More Insights Into Online Dating Preferences

Last week I wrote a post discussing a few things revealed in a sophisticated analysis of online dating

http://designogselvfremstillelse.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/dating1.pdf

As promised, here is another installment addressing some of the interesting findings.  Some people lie about their height.  They’re called men.  Many of them take considerable liberties at rounding up.  A guy who is 5′10″ will claim he is 6′ tall.  He does this because more women are interested in guys who are at least 6′ tall.   By the way, the reason the researchers are pretty sure quite a few guys are lying about their height is that no sample group of guys are so uniformly tall, with the exception of NBA players or Masai tribesmen.

And women lie about their body build and weight.  This is because more guys are interested in slender women.  So it seems each of us has a pretty good idea of what the other sex wants, and we tailor our profiles to match that.  I should note that many people aren’t lying on their profiles.  In some cases it would be silly to lie.  A guy who claimed to be 6′ tall is not going to be well-received when he shows up on a first date and seems to be 5′7″.  This sort of blatant and obvious misrepresentation is not a good way to start off a relationship.

Another point is that men are much more receptive to women who email them first than women are to men who email them first.  The median man gets a return email from the median woman 40% of the time, while the median woman gets a reply 70% of the time.  pp. 17-18.    We would expect this, because the online dating service which was studied had more men than women (55%/45%), which means that more men are chasing fewer women, and also because women are generally choosier.

Consistent with this point is that women receive four times as many first-contact emails as men receive. p. 19.

Online dating is mostly a woman’s world.  Tune in later for more installments.