The sexual market value (SMV) is an individual’s measure of sexual attractiveness.

Sometimes referred to as “mate value” by academics, high SMV men are the sexual marketplace equivalent of high-value men in social exchanges.

High-SMV individuals have an easy time dating, have many partners to choose from, and generally date other high-value women or men.

This article explains how sexual market value functions, helps you assess your sexual market value, and helps you boost your sexual market value.

People subconsciously assess others’ SMV while showcasing their best selves to elevate their own

So let’s start:

Sexual Market Value Theory

We define sexual market value as:

Sexual Market Value (SMV) refers to an individual’s overall desirability as a mate, determined by a combination of factors determines their perceived value in the mating market.

In simpler terms, the sexual market value is an individual’s level of attractiveness.

Sexual Market Value Dynamics

The concept of sexual market value is rooted in the negotiative dynamics of human relationships.
While some find this framework unpalatable, it is nonetheless supported by substantial academic evidence.

For example, the latest APA Handbook of relationships says:

Both sexes would be most happy with a partner who is high on all desirable dimensions (…). However, most people (…) must compromise and make trade-offs.

Meaning: everyone prefers a mate with a higher SMV, and nobody wants a lower SMV mate.
Since nobody wants to settle for less, people usually end up with someone who’s on their level (assortative mating).

Indeed, an individual’s SMV is the best predictor of the quality of his mates. And that’s especially true for long-term dating.
Thus, the higher mate value, the more and better dating options one has.

Sexual Market Value Is Power

Your sexual market value largely influences your “dating power”.

In simple terms:

High SMV = high dating power.

The reason is simple: everyone wants a high SMV mate.
Quoting from the Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology:

humans have evolved not to mate indiscriminately but have evolved psychological mechanisms to evaluate and prefer mates who possess greater, as opposed to lesser, reproductive value

However, that doesn’t mean that everyone is out for the best of the best.
Instead, because everyone assesses others, people’s success in the sexual marketplace is linked to their own sexual market value.

So, are you doomed at birth by your SMV?

No.

Luckily, your SMV is malleable, often highly malleable.
And you can almost always increase it with well-directed effort, smart marketing, and good old personal self-development.

You can even increase your SMV by simply changing how you think of your SMV.
We call that ‘confidence’.

How SMV Impacts Mating Efforts & Partner’s Choice

Most people have an inherent understanding of their own SMV.

That means that, largely, it’s a myth that everyone -or women- seeks the “best of the best”.
Instead, people usually target potential mates who are close to their own sexual market value.

Many men drop their standards and “date down” for short term, but maintain higher standards for long term

Usually, men are willing to “fish down” for short-term and uncommitted dating.
But also men tend to prefer similar or higher value partners for the longer-term.

Sexual Market Value Assessments

Please be aware of this:

Attraction is highly contextual and subjective, and any SVM calculator or chart is inherently simplistic.
Just as an example, read my note under the SMV calculator below.

Sexual Market Value Calculator

⚠️ Warning again: it’s a reliable calculator, but the final number is not destiny!

🙋🏼‍♂️ Lucio’s note: SMV isn’t destiny. Even as a short, low-status, low-income trainee at my old company’s party, I was with the most attractive woman. Smart men can always find a way!

For the charts, we’ll use a few simplified ones, while addressing the biggest flaw of most: ignoring the distinction between short-term and long-term dynamics.

Male Sexual Market Value (Short Term)

Looks and “game” reign supreme in short-term.

If looks are the equivalent of standing naked, game is the marketing (or manipulation) of that package.

Everyone engages in some form of “game”.
Conversation, personal style, nonverbal language, bonding and vibing with others—they’re all game.

Games work best in short-term dating, just as marketing and sales work best in selling the product.
Once the sale has been done, the intrinsic qualities of the product come to the fore.
This is why honest self-development is one of the best forms of “game”. Self-development improves your SMV for both the short-term and long-term.

