Mate Value / Coalitional Value:

Alexander:

"What women find attractive in men overlaps heavily with what men find desirable in same-sex peers, coalition members, friends, and leaders. We have evolved a bias in favor of “good traits,” which does not necessarily mean we are “good trait optimizers.” Rather, we are “good trait satisficers.” For example, our politicians are not exclusively 140IQ geniuses, but they typically are not unintelligent. If we looked at a distribution of politician IQ and found the mean was 110 or so (probably accurate, and around what it is for academics) it would not be correct to say we select “against” intelligence. But, we don’t pick the smartest people for our leaders either! Same effect in relationships. Being a literal genius might not help you much. But we do see biases in favor of one direction: women prefer physically attractive partners (and men prefer physically attractive same-sex peers, even from a young age onward). Women prefer taller and more muscular men as romantic partners - men prefer them as friends. Behavioral dominance is attractive to women and desirable in same-sex male peers. Extraversion. Low neuroticism. Some level of the Dark Triad traits (mainly narcissism) is attractive to the opposite sex - and is found more frequently in men in leadership (eg CEOs and politicians). Basically everything “mate value” is also “coalitional value.” The same status markers David Buss found cross-culturally are perceived as high status to both men and women. Not a lot in the way of sex differences in agreement or disagreement. Many of these same traits also predict both relationship outcomes (eg who will get divorced) and life outcomes (eg who will get fired from a job)."