It wouldn't be surprising to see a message along the following lines on an Internet dating site: "SJF, 26, wants to meet kind, generous, romantic, honest man."

This is how Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, would interpret the message: "Single Japanese female, age 26, seeking a healthy male of breeding age with a minimal number of personality disorders that would impair efficient parenting in a sustained sexual relationship, and a minimum number of deleterious mutations in his genome, especially with respect to the genes that influence the development of brain systems concerned with advertising moral virtue."

Consciously or unconsciously, this is what many women will be looking for in a long-term partner.