One might ask:

Why are resources even featured in short-term mating?

First of all, it’s simple logic.
And since logic simplifies at the extremes, imagine: at parity of everything else, would she rather accompany him at his mansion in a chauffeured car, or walk to his shared room in Shanty Side of Town?
Obvious answer.

Second, the two temporal dimensions are linked, and some women go for short while hoping for long-term.

Third, several studies showed that resources can also help in short-term dating.
For example, “conspicuous consumption” (Kenrick et. al., 2011), or throwing money around, is a powerful attractor in club environments.

Male Sexual Market Value (Long-Term)

Now imagine you want to settle down.

And you would ask yourself the ancestral male question:

What do women want?

The simple answer is: everything.

For simplicity, we keep the same traits for each chart.
But a more realistic chart would add more traits, including the ones that facilitate long-term pair bonding such as kindness, maturity, secure attachment style, emotional availability, etc.

Game in the long term enlarges its scope to include relationship management and maintaining attraction in the long-term.

And of course, all traits are at least somewhat connected and overlapping.
For example, high-status men are perceived as more attractive, and even taller. And vice versa.
And high status tend to have more resources. And vice versa.

Female Sexual Market Value (Short-Term)

This one was not difficult:

The game for women is the ability to make them horny.
Good game can complement looks, or can help make up for looks.

Female Long Sexual Market Value (Long-Term)

Here is one misunderstood, yet simple reality of SMV:

In long-term mating men are nearly as selective as women.
And the inverse is also true: in “short-term mode”, women become more like men.

For example, when a colleague told me he wanted a woman with a master’s degree, I knew he was not a player. Instead, he was looking for a wife.

Age is interesting.
A previously popular SMV chart assessed market value only based on age.

And it does matter a lot, indeed.
But there are still contextual elements.
First, it’s about the age one looks.
Second, it matters comparatively less in non-monogamous societies because men are not “stuck” for a lifetime.

Faithfulness, the most sought-after trait in several surveys, also matters less to very high-status men in polygynous cultures.
These men have many women, so they can allow themselves to care less about fidelity -unless they’re jealous and paranoid, exceptions always apply-.

Traits of SMV

So let’s start:

#1. Male Resources

Says Buss:

The male occupational status seems to be the best predictor of the attractiveness of the woman he marries.

Many studies show women’s preference for men with resources is universal across cultures, religions, and political systems.

Women prefer men with resources even when they themselves have resources.
Research among women in the upper-income bracket in the US showed that high-income women placed an even greater value on mates with high degrees, professional status, and high income.

High status and income men are aware of their ability to attract more desirable women.
As men’s income goes up, they seek younger partners while also expressing a stronger preference for facially feminine women.

While resources are most helpful for committed long-term, they can also empower very wealthy men for uncommitted sexual access.
For example, Berlusconi placed several “entertainers” in his many condos around Milan and ready “on call”.

#2. Male Social Status

Women desire men who command a high position in society.

For US women, high social status or a high-status job are almost as important as financial prospects.

Evolutionary psychologists say that women want high social status because it’s linked to access to resources. I believe that’s part of it, but power also plays a role.

Women also place high importance on indicators linked to high social status, including:

• Education
• Professional degrees
• Commanding the respect of the group (social power)

2.2. Women Wear Blinders to Low-Status Men

The Handbook of Relationship Initiation makes this point with a TV-show example:

In an episode of Sex in the City, the four main protagonists bemoaon the lack of available men in New York.
In fact, the establishment is stacked with young, reasonably attractive men—busboys, doormen, barmen, water waiters, and so forth.
These men, however, are not mateworthy (and are almost invisible) because they fall well below the minimum criteria of status and resources

These attractive low status men can make good short-term flings -think of the proverbial “pool boy”-.
But women enter these relationships from a position of power and only “settle” for lower-status men.

See more in successful women dating.

