Two important aspects of American society’s definition of manhood are financial success and masculine personality attributes such as confidence and determination. Both have been found to affect woman’s romantic attraction to men.
However, relatively little research has been conducted on friendships between women and men. Although some studies have examined the effects of masculine and feminine personality traits on both platonic with romantic attraction, none to date have examined the effect of financial success on platonic attraction. Finally, no study to date has shown that socially desirable personality traits are necessarily more romantically or platonically attractive than socially undesirable traits. By presenting participants with males of contrasting levels of income, occupational status, social desirability and gender role congruence, the present study examined the effects of financial success and gender-role-related personality traits on women’s platonic and romantic attraction ratings of males.
Conflicting evidence of the attractiveness of masculine and feminine traits in men has been reported in the gender role literature. Some studies have found that women prefer stereotypically masculine men as potential mates; others have found that women are more attracted to androgynous or even feminine personality men. Despite this conflicting evidence, it still seems popular to believe that women in contemporary American society prefer men who are “sensitive,” or have feminine personality traits.
However, many sensitive men may not share this belief because of their personal experience. According to Ickes, “the gentle, compassionate man who reads magazine surveys indicating that his qualities are the very ones that most women prefer in a mate may be the same man who is repeatedly turned down by women who seek the company of more atavistic males.” Similarly, Farrell has stated that women “go for heroes while saying they want vulnerability” and later try to persuade their partners to become more sensitive and vulnerable, rather than initially pursuing sensitive and vulnerable men.
Ickes has proposed that such paradoxical behavior (he also gave examples of men’s paradoxical behavior) occurs because of an inner conflict in heterosexual men and women between genetic and past cultural influences and the influence of gender equality ideals in contemporary American culture. Feminine women may be inherently physically and sexually attracted to masculine men, yet the hierarchical nature of such traditional gender role dyads conflicts with gender equality ideals, leading to interactions that are less satisfying than those of non-traditional dyads.
If gender equality ideals are initially overwhelmed by the sexual attractiveness of a gender role congruent partner, then the influence of these ideals may be best seen in relationships in which sexuality is not an issue, such as friendships. Thus, the gentle, compassionate man Ickes describes may be more desirable as a friend to the same women who reject him as a date, while the more atavistic males Ickes describes may be less desirable as a friend.
Findings in a study by McCutcheon suggest some support for this interpretation of Ickes’ “fundamental paradox” proposition. He found that women were more attracted to feminine males than masculine males as potential friends but found no difference in their attractiveness as potential dates. Thus, women’s attraction to gender role congruent men may have competed with their attraction to feminine men in the case of dating, but not in friendship. The present study examined whether college women would prefer feminine trait or masculine trait men as potential friends versus potential romantic partners and whether feminine or masculine men would be preferred as potential friends versus potential romantic partners.
Ickes’ fundamental paradox proposition also suggests that a man’s financial success is important to women. Success and success-related characteristics such as ambition, earning potential, and earning capacity have been shown to be more important criteria for women than for men in their heterosexual dating patterns.
However, Sprecher’s findings suggests that these gender differences in relationship criteria do not reflect the actual importance of success-related characteristics, but only their attributed importance to men and women. Gender was not related to participant romantic attraction ratings of an opposite-gender stimulus person, but women attributed their attraction to earning potential more than did men. These findings seem to conflict with Ickes’ fundamental paradox proposition, which would have predicted gender differences in attraction ratings because of genetic influences, yet similar attraction attributions because of gender equality ideals.
Nevertheless, Townsend has suggested that unlike men, women with higher earning potential have a smaller pool of acceptable sexual and marital partners than other women because they seek men of equal or higher earning potential. Findings in a later study by Townsend and Levy suggest that the importance of a man’s success level is not limited to his desirability as a potential marriage partner. They found that while a man’s success level became more important to women as marital potential and sexual involvement increased, a partner’s financial success level was a more important consideration for women than for men in their willingness to engage in all measured levels of relationships. Despite the differences in their findings, the converging evidence of these studies suggests that financially successful men are more romantically attractive to women than financially unsuccessful men.
In conclusion, these results suggest that in a controlled setting where confounding variables are less likely to be present, women prefer feminine men over masculine men and that income is important only when choosing among men who all have desirable masculine or feminine personality traits. Although these findings have limitations of external validity, they do lend support to the notion that women are not primarily materialistic, but are more concerned with the relationship-relevant qualities of expressiveness in their choices of romantic partners and friends.
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