5 ms·

A 6-foot man earning $62K per year is as desirable as a 5'6“ man who earns $237K

31 points by cwwc 4y ago

draw_down 4y ago
atlgator 4y ago
Isn't the 6-foot man more likely to make $237k than the 5'6" man? I know I've seen that study somewhere. That's double the pain for the vertically challenged (myself included).
- ekam 4y ago
  This makes me wonder if short guys were getting more jobs during the pandemic since more job interviews were virtual and height wouldn’t factor in as much
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - nunez 4y ago
    grim but probably true (in the consulting space)
- adamius 4y ago
  Says a lot about hiring practices and systematic biases. Even small biases creep up and accumulate. I wonder if women are more likeky to hire tall men over short men? What about male hiring of males, does that have a bias?
quantified 4y ago
If the 5'6" guy has large hands and feet, he can definitely make up for it. These guys are swimming in different dating pools anyway.
musicale 4y ago
So the gattaca surgery is worth it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31211725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31211725
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
namecheapTA 4y ago
I'm 6'4" and have been a serial dater for 20 years (thanks Spark Match then POF then Tinder.) Ive played around with personas a bit, while obviously my hight stays the same. Height is not the be all end all. Even at 6'4", if I get a bit chubby, I get zero attention from women and the ones I contact basically need to be treated like relationship wife material to get anything going. If I work out for 6+ months, cashier's are giggling and fumbling my change every time I buy something. If I'm feeling off that week or month and not putting out "interesting fun vibes" I'll get ghosted pretty fast online. If I'm in the mood to put in the work, they're ready to take my home after the first date. I bet that if a 5'6" man is rocking a great personality, he will outdo a tall man with a bland personality. Is it easier to fake a positive attitude when you're tall and feel stronger than most guys around? Sure. I think this is what women associate with height more than just pure height. A 5'8" firefighter could easily steal the gf of a 6'4" chubby software developer, atleast for a few nights.
- atwood22 4y ago
  No offense, but with no experience being short, you’re completely out of touch.
  - namecheapTA 4y ago
    While I'm not short, I have short friends and have also seen the exbfs and new bfs of my girlfriends. A gf in med school once left me for another med student that was maybe 5'7". My exgf just married a guy 6 months after meeting him.. he's 5'8" at the most. I have countless examples of girls that sounded like they really appreciated my height, and maybe they did, but they end up with shorter guys that have other physical or attitude traits going for them. Basically as you would expect statistically.
    - atwood22 4y ago
      I think you’re missing the point. No one is saying that shorter men will never be desirable to any woman. What this study suggests is that being short is a disadvantage, so short people either need to have some other traits that compensate or they won’t find a partner. In the study, they used salary to measure this (it’s ok to be short as long as you earn 270k). So yes, it’s great you know some short guys who are exemplary enough to overcome to stigma of being short. But there are plenty of unremarkable short people who are struggle.
icegreentea2 4y ago
Source study (as far as I can tell): https://home.uchicago.edu/~hortacsu/onlinedating.pdf https://home.uchicago.edu/~hortacsu/onlinedating.pdf Jump to Table 5.5 if you want. You can also look around at the other tables surrounding it. Focusing on male height makes for easy twitter-ness. The rest of the tables are less fun to talk about. Based on my interpretation of "Not Feasible" (I couldn't find a good definition in the paper), there is no amount of money that would make moderately tall woman (> 5'8") as attractive as the median height woman (5'5"). And there's no amount of money that would make a less than top 10 percentile attractive woman as attractive (Table 5.4) as a top 10 percentile woman - which is not the case for men. You can draw your own conclusions about how accurately the data and approach in the paper maps reality. But taken at face value, it's not just short men getting a bad deal.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- vannevar 4y ago
  The data is for online only, as far as I can tell. So the conclusion is more like, a description of a 6'0" man making $62K is more appealing than a description of a 5'6" man making $237K. I suspect that the results for in-person dating would be very different, because height differences in actual couples are less pronounced than stated preferences would suggest (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0054186 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...).