#3. Male Ambition & Industriousness

Connected traits are:

• Ambition
• Industriousness
• Intelligence

In Buss’ large-sample study ambition and industriousness were rated as important or indispensable.

In turn, both industriousness and ambitions facilitate men’s growing income and social status.
And that may explain why men are over-represented among CEO and board members. Men are sexually incentivized to work harder.

As a popular Italian singer Adriano Celentano sang:

He who doesn’t work, doesn’t make love

Pop Italian song lyrics

And men took note.

Again, there is a major gender difference between the sexes here: women regarded a lack of ambition as extremely undesirable, while men didn’t care about women’s ambition.

#4. Kindness

In Buss’ large survey data both men and women across the globe value kindness.

Buss says it’s because support is important in life.
And a kind mate offers an unstated promise of support when we will all, eventually, hit a rough patch.

Kindness also increases the chance that a man will commit and provide, and make for a better father.

4.2. But… How About Assholes?

The stereotype goes that women say they want nice guys, but prefer assholes.

The stereotype is partially true, but what matters most here is power.
Women are attracted to behavioral cues of male social dominance and social confidence (Gangestad et al. , 2004; Li, Yong, Tsai, et al. , 2020).

Women’s preference for dominance is particularly strong for short-term (Brown et al, 2022).

Bad boys beat “kind guys” whenever the “kind guy” is weak and unconfident. And especially for the short-term.
Viram Swami reached this same conclusion when reviewing the evidence for the nice guy / bad guy dichotomy: to be successful, the “nice” guy does need to be confident.

Also see:

• How to be a good asshole
• The asshole strategy
• Power University is designed to help these good men also become high-power, attractive, effective men

#5. Intelligence

Evolutionary psychology professor Geoffrey Miller says:

During human evolution, sexual selection seems to have shifted its primary target from body to mind.

Think about men and boys meeting.
What do they do?
99% of the time, they talk.

Talking allows us to showcase and assess the health and intelligence of a person’s mind.

Intelligence is also the meta-trait that allows us to play the dating game itself.

5.2. Humor, “Game”, Conversations, Frames

Conversations and humor showcase intellectual brainpower.
And “frame control” is an indicator of social dominance and intelligence.

Also see:

• The role of dominance in seduction
• 10 frame controlling techniques

Humor may also be a well-adapted tool of sexual choice and sexual discrimination.
When a brain’s pleasure center can be stimulated, but not stimulated by everyone, chances are that it’s an evolved tool of sexual discrimination.

This is why “making her laugh” does indeed help.
And that’s why women prefer men who make them laugh, whereas men prefer women who laugh at their jokes.

5.3. Vocabulary & Conversations

Vocabulary is at least 60% heritable and 80% correlated with general intelligence (and 20% with body symmetry).

A theory of the existence of so many synonyms when one single word would suffice is that words serve not to better explain things, but to display superior intelligence.

Why Men Stop Talking During Relationships?

A common complaint of women is that men stop talking during relationships.

That supports the theory that vocabulary, language, and intelligence courtship tools to gain sexual access.

But once sexual access has been granted, men don’t need to put up with that effort anymore.
As someone said:

Why should he regale you with poetry when 20 words a day suffice to have sex with you?

#6. Male Physical Traits

The female preferences for attractive physical traits include:

• Height
• Symmetrical body and faces
• Athleticism
• Toned muscles
• Masculine features (more personality-based than the previous ones)
  • Large jaw
  • Jutting chin
  • Beard
  • Low voice (up to a certain point)
  • V-shaped torso

Some physical traits, like height, is intercultural and present fewer exceptions (albeit even there I’ve encountered women who cared little).

Other traits are more cultural and present more variance, like for example masculine features.

The Virtue Is… Above The Middle, But Not Too Extreme

Many of these features have an upper limit.

For example, deep voice is attractive, but only up until a certain frequency.

