Reading Reports of Empirical Studies

The Abstract is a brief but comprehensive summary of the empirical research report. The Abstract includes a concise statement of the goal of the research, outlines the methods, and presents the essential results and conclusions.

Read the Abstract to get an overview of the research. A general orientation to the article and specific aspects your instructor wants you to concentrate on are presented below.

What makes you attracted to another person? What characteristics lead you to decide you'd like to date someone? Many men desire younger women but many women want to date older men. According to an evolutionary perspective, men desire fertile young women and women desire men who can provide for the family. According to a cultural perspective, men seek younger dates and women seek older dates because of cultural norms and socialization. Most of our socialization comes from American media. Television shows often pair young, fertile women with older, more mature men.

What about young people just beginning to date? Do adolescent boys prefer younger girls and adolescent girls prefer older boys? Evolutionary and cultural perspectives make different predictions about dating preferences by young people. Kenrick, Keefe, Gabrielidis, and Cornelius (1996) conducted an empirical study to tease out differences in dating preferences.

As you read the article, keep track of the two different perspectives and the predictions they make. What perspective do Kenrick et al. appear to favor? If they favoured another perspective, would they word the hypotheses any differently? What perspective is supported by the research? Is this surprising given Kenrick et al's preference?