Women are more attracted to rich men, study finds

Men with a high income and powerful job are 3.5 times more likely to attract women on online dating platforms, a new study has revealed.

Women really are attracted to rich men more, a study has confirmed.

As reported by The Sun, men like Tesla tycoon Elon Musk – the wealthiest person in the world – with a high income and top job get 3.5 times as many replies on online dating platforms.

Women also get more attention if they seem well-off and educated – but the effect is smaller.

Men with a high income and powerful job (like Tesla founder Elon Musk) are 3.5 times more likely to attract women on online dating platforms, a new study has revealed. Picture: Angela Weiss/AFP

Researchers scanned 1.8 million dating app profiles from 24 countries and found it was true worldwide.

“A lot of people like to believe this is just a stereotype – but we find it across all cultures in studies dating back to the 1980s, which tells us it’s real,” Swansea University lecturer Andrew George Thomas, who specialises in evolutionary psychology, said.

His study rated men by income, education and jobs posted with replies from lonely hearts.

The highest level of “resource-acquisition ability” – education and cash – boosted replies men got by 255 per cent compared to the lowest.

For women, it was 103 per cent.

Dr Thomas said the internet is driving both sexes to extreme lengths to look rich or fit to attract a lover.

“Humans appear to have a preference for money and wealth in a partner, not because we have ‘evolved money preferences’ but because these things act as modern cues of a more general trait: the ability to secure resources like food, shelter, tools, and protection,” he explained in a piece for Psychology Today earlier this year.

“The cognitive mechanisms behind such preferences are sensitive to modern ‘cues’ of successful provision, including having a partner with wealth or the potential to accrue it.”

This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permission