Men struggle to understand this because men keep being intimidated by more mannish men long past women are attracted by them.
This suggests that for seducing women the “lover” strategy beats the “fighter” strategy (Tamsin, 2015).

We call this phenomenon “law of optimum balance“.
See here:

• Law of dating optimum balance

Male attractiveness

Men’s attractiveness may be the most underestimated trait in the literature.

That’s because much recent research and evolutionary discourse have been dominated by surveys (ie.: David Buss and David Schmitt SST theory).

Surveys are valid in certain contexts, but less in others.
And they tend to underestimate looks.

However, looks matter.
And especially so in the short-term.

In general, women look more at male faces than the body.
Men tend to look more at bodies than faces -younger men in locker-room mode may refer to “intercourse while covering her face”-.

#7. Female Youth

Men solved the problem of finding fertile women, in part, by looking for younger women.

The proof that men seek youth as a sign of fertility is in adolescent males, who instead prefer older women (an unrequited attraction).

7.2. The Appeal of MILFs

The MILF-apeal is real and widespread.

How do we explain this?

Well, think about what an older woman with children has proven.
She has:

• Proven health: she’s been around for longer
• Proven fertility: her kids are the proof
• Proven mothering skills: her kids being alive is proof
• Experience being a mother

From an evolutionary perspective, the MILF is a safer bet.

Many men prefer an attractive older mother to younger women

7.3. Youthful Behavior

Buss says that our ancestors had two types of evidence for a woman’s health and youth:

1. Features of physical appearance
2. Features of behaviors

Feature of behavior includes:

• Bouncy youthful gait
• Animated facial expressions
• High energy levels

7.4. Age Matters More For Women

Quoting from the Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology:

Women’s preference for a young, fertile-looking partner has been theorized and found to be weaker than that of men (Antfolk, 2017; Buss, 1989; Conroy-Beam & Buss, 2019; Kenrick & Keefe, 1992)

Why?

1. Reproduction: Age is more correlated to her reproductive value than men’s
2. Evolved preference: Age is more correlated to beauty in women than in men
3. Math: Women’s sexual value is based on fewer traits than men’s, and age and beauty carry comparatively more weight

The peak of desirability depends on many factors but, on average, it’s in the early and mid-20s for women and late 20s and mid-30s for men.

Here is a chart from OK Cupid, based on the number of messages men and women received:

Extra reminder: aggregate numbers are poor predictors of an individual’s sexual market value because individual variances are large.

Some influences and mitigating factors to age include:

• Availability of resources

Destitute women might place a premium on resources and care less about age.

• Quality & quantity of other traits

Different traits can compensate for age.

Real-world data provides evidence. The richest 400 men in the US married women who were on average 7 years younger.
But when they re-married, billionaires chose mates who were on average 22 years younger.

#8. Female Physical Appearance

Men rate physical appearances much higher than women do.

Traits of high-appeal physical appearance include:

• Smooth skin
• Clear skin (signals absence of parasites)
• Homogenous skin color distribution
• Big and firm breast
• Facial femininity (signals your and more estrogen, ie.: higher fertility)
  • Full lips
  • Large eyes
  • Thinner jaw
  • Small chin
  • Chromatic contrast
  • High cheekbones
  • Relatively short distance between mouth and jaw
• Facial symmetry
• Clear eyes
• Lustrous hair (hair quality and length correlates with age and health)
• Good muscle tone
• Leg length (long legs relative to torso length, 5% longer than the average receive maximum attractiveness)
• Symmetrical faces and bodies
• Waist-to-hip ratio

Higher-pitched voices are also preferred.
And men prefer the gait of women wearing heels because it makes for shorter steps and increased tilt and rotation of the hips.

8.2. Women’s Physical Appearance Matters More

Physical appearances matter more to women’s SMV.

While handsome men gain more in short-term dating, women gain both in short-term dating and long-term dating.
And attractive women tend to have less casual sex and more relationships.

This is also why beautiful people tend to have more daughters than sons.

