8 ms·

Why Beautiful Women Marry Less Attractive Men

15 points by pius 18y ago

lacker 18y ago
This title is misleading. In fact the text of the article contradicts the title: "About a third of the couples had a more attractive wife, a third a more attractive husband and the remaining partners showed matching looks." Regardless, the article is stretching pretty far to make its conclusions. The study just showed couples where the woman is more attractive than the man were happier. That doesn't mean women should "marry down". It could just mean that men care more about looks, and therefore an attractive woman contributed more to the couple's happiness than an attractive man.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- yters 18y ago
  If that were the case, then the happiness of the couple would be independent of the attractiveness of the man, or at least have little correlation. Anyways, it's probably because the match hits an equilibrium. Men are statistically much more likely to commit adultery than women (22%:14%). http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=226300 http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id... A difference in attractiveness in the woman's favor means there is much less incentive for the man to cheat, since a woman more attractive than his wife is unlikely to try and seduce him. Consequently, it isn't worth the risk for the man.
TammyK 18y ago
"with the perfect 10 representing the ultimate babe." Sounds real credible.
attack 18y ago
There is probably a strong inverse correlation between working hard for success and attractiveness in men. That could be reversing the results. Women don't prefer less attractive men, all else being equal.
- pius 18y ago
  There is probably a strong inverse correlation between working hard for success and attractiveness in men. Why?
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
  - attack 18y ago
    Instead of getting into a numbers match between all the influencing factors, I'd rather just point out that there are many confounding factors and that the authors of this seemed to miss that point entirely.
osipov 18y ago
Simple answer: money it is interesting that article mentions height and money because while back i read another study that figured out how much money a man should make to compensate for a situation where the man is shorter than the woman. apparently there was an almost a linear correlation, for every inch of extra height that a woman has on a man, the man must have at least an extra 6 million of net worth.
- daniel-cussen 18y ago
  Damn. 6 million dollars per inch.
  - SwellJoe 18y ago
    That's per inch of height. Just in case anyone was wondering.
    - weezus 18y ago
      I always use centimeters because magnitude counts.
- menloparkbum 18y ago
  Money isn't everything. Silicon Valley is filled with thousands of ugly rich dudes who can't find a date.
  - ardit33 18y ago
    I'd say that SV is a sausage fest, but if these guys are rich, and mobile, than what prevents them to move to a place where they would have much better ods at finding good looking and smart women? If you have money, NYC is a blast. Maybe they can work a pet project from there. I'd say, if you have more than 3-4 millions on your bank account, you are really well off, and the only thing that prevents from finding a woman, is your character, or lack of trying. Bad looks, can be fixed with some good fashion, exercise, and maybe some litle surgery.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
weezus 18y ago
Women can fall in love with guys that aren't hot. Guys don't fall in love with women who aren't hot to them. Love, yes; in love, no.
vitaminj 18y ago
These kinds of studies are ridiculous. First there's the element of subjectivity and discretion in the "trained coders" that rate a person's attractiveness. On a single overall number scale no less. But more importantly, how do they even hope to attain any semblance of ceteris paribus ("all things being equal") in this study? Of the millions of factors that contribute to pair selection and how couples interact, the researchers want to isolate disparities in attractiveness and test whether this is significant. Short of cloning a whole bunch of people and pairing them up with ugly and beautiful partners, AND THEN doing the tests, the sheer number of conflating variables makes this kind of research worthless. I don't think even the clones would make the results valid given the variables that aren't genetic eg. upbringing, mood on the day, individual preference etc. It comes accross as if they came up with the conclusion first, and then fit a flimsy experiment to prove the point. The correlations are no doubt statistically significant, but to imply that they mean anything without even attempting to isolate any other conflicting factors is a joke. Human interaction is a complex system. There's every possibility that attractiveness does contribute to pair selection as the researchers assert, but what is the proportion of that influence? What billion other factors contribute? My guess is that you'll never be able to isolate just one factor that accounts for the bulk of the influence. This is not to say that social science experiments can't be done right, but it's not easy. This kind of reductionist tripe only serves to muddy the really good research out there.

