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Assortative mating and online dating

The other day I saw a short heavyset guy and a short heavyset girl at 49th and Broadway, and this made me think about assortative mating. Assortative mating is a complicated name for the simple concept that couples have more traits in common than likely in random mating. In other words, like pairs up with like.

This is a natural preference that we human beings have, and one needs to be aware of it to succeed in online dating. You will be most likely to get responses to your emails, and second dates from your first dates, if you focus on members of the opposite sex who are like you.

The most important traits are social status, looks, height, body type, age, ethnicity, baggage, and religion. Match up on these characteristics and you will find good dates. Let’s examine each more closely:

Social status: this includes income, education, and your family background. Some of this information can be pretty hard to figure out based on the checkboxes at Match.com. A Bachelor’s degree from the College of Staten Island isn’t in any way comparable to a Bachelor’s degree from Yale, yet they are both identified with the same checkbox. And regarding income, most women don’t list their income. Nevertheless, this is an essentially important component of dating success.

Looks: if you’re ugly don’t expect to hook up with someone super hot looking. Of course, the photos are so bad it’s often hard to tell what people really look like until you meet them. When you meet in person, you may be horrified, or you may be pleasantly surprised.

Height: the average man is five inches taller than the average women. And two inches make a big difference when it comes to height. So if you’re a man of 5'11", getting a woman who’s 5'8" to go out with you might be a difficult challenge. Your luck would be much better going after a woman who’s 5'6".

Body type: you’re best sticking to the same body type as you, even though the desirability of body types differ depending upon your sex. But one interesting point is that many assume that a slender body type is most desirable for women, when actually men like any body type as long as it’s not something like “a few extra pounds” or “large frame.”

Age: men would like to go out with women who are ten years younger, but it’s not going to happen. On the other hand, women who are older than me keep sending me emails, and this doesn’t work either. If you’re a man, you should know that women prefer men who are exactly two years older than them. And if you’re a woman, you should know that men don’t care how much younger you are, but you are wasting your time sending emails to younger men.

Ethnicity: I think this is self-explanatory.

Baggage: if you are divorced with kids, you are best off seeking partners who are also divorced with kids.

Religion: women tend to be somewhat more religious than men, so if you’re a man and an atheist, you need to also match with women who profess a religion but don’t really practice it. (Once I went to an atheist rally and there were ten men there for every woman, and the women weren’t very attractive.)

posted August 19, 2005

9 Comments:

By Armaedes:

I actually don't mind women who are "a few extra pounds" or "large frame." What I mind is when you look at their picture and they obviously should have put "a few extra pounds" but instead put "athletic and toned." I mean, if you're going to lie you shouldn't immediately give yourself away by posting a picture contradicting yourself, because it either makes you look like a liar or a delusional, neither of which is exactly a desirable characteristic.

posted at 8/19/2005 1:28 PM

By Online Dating Insider:

There don't seem to be that many overweight women living in Manhattan. Maybe the coop boards don't let them in or something.

posted at 8/19/2005 1:43 PM

By Sam:

My mom told me "you only get out what you put in".

It's still true 20 years later, if you have a lazy profile and some outdated pictures (or worse, no picture), and wish to pick up someone really hot, you're delusional. However when I first play the online dating game, I tricked myself into thinking I can get more than what I put in.

posted at 8/20/2005 3:16 AM

By FERNANDO ARDENGHI:

An excellent article to read:

http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/psp882304.pdf

"Journal of Personality and Social Psychology"
Change Assortative Mating and Marital Quality in Newlyweds: A Couple-Centered Approach, February 2005 (PDF: 225KB)
(c) Shanhong Luo and Eva C. Klohnen

Kindest Regards,
Fernando Ardenghi
ardenghifer@argentina.com

posted at 8/25/2005 3:46 PM

By Ben:

I think that you're putting too much stock into the belief that people want to (or should) date people similar to themselves. But, this is the very old argument of homogamy vs. heterogamy. Is it birds of a feather flock together, or is it opposites attract? And, remember the Seinfeld episode where Jerry said, "I can't be with someone like me... I hate myself!"

The article that Fernando cited is interesting, but it discusses only personality, attitudes, values, and beliefs. It doesn't go into things like height, body type, income, etc.

posted at 9/10/2005 10:26 PM

By Online Dating Insider:

Ben, I don't necessarily think people SHOULD date people like themselves, but I it certainly is the way most people behave.

posted at 9/11/2005 9:50 PM

By e-head:

I couldn't pass this one up.

