Assortative mating and the evolution of desirability covariation

Summary

This paper tested whether assortative mating on overall mate value can explain why desirable traits tend to co-occur within individuals. Using agent-based evolutionary simulations, the authors showed that mating between partners of similar overall desirability drives the emergence of a positive manifold, or 'd factor,' in which being desirable on one dimension tends to predict desirability across others. They then examined a large cross-cultural dataset of 14,478 participants from 45 countries and found that this d factor emerged consistently and was patterned as an evolutionary history of assortative mating would predict. The findings link mate-choice dynamics to the correlational structure of human individual differences.