15 points by pius 18y ago

This title is misleading. In fact the text of the article contradicts the title: "About a third of the couples had a more attractive wife, a third a more attractive husband and the remaining partners showed matching looks." Regardless, the article is stretching pretty far to make its conclusions. The study just showed couples where the woman is more attractive than the man were happier. That doesn't mean women should "marry down". It could just mean that men care more about looks, and therefore an attractive woman contributed more to the couple's happiness than an attractive man.

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
yters 18y ago
If that were the case, then the happiness of the couple would be independent of the attractiveness of the man, or at least have little correlation. Anyways, it's probably because the match hits an equilibrium. Men are statistically much more likely to commit adultery than women (22%:14%). http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=226300 http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id... A difference in attractiveness in the woman's favor means there is much less incentive for the man to cheat, since a woman more attractive than his wife is unlikely to try and seduce him. Consequently, it isn't worth the risk for the man.

TammyK 18y ago

"with the perfect 10 representing the ultimate babe." Sounds real credible.

attack 18y ago

There is probably a strong inverse correlation between working hard for success and attractiveness in men. That could be reversing the results. Women don't prefer less attractive men, all else being equal.

pius 18y ago
There is probably a strong inverse correlation between working hard for success and attractiveness in men. Why?
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- attack 18y ago
  Instead of getting into a numbers match between all the influencing factors, I'd rather just point out that there are many confounding factors and that the authors of this seemed to miss that point entirely.

osipov 18y ago

Simple answer: money it is interesting that article mentions height and money because while back i read another study that figured out how much money a man should make to compensate for a situation where the man is shorter than the woman. apparently there was an almost a linear correlation, for every inch of extra height that a woman has on a man, the man must have at least an extra 6 million of net worth.

daniel-cussen 18y ago
Damn. 6 million dollars per inch.
- SwellJoe 18y ago
  That's per inch of height. Just in case anyone was wondering.
  - weezus 18y ago
    I always use centimeters because magnitude counts.
menloparkbum 18y ago
Money isn't everything. Silicon Valley is filled with thousands of ugly rich dudes who can't find a date.
- ardit33 18y ago
  I'd say that SV is a sausage fest, but if these guys are rich, and mobile, than what prevents them to move to a place where they would have much better ods at finding good looking and smart women? If you have money, NYC is a blast. Maybe they can work a pet project from there. I'd say, if you have more than 3-4 millions on your bank account, you are really well off, and the only thing that prevents from finding a woman, is your character, or lack of trying. Bad looks, can be fixed with some good fashion, exercise, and maybe some litle surgery.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

weezus 18y ago

Women can fall in love with guys that aren't hot. Guys don't fall in love with women who aren't hot to them. Love, yes; in love, no.

vitaminj 18y ago

These kinds of studies are ridiculous. First there's the element of subjectivity and discretion in the "trained coders" that rate a person's attractiveness. On a single overall number scale no less. But more importantly, how do they even hope to attain any semblance of ceteris paribus ("all things being equal") in this study? Of the millions of factors that contribute to pair selection and how couples interact, the researchers want to isolate disparities in attractiveness and test whether this is significant. Short of cloning a whole bunch of people and pairing them up with ugly and beautiful partners, AND THEN doing the tests, the sheer number of conflating variables makes this kind of research worthless. I don't think even the clones would make the results valid given the variables that aren't genetic eg. upbringing, mood on the day, individual preference etc. It comes accross as if they came up with the conclusion first, and then fit a flimsy experiment to prove the point. The correlations are no doubt statistically significant, but to imply that they mean anything without even attempting to isolate any other conflicting factors is a joke. Human interaction is a complex system. There's every possibility that attractiveness does contribute to pair selection as the researchers assert, but what is the proportion of that influence? What billion other factors contribute? My guess is that you'll never be able to isolate just one factor that accounts for the bulk of the influence. This is not to say that social science experiments can't be done right, but it's not easy. This kind of reductionist tripe only serves to muddy the really good research out there.