Abstract
Objective. Most of the research on mate preferences has focused on what people desire in a partner, and not on dealbreakers, i.e. what traits make people reject a potential mate. Recently, Jonason et al (2015) published a multi-study paper presenting extensive research on dealbreakers, emphasizing their importance. However, their items loaded on a single factor, so they turned to sorting the items by independent coders into face-valid categories to establish more distinguished facets of dealbreakers. The goal of the present research is to identify dealbreakers in a large sample with factor-analytic methods.
Methods. In Study 1, potential dealbreakers were collected with open-ended questions from a sample of 173 participants. Based on their responses, in Study 2 a closed-ended questionnaire was compiled and administered to a large sample (N = 2,445) of heterosexual respondents (48% female), who had to rate each dealbreaker trait according to how likely it would make the participant reject a potential partner. First exploratory, then confirmatory factor analyses were performed on these ratings. Participants also rated themselves on 23 desirable traits representing 7 factors of mate preferences (from Csajbók & Berkics, 2017).
Results. Seven factors of dealbreakers were confirmed: loserness, hostility, bad hygiene, arrogance, ugliness, overattachment, and abusiveness. Women in general were more selective, i.e. they were more likely to reject prospective partners with undesirable traits, except for ugliness, where males scored higher. Individual differences were also found, as participants' ratings of themselves predicted which dealbreakers they found to be more or less repulsive.
Conclusions. Dealbreakers can be measured as factors just as desirable traits in a potential mate. This offers a more nuanced method to study sex and individual differences with regards to what traits make people reject a candidate when looking for a partner.
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