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Older Men

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science

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Synonyms

Age disparity

Definition

The tendency on women to seek older partners

Introduction

As a general rule, heterosexual women like their male partners to be slightly older than they themselves are (Kenrick and Keefe 1992). The average age disparity between women and their male partners (real or imagined) has been consistently estimated at 2–6 years, but the preference for older men decreases slightly as women grow older, and at about 45 years of age, women no longer show a preference for older men (Antfolk et al. 2015; Kenrick and Keefe 1992). However, a lot of important information is lost when only looking at the mean population preference. A closer look at the distribution of age disparity from population-wide marriage data shows that approximately one-third of married women in the USA have a partner that is less than 1 year older (or younger) than they themselves are. Somewhat ironically, the most common “age disparity” is thus one where there hardly is any age disparity at...

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Åbo Akademi University, Tehtaankatu 2, 20500, Åbo, Turku, Finland

    Jan Antfolk

Authors
  1. Jan Antfolk
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jan Antfolk .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland Univ Dept of Psycholgy, Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Viviana Weekes-Shackelford

  2. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

  3. Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. School of Psychology, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, Lancashire, UK

    Gayle Brewer

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing AG

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Antfolk, J. (2016). Older Men. In: Weekes-Shackelford, V., Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_11-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_11-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

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