8.3. Status Boost: The Trophy Wife

Men value a woman’s attractiveness also for the status boost it grants them.

The trophy wife is especially important for unattractive men because people infer that if he is with an attractive wife, he must have a very high social status.

#9. Faithfulness

Survey after survey shows that men care a lot about fidelity (Buss & Schmitt, 2019).

Even in relatively open-minded and modern societies, faithfulness still matters.
In a survey by David Buss, U.S. Men evaluated faithfulness and sexual loyalty as the most valued trait out of 67 possible characteristics.

Women took evolutionary note and strategically present cues to sexual fidelity when seeking long-term mates.
Also see the “Madonna-whore” dichotomy.

#10. Misc.: Art, “Fun”, Good Sex

Sex…

Why wouldn’t anyone count sex in the sexual market value?

And there is much more, too.
Fitness can be displayed in countless ways.

Enter the appeal of poets, artists, and singers.
Some of these “alternative” signals of high fitness include:

• Art (albeit today it overlaps with status)
  • Body ornamentation
• Dance
• Irreverent humor
• Ideological ardor
  • Snake oil salesmen
  • Shamans
  • Honest idealists
  • Rebels
• Memorable storytelling
• Spiritualism, sometimes mixed with allusions to sex (see tantra)
  • Shared consciousness
  • Altered states of consciousness
• Pro-social behavior & charity
• Good sex

Both men and women enjoy good sex, and people who can provide -and market- their lovemaking skills are also providing a valued SMV currency.
The female orgasm is elusive because it’s a sexual discrimination tool.

Pro-social behavior is also attractive in the right contexts.
Geoffrey Miller argues that both intelligence and cooperation evolved from sexual selection (Miller, 2000).
That’s why men increase their charitable contributions and tips when women are around (it’s virtue-signaling, as a sexual strategy).

Ranking SMV Traits

Precise measures are sexy.

Plug in your details, and get out a final number.
A “certitude” -ain’t that nice-.

However, because of the high individual variance, any quantification and ranking is bound to be misleading.

But that hasn’t stopped researchers from trying.
Here is how Buss’ survey ranks the characteristics most commonly sought in a mate:

And here’s how they changed over time.

Let’s improve this approach by differentiating short VS long term:

Short-Term VS Long-Term

People’s SVM change depending on whether the assessment is for short, or long term.

For example, see how women’s rating changed between the two:

ranging from −3 (extremely undesirable) to +3 (extremely desirable):

Ambition presents the biggest difference between short-term and long-term.

It explains why an attractive hippie with a guitar is a great short-term fling, but not a great long-term, “official” mate.
Same for the pool boy :).

Sexuality and skills are not on the table.
But men who are successful at short-term dating tend to have a higher sexual vibe and also to be more comfortable around sex.
The promise is better sex, partially, but also “guilt-free sex”, where she doesn’t have to play the Madonna and hide her true self.

Of course, these are based on what people say.
I never trusted too much what people say :).

So I find a different approach more helpful.
Just like a good investor looks at what problem a new venture solves, the good SMV analyst looks at what a specific woman needs:

What Does She Need? Female Adaptive Problems

This is a high-level summary of why women want what they want:

Adapted from the Evolutionary Psychology handbook

Of course, smart men can find different ways to help women meet their needs.

For now, let’s move past the tables, though.

And now let’s get more quantitative with this better approach:

Microenocomis Explain Mate Value

One way to measure what men and women tend to value ore is with budget allocation studies borrowed from microeconomics.

The principle is that people allocate their budgets according to how much they have, and what they need most.
In evolutionary terms, fertility is a “basic need”, and the rest cascades from there.
Since women’s fertility decreases faster, this model explains why men prioritize beauty -even in long-term dating-.

