Speed Dating Reveals What Guys and Girls Want

I wrote a day or so ago that the best way to determine what guys or girls like in a date is not to ask them, but to look at what decisions they make.  Economists and psychologists call this revealed preference rather than stated preference. 

We recently looked at online daters’ revealed preferences as set out in a study done on Match.com users.   We now have another piece of research that reveals daters’ preferences.  Two psychologists in the Psychology Department of the University of Pennsylvania conducted an interesting piece of research on preferences of speed daters.

For those of you  not familiar with speed dating, it’s an activity in which equal numbers of men and women are recruited.  They dress up, smile, and sit down for three-minute sessions with every member of the opposite sex in attendance.  At the end of these three-minute sessions each participant gives each person he or she has met a thumbs up or thumbs down, on a dating sheet.  These sheets are compiled by the organizers of the event and if two people gave each other a thumbs up, email addresses are sent to each and they can meet.

Here is a link to the writeup for this study: http://www.psych.upenn.edu/PLEEP/pdfs/2005%20Kurzban%20&%20Weeden%20EHB.pdf

I wish I could mention some surprising findings of this study.  But I cannot.  Almost nothing of significance it reveals is unknown to the careful observer of dating behavior.

Women liked men who were tall, good-looking, fairly young, and fairly big (not necessarily fat, but with a BMI of around 25).  The overwhelming thing men were drawn to was slender women. p. 234. After that, their next strongest preferences were for attractive faces and younger women.   This should come as no surprise to observers of dating.

Another obvious finding was that the most attractive people got the most thumbs up from other speed-daters but said yes to them more often. For men, being good-looking, a bit large, and making good money caused them to be more selective. p. 236.  For women, being slender allowed them to be more selective. p. 236.   Women tended to say no more often when they were thin and the male daters were older. p. 237.  Again, nothing you couldn’t figure out on your own.

All of these findings support the market value theory of mating: people like pretty much the same qualities in a date, but they realize they can only get someone with these qualities if they themselves are high in qualities wanted by the opposite sex.  This phenomenon is expressed memorably by the scientist Stephen Pinker, “Somewhere in this world of five billion (now six billion) people there lives the best-looking, richest, smartest, funniest, kindest person who would settle for you.”

One of the findings that might surprise some of you is that women are, in general, much more selective than men.  Women gave fewer thumbs ups to men than men gave to women. 

Another is that the different sexes are willing to adjust their expectations down based on different things.  Women will lower their selectivity if they are fat, but not if they are older.  And men will lower their expectations if they have unattractive faces, but not if they are older or shorter. p. 241. 

Another settling feature is that divorced men will settle for chubby women more often than nondivorced men.