Cougar myth busted

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDAug 18 2010

A new study shows that the phenomenon of the “cougar” where an older woman seeks a younger partner is a myth, confined to the world of celebrities. The study looked into online dating and was conducted by the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff (UWIC). The study found the conventional – men looking for younger and attractive women and women looking for older and wealthier men.

The study was published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior and it dispels the “cougar” phenomenon as popularized by movies and TV shows like “Cougar Town” and “Sex and the City”. According to psychologist Dr Michael Dunn of UWIC's Cardiff School of Health Sciences, who was the lead research, age preferences of 22,000 men and women using online dating sites across 14 countries and two religious groups was studied. The countries involved in the survey were Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, Greece, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, and Ukraine. Dr. Dunn said, “A critically important consideration for advertisers on online dating sites appears to be the age of a potential partner.”

He explained that the assumption arises from the fact that with the advent of female financial independence, women were now free to target men of any age group, as securing financial security from older, wealthier males was no longer a priority. “The transference of female desire from relatively older men to relatively younger men, it has been argued, is reflected by the growth of the toy boy phenomenon…The results of our research challenges these assumptions. Although there was some cultural variation in extremes, the results showed clearly that women across all age groups and cultures, targeted males either their own age or older.”

Regarding men he said, younger men aged 20 to 25, either targeted females their own age or marginally younger. But as males aged, they clearly expressed a preference for women increasingly younger than themselves, a cross-culturally consistent pattern. He added, “These findings are clearly supportive of evolutionary theory…A wide variety of evidence has shown that women, when considering a potential long-term partner, focus more than males on cues indicative of wealth and status and these logically accumulate with age…Males conversely focus more intently on physical attractiveness cues and these are clearly correlated with the years of maximum fertility.”

Dr Dunn said Australian men preferred younger women but they tended to nominate a less dramatic age gap, and they were the least likely of those studied to rule out dating older women. “Australian males are still showing a predilection to younger females but not as young as males in other countries sampled…If we look at maximum age preferences, then Australian men show a willingness to consider females marginally older than other countries - especially at age 50 - but even here this preference is for women only one or two years their senior.”