stated preferences underestimated revealed preferences (i.e., they thought attractiveness was less important than it actually was). For earning potential, men's stated preferences underestimated-and women's stated preferences overestimated-revealed preferences." (abstract, results, passage verified)
pubmedfull study (doi)