Assortment Mating or Reproductive Potential Attract Mating?

Ellery

If Assortment Mating holds as true, then rich men should go for rich women, while beautiful women would go for beautiful men etc.

A contrasting theory is that, rich men go for beautiful women, so as to maximize reproductive potentials.

In real life, which assumption of the two above is what happens?

To be more specific, if I am wildly attracted to intelligence in men, shall I focus on my physical attractiveness and sweetness in order to attract them, or shall I focus on my achievements/intelligence in order to do so?

Hope can get answers to especially my last question from male perspectives. So any man especially intelligent men please help. Thanks in advance.

Ostrom

The most potent assortative mating mechanism is hypergamy - specifically females choosing partners of higher levels of education. The basic functional account suggests this offsets females' lower long term earning potential, and tendency toward early labour market exit. I really doubt that the main driver of these things is biological - there are far too many similarities of mate selection along educational, occupational and class lines across countries.

Torakx

This is just my opinion for funsies.

Ah depends on what you class as an intelligent man
Maybe you mean educated?

There is also the issue of personality and culture there too and if the male subscribes to a culture.
I would say an intelligent man might not subscribe to cultural protocols, but may appear to, so as to succeed.

If you are after an educated intelligent man who is successful regarding securities in life(has money/shelter/food etc) he will probably look first for intelligence and not far behind that, good looks. Because he is intelligent and not following his natural instinct to go for a good looking woman who will represent sex and reproduction to him on a basic level.

I'm guessing an educated man who is not intelligent would go for a good looking woman(but really playing averages on that guess).

Another guess is that an uneducated man who is very intelligent might go for an educated or intelligent woman foremost and secondly good looks(which he knows will fade in time).

But then it all depends on what the individual counts as important to them personally too!
So really I would not worry so much about looks that are more or less set by genes and focus on cultivating your intelligence and education.

My personal preference would be intelligence/education/looks in order of priority.
Mainly because I value peace of mind and a thick good looking woman will drive me up the wall in about 5 minutes.
An unnattractive intelligent woman will have a better chance if she can bypass the looks department enough to create an attraction.

And lastly as I am searching for the lady of my dreams
I first look for attraction, because its the easiest simplest thing to decide if its there.
Once I have decided I am or could be attracted, I move on to the more important things that really matter.

Hope that helped and didn't make things worse haha!
It certainly helped me and I enjoyed writing it.
Interestign discussion and I would love to hear more opinions also from women on their choice of men!