Quoting from the Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology:

Li and colleagues confirmed the priority model using a budget allocation paradigm (…) For long-term mates, men tend to allocate a signifcant portion of their low budgets on physical attractiveness, whereas women allocate a signifcant portion to social status traits.
As budgets increase, however, signifcantly less is spent on these necessities, and more is spent on other traits—so-called luxuries (Li et al. , 2002)

Women considering short-term mates also prioritize physical attractiveness about as strongly as men do for long-term mates, but spend increasingly more on other traits as budgets increase.
And men, of course, prioritize attractiveness even more for the short term (just like our charts above show).

Similar experiments where budget was used to reveal more information showed that women inquired first about physical attractiveness for short-term mates but social level for long-term mates.

Regression analyses on these studies showed that being below average hurt more than being above average.
A curvilinear pattern indicating a necessity’s diminishing marginal returns, and indirectly also confirming the validity of the micro-economics approach.

Compensate what you don’t have: it works

Quoting from the same handbook:

researchers demonstrated that a compensatory decision-making strategy (where traits that are high in value can ofset those that are low in value) using weighted-sum calculations outperformed the Euclidean distance model and noncompensatory models such as take-the-best, threshold, and aspiration

For more, check our article “Exceptional Dating” based on this principle:

• Exceptional dating

Mate Values Are Universal Calculations

Everyone assesses other people’s value.

Most of these calculations are unconscious, but no less real.
And the consequences are endless and far-reaching.

Just three examples:

• People forgive high-value cheaters more than lower-value ones (Sidelinger and Booth-Butterfeld, 2007)

The unspoken calculation is that higher-value maters give more. So they’re more afforded to stray.

• Higher mate value partner = higher relationship satisfaction (Conroy-Beam et al., 2016)

Worth noting though this is only true up to a certain point. If the discrepancy grows too large, partners may get uncomfortable (the optimum balance again).

• High-mate value partners = more jealousy and mate guarding (Buss and Shackelford, 1997)

The subconscious calculation is that higher value partners are more likely to stray because of more options. They’re also a bigger loss if lost, and harder to replace.

• Men are more romantic when women are scarce

When men outnumber women, women and relationships become more valuable.

The shift is so powerful that whole cultures change, shifting towards more courtship and romance.
For example, studies suggest that when men outnumber women, men invest more, marry more, value their partners more, and become more romantic.

The longer, more effortful, and more expensive the courtships, the higher the woman’s value is compared to the man

SMV Strategies

So many traits… And such a great opportunity!

Especially for men.
It allows for specialization and for choosing along the lines of personal preferences.

Sure, the indicators of overall fitness do correlate with each other, but it’s not always a high correlation.
Says Geoffrey Miller:

(..) such correlations might be quite modest.
(…) Because each indicator is costly (so it works according to the handicap principle), there are trade-offs between indicators. This allows scope for individuals to differ in their allocation of resources to different indicators

An example of such specialization is a relationship-type of man VS “player”.
The former displays kindness and commitment, the latter focuses on looks and personality/”game”.

See more here:

Pick A Niche

Now that you know it’s a market, think about how to market yourself best.

Here are some ideas of successful male archetypes for you.
All different, but all can be attractive:

Summary

Mate value refers to an individual attractiveness in dating and mating contexts.

Albeit still somewhat controversial, the concept of mate value should be as natural as life itself to any unbiased mind.

Animals assessing other animals’ mate value is a natural consequence of any animal’s drive to maximize their reproductive fitness.
Humans included.

Our goal was to provide a simple and “real world” analysis that everyone can understand but that is as scientifically rigorous as a textbook.

Reminder: we embrace honor and human respect here

We respect respect-worthy human beings of all stripes and shapes based on character, rather than ‘beauty’.

And we take a can-do attitude on this website.

We firmly believe that a realistic look at dating dynamics empowers both men and women to live richer and more fulfilling lives.

Including, if that is their goal, finding a loving and supportive partner (love is also part of humans’ psychological makeup, BTW).

Our Power University alumni told us they became 7 times more attractive. Check it out here.