Scientists Suggest That Women Might Be Suppressing Their Cougar Instincts By Saying They Prefer Older Men

Society suggests that it's only men who want to go out like the late oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall. Science, on the other hand, tells a different story.

Women like Joan Collins, 91, Cher, 78, and Priyanka Chopra, 42, who are all in relationships with younger men, aren’t doing so because of some Hollywood secret to longevity.

Alexander Edwards and Cher attend the amfAR Cannes Gala. (Photo by Gisela Schober/Getty Images)

They're embracing their cougar instincts and what they actually prefer over what women generally say when they claim to prefer older men.

Scientists say that claim isn’t actually true. Whether women realize it or not, just like men, they prefer younger partners.

A study by researchers at the University of California, Davis, proves this. Professor Paul Eastwick, the lead author of the study, says of the findings, reports the Daily Mail, "This preference for youth among women will be shocking to many people."

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He adds of his groundbreaking work, "Because in mixed-gender couples, men tend to be older than women. Plus, women generally say they prefer older partners. But women's preferences on the dates themselves revealed something else entirely."

The group of researchers conducted their study on more than 6,000 people who were set up on blind dates using a dating site in the United States. The people were all looking for long-term love and matched with others based on their interests.

Preferring younger men isn’t just for the wealthy Hollywood elites

What they found is that men and women were both more attracted to younger partners. That's right, Cher dating a 38-year-old isn’t slowly collecting his soul to extend her own life.

The AARP member and singer is just like any woman out there looking for love, she prefers a younger partner and isn't pretending she wants an older man.

Good news for the women out there not in Cher's tax bracket. This isn’t a condition that afflicts only the rich. Cougars can be from any socioeconomic group.

There was little evidence, the researchers found, that a woman's wealth meant that they were more inclined to prefer a younger man.

"These findings suggest that men and women find youth a little more appealing in initial attraction settings - whether they know it or not," Professor Eastwick added.

Although it should be pointed out that the study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, did not dive into whether romantic attraction on the first date corresponded to longer-term relationships.

There would seem to be some good news there as well.

While it doesn’t appear that it was mentioned in the study, it would stand to reason that the older one is the shorter these "longer-term relationships" would have to be.