Do men with high self-esteem have higher standards in women?

.


When it comes to one-night stands, high self-esteem makes women’s standards go up and men’s standards go down:

Men tend to establish minimum standards that are similar to those of women for high investment relationships (e.g., marriage) but set lower standards for relationships requiring less investment (e.g., a one-night stand). The purpose of the present study was to examine whether self-esteem moderates these gender differences in minimum standards for romantic relationships. This was accomplished by conducting a cross-sectional study with undergraduate participants (57 men and 124 women) from the southern region of the United States. Participants completed a self-esteem measure and reported their minimum standards for partners across various levels of relational involvement. As predicted, high self-esteem was associated with higher standards for low investment relationships among women but lower standards among men.

Source: “How Low Will Men with High Self-Esteem Go? Self-Esteem as a Moderator of Gender Differences in Minimum Relationship Standards” from the journal “Sex Roles”, Volume 61, Numbers 7-8 / October, 2009

Join over 320,000 readers. Get a free weekly update via email here.

Related posts:

New Neuroscience Reveals 4 Rituals That Will Make You Happy

New Harvard Research Reveals A Fun Way To Be More Successful

How To Get People To Like You: 7 Ways From An FBI Behavior Expert

Share

Subscribe to the newsletter