Centre for Policy on Ageing



Age preferences in personal advertisements: two life history strategies or one matching tactic?
Author(s)	Jeffrey Lee Rasmussen, D W Rajecki, Anita A Ebert
Journal title	Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, vol 15, no 1, February 1998
Publisher	SAGE Publications, London, February 1998
Pages	pp 77-90
Keywords	Personal relationships ; Adults ; Middle aged ; Age groups [elderly] ; United States of America.
Annotation	Previous interpretations of human age preferences in mates posited two sex-linked `life history strategies' said to involve the parental investment potential of the other as revealed by the other's age. In contrast with a dual strategy, this study of 722 heterosexual personal advertisements written by persons aged 20 to 59 years found overall patterns of correlations between own and stipulated ages that were common to both men and women. For both sexes, reliable own/other correlations were generally found within age decades as well. In addition, an analysis of 133 homosexual personal advertisements showed a similar pattern of reliably correlated own/other ages. These findings suggests that it may not be the age of the other but the age of the self that is the key factor in a single `matching tactic' for stipulating age preferences in mates or partners. (AKM).
Accession Number	CPA-980421219 A
Classmark	DS: SD: SE: BB: 7T
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...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.