Infidelity, chastity/purity, and long-term mating success increase women’s status more than men’s; promiscuity lowers the status of both sexes, but lowers it more dramatically for women than for men

Buss, D. M., Durkee, P. K., Shackelford, T. K., Bowdle, B. F., Schmitt, D. P., Brase, G. L., Choe, J. C., & Trofimova, I. (2020). Human status criteria: Sex differences and similarities across 14 nations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, May 2020. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000206

Abstract: Social status is a central and universal feature of our highly social species. Reproductively relevant resources, including food, territory, mating opportunities, powerful coalitional alliances, and group-provided health care, flow to those high in status and trickle only slowly to those low in status. Despite its importance and centrality to human social group living, the scientific understanding of status contains a large gap in knowledge—the precise criteria by which individuals are accorded high or low status in the eyes of their group members. It is not known whether there exist universal status criteria, nor the degree to which status criteria vary across cultures. Also unknown is whether status criteria are sex differentiated, and the degree of cross-cultural variability and consistency of sex-differentiated status criteria. The current article investigates status criteria across 14 countries (N = 2,751). Results provide the first systematic documentation of potentially universal and sex-differentiated status criteria. Discussion outlines important next steps in understanding the psychology of status.

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[T]he content-level analyses further confirmed that all components of attractiveness (i.e., hygiene, appearance) and domestic skills (i.e., cooking ability, parenting skill, and cleanliness) are more central to women’s status than men’s status across the countries sampled. Sex differences in the effects of women’s sexual strategy on status are especially clear at the content level. Infidelity, chastity/purity, and long-term mating success increase women’s status more than men’s. Sexual promiscuity lowers the status of both sexes, but lowers it more dramatically for women than for men (see Figure 11).