31 points by cwwc 4y ago

Isn't the 6-foot man more likely to make $237k than the 5'6" man? I know I've seen that study somewhere. That's double the pain for the vertically challenged (myself included).

ekam 4y ago
This makes me wonder if short guys were getting more jobs during the pandemic since more job interviews were virtual and height wouldn’t factor in as much
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- nunez 4y ago
  grim but probably true (in the consulting space)
adamius 4y ago
Says a lot about hiring practices and systematic biases. Even small biases creep up and accumulate. I wonder if women are more likeky to hire tall men over short men? What about male hiring of males, does that have a bias?

quantified 4y ago

If the 5'6" guy has large hands and feet, he can definitely make up for it. These guys are swimming in different dating pools anyway.

musicale 4y ago

So the gattaca surgery is worth it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31211725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31211725

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

namecheapTA 4y ago

I'm 6'4" and have been a serial dater for 20 years (thanks Spark Match then POF then Tinder.) Ive played around with personas a bit, while obviously my hight stays the same. Height is not the be all end all. Even at 6'4", if I get a bit chubby, I get zero attention from women and the ones I contact basically need to be treated like relationship wife material to get anything going. If I work out for 6+ months, cashier's are giggling and fumbling my change every time I buy something. If I'm feeling off that week or month and not putting out "interesting fun vibes" I'll get ghosted pretty fast online. If I'm in the mood to put in the work, they're ready to take my home after the first date. I bet that if a 5'6" man is rocking a great personality, he will outdo a tall man with a bland personality. Is it easier to fake a positive attitude when you're tall and feel stronger than most guys around? Sure. I think this is what women associate with height more than just pure height. A 5'8" firefighter could easily steal the gf of a 6'4" chubby software developer, atleast for a few nights.

atwood22 4y ago
No offense, but with no experience being short, you’re completely out of touch.
- namecheapTA 4y ago
  While I'm not short, I have short friends and have also seen the exbfs and new bfs of my girlfriends. A gf in med school once left me for another med student that was maybe 5'7". My exgf just married a guy 6 months after meeting him.. he's 5'8" at the most. I have countless examples of girls that sounded like they really appreciated my height, and maybe they did, but they end up with shorter guys that have other physical or attitude traits going for them. Basically as you would expect statistically.
  - atwood22 4y ago
    I think you’re missing the point. No one is saying that shorter men will never be desirable to any woman. What this study suggests is that being short is a disadvantage, so short people either need to have some other traits that compensate or they won’t find a partner. In the study, they used salary to measure this (it’s ok to be short as long as you earn 270k). So yes, it’s great you know some short guys who are exemplary enough to overcome to stigma of being short. But there are plenty of unremarkable short people who are struggle.

icegreentea2 4y ago

Source study (as far as I can tell): https://home.uchicago.edu/~hortacsu/onlinedating.pdf https://home.uchicago.edu/~hortacsu/onlinedating.pdf Jump to Table 5.5 if you want. You can also look around at the other tables surrounding it. Focusing on male height makes for easy twitter-ness. The rest of the tables are less fun to talk about. Based on my interpretation of "Not Feasible" (I couldn't find a good definition in the paper), there is no amount of money that would make moderately tall woman (> 5'8") as attractive as the median height woman (5'5"). And there's no amount of money that would make a less than top 10 percentile attractive woman as attractive (Table 5.4) as a top 10 percentile woman - which is not the case for men. You can draw your own conclusions about how accurately the data and approach in the paper maps reality. But taken at face value, it's not just short men getting a bad deal.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
vannevar 4y ago
The data is for online only, as far as I can tell. So the conclusion is more like, a description of a 6'0" man making $62K is more appealing than a description of a 5'6" man making $237K. I suspect that the results for in-person dating would be very different, because height differences in actual couples are less pronounced than stated preferences would suggest (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0054186 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...).