Case Study 4.1: Two Researchers, Two Frameworks
The Phenomenon: Women's Preferences for Physical Dominance
One of the most replicated findings in evolutionary psychology is that women, on average, show some preference for partners who display physical indicators of dominance — height above average, shoulder-to-hip ratio, physical strength — particularly in short-term mating contexts. This finding has appeared in studies across multiple cultures and has proven reasonably robust in replication attempts. It is also one of the most contested findings in the field, not because the basic empirical pattern is disputed, but because the explanation of that pattern is fiercely debated.
When Dr. Adaeze Okafor and Dr. Carlos Reyes first sat down to discuss the design of their Global Attraction Project, this finding was on the table within the first hour.
The Evolutionary Reading (Dr. Reyes)
For Reyes, the finding fits coherently into the framework he works within. Physical dominance indicators — height, musculature, broad shoulders — are honest signals of developmental health, immunocompetence, and resource acquisition capacity. A male who has grown tall and strong in an environment that depleted resources was, by definition, a survivor. These signals, in an ancestral environment, would have been meaningful predictors of the ability to protect a mate and offspring, secure food and territory, and provide material resources.
Reyes is careful to note — and this is one of the things Okafor respects about him — that "average preference" does not mean "universal preference," and that evolved tendencies are not immune to cultural modulation. He also acknowledges that physical dominance is only one factor among many; men who display warmth, intelligence, and social status are often found more attractive overall than physically dominant men who lack these qualities. The evolutionary account, he insists, is about a statistical tendency, not an iron law.
Still, his explanation runs: this preference is found across cultures because it was adaptive in ancestral environments. Culture modifies its expression; biology establishes the basic tendency.
⚖️ The Evolutionary Framework's Illumination This interpretation highlights the cross-cultural robustness of the preference — the fact that it appears even in cultures where explicit gender norms vary substantially. It provides a parsimony argument: if a preference appears repeatedly across diverse social environments, a biological explanation has explanatory economy that purely cultural accounts may lack. It also generates testable predictions about when preferences will be strongest (short-term vs. long-term mating contexts, women at different points in their ovulatory cycle, etc.).
The Social Constructionist/Feminist Reading (Dr. Okafor)
Okafor does not dispute the basic empirical finding. What she disputes, forcefully, is Reyes's explanation.
Her counter-analysis begins with the historical and anthropological record. Physical dominance indicators have been associated with desirability in men partly because societies that value or reward physical dominance in men have also created social conditions in which physical dominance is men's primary avenue to status and resources. The finding may not be "women are attracted to physically dominant men because dominance signals fitness" but "women in societies where physical force is equated with power are attracted to signs of that power because power, under those conditions, genuinely predicts access to resources."
This is not a trivial distinction. It means the preference may be less about evolved psychology and more about rational — even if unconscious — assessment of who has social and material power in a given context. If you change the conditions under which power is acquired (if physical strength is less correlated with status and resources, as it is in many contemporary knowledge economies), you would expect the preference to weaken or shift.
Okafor also points to the racial dimension, which Reyes's framework systematically underweights. The content of what counts as "physically dominant" is not culturally neutral. In Western contexts, certain body types — often those associated with whiteness — are aesthetically coded as dominant and attractive, while other body types — often those associated with Blackness or South Asian ethnicity — are either hypersexualized (Black men, in racist stereotypes) or desexualized (South Asian men, in different racist stereotypes). If the preference for "physical dominance" is partly a culturally produced aesthetic, it carries the racial aesthetics of the culture that produced it. An evolutionary account that fails to account for this is measuring the output of racial ideology and calling it a biological preference.
⚠️ The Constructionist/Feminist Framework's Illumination This interpretation highlights what the evolutionary account systematically cannot see: the racial and historical specificity of what counts as "dominant." It explains why the content of physical attractiveness preferences varies substantially across cultures even when the general preference for dominance signals appears consistent. It asks the political question that evolutionary accounts frequently evade: who benefits from naturalizing this preference?
What Each Framework Obscures
Reyes, when pushed, acknowledges that his framework is less well-suited to explaining within-culture variation (why do women's preferences vary so dramatically within any given culture?), the role of explicit relationship goals and values in overriding evolved tendencies, and the experiences of women who consistently do not share the modal preference.
Okafor acknowledges that a purely constructionist account struggles to explain why preferences for physical dominance appear cross-culturally even in societies with very different gender norms — she doesn't have a clean constructionist explanation for the finding's cross-cultural breadth.
This is, in miniature, the productive tension that the Global Attraction Project was designed to explore. Their mixed-methods approach — surveys to assess cross-cultural breadth, qualitative interviews to understand subjective meaning, behavioral observation to identify divergence between stated and revealed preferences — is explicitly designed to capture what neither framework alone can see.
Discussion Questions
- Okafor argues that the evolutionary account "measures the output of racial ideology and calls it a biological preference." Do you find this critique compelling? What evidence would you need to see to evaluate it?
- Reyes makes a distinction between a "statistical tendency" and an "iron law." Is this distinction sufficient to answer Okafor's critique, or does it sidestep it?
- Can you think of a research design that would help adjudicate between these two explanations? What would it need to measure, and what methodological challenges would it face?
- Does the framework you find more persuasive in this case study correlate with your social position (gender, race, cultural background)? What would it mean if it did?