Age Effects in Lesbian and Bisexual Women
Age range deemed acceptable and youngest and oldest age deemed acceptable by own age. Graphs display means and 99.5% confidence intervals
The following results for lesbian and bisexual women are based on exploratory analyses (i.e., we did not specify any hypotheses). They should therefore be seen as preliminary and be used to inform future research focusing on nonheterosexual individuals. Descriptive information as well as comparisons between groups based on sexual orientation can be found in Table S3. In addition, all results for our exploratory analyses can be found in detail in the ESM (Tables S4–S9 and Figs. S5–S14).
The subsample of women identifying as lesbian likely was too small (n ranging from 331 to 456) to determine whether age played a substantial role in shaping preference attributes (Table S4 and Fig. S5). No clear pattern was apparent for the link between age and parenting intention (Table S5, Figs. S6 and S7), yet age range deemed acceptable increased with age (Table S6, Figs. S8 and S9). As in the heterosexual sample, this was due to older women lowering the youngest age deemed acceptable in an ideal partner.
In women identifying as bisexual (n ranging from 2,239 to 3009), age was not linked to desired level of attractiveness, nor was it linked to importance and desired level of financial security and successfulness. For all other preference attributes, the subsample of bisexual women was too small to reach a definitive conclusion (Table S7 and Fig. S10). While the pattern for the relationship between age and parenting intention was mixed for bisexual women (Table S8, Figs. (more…)