What Men & Women Find Sexually Attractive, According To Research

In a study published in the journal PLOS ONE, a team of researchers from Queensland University of Technology in Australia looked at what exactly men and women prioritize in sexual partners as they age. They looked at over 7,000 Australians on dating sites, with ages ranging from 18 and 65.

The participants were given nine specific traits broken into three categories to rate based on importance, on a scale of 0 to 100. The "aesthetics" category included age, attractiveness, and physical build/features. The "resources" category included intelligence, education, and income. And the "personality" category included trust, openness, and emotional connection.

Men and women also both rated income with lower importance.

As far as how the results differed with age, it would appear our priorities do change as we get older. In the study, men did place more importance on aesthetics than women in general, but among the older participants, there was less of a discrepancy between men and women's concerns for aesthetics.

For both men and women, "preference for attractiveness appears negatively correlated with age, but preference for openness and trust is positively associated with age," the researchers write in the study.

It's well understood that these sexual attraction preferences influence everything from relationships to sex on an individual level but also broadly influence things like gender norms and politics. The results of this study, the authors note, do line up with much of what we already know with regard to sexual attraction, with the biggest takeaway being how those preferences change with age.

If there's anything we can garner from this, it's that physical attractiveness may be important throughout our lives, but the older we get, the more our personality will be a true test of our attractiveness.