With regards to the degree from Staten Island not being equivalent to a degree from Yale ...

I got my undergraduate chem. degree from a very non-prestigious school. I went off to graduate school a little bit worried (I went to a better grad school). Anyway, the University of Berkeley is by far the "best" school in the country for chemistry, and would you believe the 2 undergrads from there were complete idiots. I mean, embarrassingly idiotic ... they had no grasp of chemistry at all.

So, in short, you can not really judge these things based on what school or what degree someone has.

I've found that a college degree is more or less useless in predicting someone's intelligence OR EVEN the extent of their knowledge.

I dropped out with a Masters due to emotional "problems"/lack of interest. Students with very dubious abilities and little natural talent were continuing on ... jumping through the requisite hoops to get the phD. The phD is more about jumping through hoops than ability.

posted at 9/16/2005 11:36 AM

By FERNANDO ARDENGHI:

At the United States there are many Psychologists (PhD) researching on
THEORIES OF ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS DEVELOPMENT

You could see

"Personality, Family History, and Competence in Early Adult Romantic Relationships"
http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp883562.pdf

and

"The Big Five and Enduring Marriages"
Journal of Research in Personality, 38, 481-504.
http://athens.pop.psu.edu/allen/FacPubsByFac.cfm

also
http://www.uwsp.edu/news/pr/chFraniuk.htm
http://www.tcnj.edu/~bethpaul/srcd/index.htm
http://www.uky.edu/~drlane/capstone/interpersonal/reldev.html
http://www.publicpolicyresearch.net/documents/internet_romance.pdf

Unfortunately, NOT ALL Psychologists (PhD) agree between themselves!!!

Actually, I noticed that many users / subscribers (to sites that use proprietary tests or models) complaint about an actual big problem in "scientific dating and matchmaking": lack of precision / low precision / low successful matching rates. It seems that proprietary tests or models have great precision in measuring different psychological variables but the matching algorithm has low precision when comparing one psycho-pattern to others.

The MEDICINE: more power calculation and better matching algorithms to increase successful matching rates (will require ADVANCED MATH & STATISTICAL EQUATIONS, NOT only multiple/simple linear regression equations, root-mean-square error of approximation (RMSEA), comparative fit index (CFI) etc.).

OnLine Dating Sites and their Big Databases are NEW sources for scientific research.
New Knowledge is waiting to be discovered inside these Big Databases!!!

Kindest Regards,

Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
ardenghifer@gmail.com

posted at 9/19/2005 4:04 PM

By FERNANDO ARDENGHI:

Although a bit old, there is a quite interesting thesis at
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~atf/thesis_mit/

My comments:
The thesis' name is "An Analysis of Behavior in Online Dating Systems"
but it was only "Analysis of Behavior on ONE Dating System" (page 30)
Nonetheless it will be interesting to read it with care.
The conclusions were taken from a dating site (date research from June 2002 to February 2003) with 52857 "active members" over a total of 221800 members. The median age was 34 years old (page 38. )

The findings: "Users opted for sameness more often than chance would predict in all the characteristics examined in this section. This concurs with the overwhelming evidence gathered by relationship researchers ...... that actual similarity and perceived similarity in demographics, attitudes, values, and attractiveness correlate with
attraction (and, later, relationship satisfaction). However, users demonstrate this homophily to differing degrees for different characteristics." (page 47)

Nonetheless more valuable than the information provided is THE WAY
research was conducted and fig. 2.1 at page 37, fig. 2.6 at page 54 and fig. B.13 at page 90.

As the author says on page 62 "My exploration of behavior in online
dating environments raises more questions than it answers. Each
statistic begs for comparison with other online dating systems, with
different populations and different interactional tools. The numerical results have human stories behind them that will require a complementary qualitative approach to unravel.
Of course, the real question is what people are looking for in a partner, whether for a night, a date, or a lifetime. Online dating
systems provide a copious amount of raw behavioral data that might improve our understanding of people’s complex goals in this arena, which will in turn help us improve the systems themselves."

Regards,

Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
ardenghifer@gmail.com

posted at 10/16/2005 5:19 PM