ORIGINAL PAPER Intra-sex Variation in Human Mating Strategies: Different People, Different Tactics Felipe Nalon Castro 1 • Wallisen Tadashi Hattori 1 • Fı ´via de Arau ´ jo Lopes 2 Received: 5 May 2012 / Revised: 24 June 2013 / Accepted: 2 February 2015 Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015 Abstract Several studies have demonstrated that men and women exhibit different romantic preferences, which align with the patterns predicted by sexual strategies theory. It is also as- sumed that the mate’s value is a central factor in determining an individual’s sexual strategy. Thus, the current study was devel- oped to investigate whether intra-sex variation exists in the ideal romantic preferences of both genders and whether these prefer- ences are associated with self-perception. To investigate these questions, cluster analyses were performed on the descriptions of ideal mates for short- and long-term relationships given by 366 Brazilian undergraduates (145 men and 221 women). Subsequ- ently, comparisons were made between the lists of self-perceived attributes related to reproduction generated by the resulting groups. The results suggest that males and females use different mating tactics for short-term mating and that males use different tactics for long-term mating. Among men, the mating tactics observed seem to be related to male mate value and their tactics changed when they described ideal short- and long-term partners. Women’s results showed different preference patterns in short- term assessments but minor differences were observed between them in terms of female mate value. For long-term relationships, female patterns were less distinct, indicating a single preference pattern. These findings indicate that a number of different tactics may be clustered together in investigations that address ideal pre- ferences, and that studies of mate preferences must consider indi- vidual self-perceptions. Keywords Evolutionary psychology Á Human mate selection Á Human sex differences Á Self-perception Á Sexual selection Introduction Mate selection has been thoroughly investigated, and several studies indicate that sex and involvement in the relationship are impor- tant factors in determining the preference patterns of men and women (Buss & Schmitt, 1993; Castro & Lopes, 2011; Fletcher, Tither, O’Loughlin, Friesen, & Overall, 2004; Kenrick, Sadalla, Groth, & Trost, 1990; Li & Kenrick, 2006; Stewart, Stinnett, & Rosenfeld, 2000). From an evolutionary perspective, these pat- terns evolved into strategies used by each sex to improve their own reproductive success, even if it meant to respond to the oppo- site sexes desires (Geary, Vigil, & Byrd-Craven, 2004). Accord- ing to the parental investment theory (Trivers, 1972), these be- haviors are the responses to the asymmetrical investment of ener- gy the sexes direct towards reproduction, and they promote in- dividual reproductive success. Particularly among mammals, males exhibit higher reproductive potential, which is limited by access to fertile females. In turn, females evolved to be selective because of the high costs associated with their parental invest- ment (Clutton-Brock, 1989; Clutton-Brock & Vincent, 1991). Expanding these findings to human behavior, Buss and Sch- mitt (1993) proposed the sexual strategies theory, which propos- es that male and female mating strategies were selected to re- spond to different adaptive problems. In response to their main re- productive constrains, the predicted male strategy is to seek a greater & Felipe Nalon Castro castrofn@gmail.com 1 Graduate Program Psychobiology, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Campus Universita ´rio, Caixa Postal 1511, Lagoa Nova, Natal, RN 59078-970, Brazil 2 Department of Physiology, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Campus Universita ´rio, Caixa Postal 1511, Lagoa Nova, Natal, RN 59078-970, Brazil 123 Arch Sex Behav DOI 10.1007/s10508-015-0533-1