In Fall 2023, 12 Ithaca College students embarked on a team research project under Leigh Ann Vaughn, professor in the Department of Psychology. The international project, in which students played a small part, researched preferences of romantic partners, crushes or people an individual might be interested in. They also investigated differences between what people want in a partner versus what they say they want.

The study, “The reality of romantic preferences: Large-scale study reveals surprising truths,” was officially approved on July 3 by reviewers at the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology  and will be published in their journal of the same name. The study results were built by a culmination of research in 43 different countries and 10,000 participants.

After analyzing many traits, characteristics like warmth, loyalty and honesty were found to be prioritized and generally liked the most — a general trend throughout the multiple research teams. Especially in gender contexts, the idea of women valuing status and men valuing attraction was overstated.

While much of the work was done in Fall 2023, the approval for the study’s publication was officially announced in August.

Senior Grace Lill, a psychology major, acted as a mentor for other student co-researchers, as this is her third research team study. As a mentor, she strived to help first-time researchers succeed by giving them prompts and answering questions. She said she was proud that the work she contributed was approved for publication.

“You get to look at and be like, my name’s there,” Lill said. “I actually did this. I can put this on my [curriculum vitae] and be like, ‘I really did this, which is really cool for something like grad school.’”

The study’s principal investigator, Paul W. Eastwick, professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, started this research with an interest in the differences in romantic preferences, related to gender, as he mentioned in an interview on the Modern Wisdom podcast. Eastwick said he wanted to investigate the accuracy of the claim that women tend to be more attracted to economic status whereas men focus more on physical attractiveness.

Eastwick explained the understanding and analysis of a trait, focusing on the trait of attractiveness; he compared the study to a person going speed dating and liking some of the people they meet intensely and some not at all. 

“Liking [someone or something] can be measured in a million different ways,” Eastwick said on the podcast. “But it’s some sort of association, some sort of predictive relationship between the attribute and some fort of evaluative experience that you have for a set of potential partners.” 

Professor Vaughn heard about this study through the Psychological Science Accelerator, an organization that allows researchers to connect worldwide to assist with big team science projects that cannot be successfully completed in a single research team. 

“If we want to take a look at, for example, romantic partner preferences around the world, no one person can do that,” Vaughn said. “But if a bunch of people get together, then we can.”

The opportunity to be on these research teams is often what attracts these students to the college. Participating on the research team for two semesters is required for the psychology major. Vaughn said that finding students willing to help with this study was easy. She said it also helped that students were engaged with the topic.

“[Romantic attraction] has always been one of my favorite topics in social psychology,” Vaughn said. “And it is one of my students’ favorite topics, so I thought my research team would love it.” 

One of the students who helped with this study was senior Allie Richter, a psychology major, who said this was her first large-group research project. She was asked by Vaughn if she was interested in joining the team because Richter was always engaged in class.

“So many people are in romantic relationships, including myself,” Richter said via email. “I think it is really interesting to see and learn about what types of traits people care about the most when looking for a romantic partner and if it is similar versus different to what I looked for in my partner.”

Senior Camden Kelley found that the angle of this research and the opportunity to be involved in an international study resonated with her.

“I just thought it’d be interesting to be a part of this major international study,” Kelley said. “And it just seems like something that’s relevant to young people.” 

Vaughn and her students’ role was to collect data by conducting surveys. Her students recruited other students at the college to participate, assisted in data collection and worked on troubleshooting any mishaps that might come up. Vaughn led the students and helped create Institutional Review Board proposals, which involves submitting the intended research methods to the board and handing in consent forms from participants.

Before diving into research, Vaughn and some of her students made predictions about what they would discover.

“I just assumed that whatever findings we would find would kind of feel like we knew them, like it would feel like common sense,” Kelley said. “Like we like people that match our ideals.”

The findings also revealed that most people are influenced by “consensually desirable” or universally attractive traits rather than “distinctive” or more specific traits. Generally negative traits, such as “easily upset” had a significant influence on partnerships or potential partnerships. As not all participants were in relationships and they were asked to think about multiple people during the study, not every trait looked at was inherently for a present-romantic connection.

While the study has already been approved for publication, the work for the team is not done. Vaughn and some of her students will be attending the 2024 New England Psychological Association in October to present their findings to other study groups.

“I am really excited to present our findings at NEPA,” Richter said via email. “I definitely am a bit anxious but I think the anxiety is more of an excitement for being able to be part of something so cool.”