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Pre-web, I used to work at a dating service doing many things, but the data entry, number crunching, etc. part was my main job. I really should have moved the

Pre-web, I used to work at a dating service doing many things, but the data entry, number crunching, etc. part was my main job. I really should have moved the data off of dBase III floppies but first I noticed trends, then I ran numbers to confirm my suspicions. The gulf between what people say they want and what they actually do (whom they ask out, or from whom they will accept requests) is vast. Self-reporting is largely a matter of public relations. People who refer to evolutionary psychology as "evo psych" are dog-whistling for the tabula rasa crowd and can be safely ignored; you can't tell them anything they don't want to hear anyway. In any case, your worst suspicions are likely to be true. Men did the asking out, by and large. Men were bigger on the shotgun approach, also no surprise. We asked people to rate each preference as to how important it was to them ("do you really need blue eyes?") and women, on average, rated all of their preferences as more important than the men did. Height was almost always in the top three for women, in terms of preferences, in terms of whom they asked out if that did happen, and from whom they would accept requests. That and income. I've seen other studies, later, which bore all of this out, but if you want the true dirt, you go look at what people actually do, not what they want someone to think they do.

hx8 3y ago
It might be interesting to take photos of couples and have members of the opposite sex rate each member's attractiveness. Then analyze the data. That would go with the approach of measuring actions instead of stated preferences.
corethree 3y ago
I'm an evo psych guy. But isn't the top 3 preferences of women to be income and height completely inline with what the eco psych people claim? And you're saying people self reported height and income as a preference but the behavior doesn't play out with what people actually do?
- at_a_remove 3y ago
  No. If you went up to them on the street and asked, "Hey, how important is it that a guy be tall?" you would get a response that would sound a lot better than what they fill out with nobody looking. You have to take it out of a public context and also bury it along with a bunch of other things to de-emphasize it. Meanwhile, at one point Tumblr, Twitter had a run of women pulling faces of disappointment and/or disgust with the caption "When his height starts with a 5." And that's an in-group thing, neither private nor public. People have a lot of different facets of themselves -- something that Zuckerberg really didn't get -- each shown to a different audience. If you've ever watched a bunch of women do this "performative disdain" routine, wherein they make displays to other women that they, too, have high standards, that's definitely a facet that is neither entirely public nor completely private. I recall a recent car commercial to that effect, where women were inferring something about a man due to his choice of vehicle, and were doing performative disdain based on that.
  - corethree 3y ago
    Interesting. "Performative disdain." Is there an actual formal study that accounts for it? Doesn't it actually look worse for a woman if she acts like she cares about height? I think your claim has merit. But I want to see studies that bypass the psychological bias. Are there any? What did you see with your data? Not just the divide in general but actual trends and actual examples.
    - at_a_remove 3y ago
      Right, so, the question is: to who? It looks bad if she cares about height if you just flat up ask her, alone, without peers. It does not look as bad if she admits to it with and to her peers. You get to see mate pre-selection in action! There's a lot of chiming in. This is where the performative disdain appears. Disdain, because you will see expressions and utterances of distaste or even disgust; performative, because she is communicating this preference with her peers, partially for validation. You can catch women and even girls doing this. There's a hint of social jockeying in there. After all, by rejecting (or even pre-rejecting) someone, you're ranking them lower than you in some fashion. And there's really only two ways to increase your relative status: bring yourself up or tear someone else is down. Which is easier? It also doesn't look that bad if the height question is mixed in with tons of other questions, and she isn't looking anyone in the eye when answering. This is the private milieu. Here, it's a questionnaire. She's at least taking a swing at being honest with her preferences. Well, it's been a few decades, so my memory is limited. "Attractiveness" was a general self-reported category and women rated themselves higher. Interestingly, attractiveness and height overruled religion for women, even those who reported the religion answer as being at the highest rating on the scale. We did have some psych tests besides the "barely above astrology" MBTI, namely the Taylor-Johnson. I don't think you're going to see a lot of hardcore studies. Even OKCupid redacted their conclusions. It's really one of those areas where average people aren't ready to hear the results. The results would be unpleasant for the tabula rasa crowd and their buddies, the people who are against gender essentialism. And if it might present women in a less than brilliant light, consider the "Women Are Wonderful" effect.
      - 3y ago

hx8 3y ago

It might be interesting to take photos of couples and have members of the opposite sex rate each member's attractiveness. Then analyze the data. That would go with the approach of measuring actions instead of stated preferences.

corethree 3y ago

I'm an evo psych guy. But isn't the top 3 preferences of women to be income and height completely inline with what the eco psych people claim? And you're saying people self reported height and income as a preference but the behavior doesn't play out with what people actually do?

at_a_remove 3y ago
No. If you went up to them on the street and asked, "Hey, how important is it that a guy be tall?" you would get a response that would sound a lot better than what they fill out with nobody looking. You have to take it out of a public context and also bury it along with a bunch of other things to de-emphasize it. Meanwhile, at one point Tumblr, Twitter had a run of women pulling faces of disappointment and/or disgust with the caption "When his height starts with a 5." And that's an in-group thing, neither private nor public. People have a lot of different facets of themselves -- something that Zuckerberg really didn't get -- each shown to a different audience. If you've ever watched a bunch of women do this "performative disdain" routine, wherein they make displays to other women that they, too, have high standards, that's definitely a facet that is neither entirely public nor completely private. I recall a recent car commercial to that effect, where women were inferring something about a man due to his choice of vehicle, and were doing performative disdain based on that.
- corethree 3y ago
  Interesting. "Performative disdain." Is there an actual formal study that accounts for it? Doesn't it actually look worse for a woman if she acts like she cares about height? I think your claim has merit. But I want to see studies that bypass the psychological bias. Are there any? What did you see with your data? Not just the divide in general but actual trends and actual examples.
  - at_a_remove 3y ago
    Right, so, the question is: to who? It looks bad if she cares about height if you just flat up ask her, alone, without peers. It does not look as bad if she admits to it with and to her peers. You get to see mate pre-selection in action! There's a lot of chiming in. This is where the performative disdain appears. Disdain, because you will see expressions and utterances of distaste or even disgust; performative, because she is communicating this preference with her peers, partially for validation. You can catch women and even girls doing this. There's a hint of social jockeying in there. After all, by rejecting (or even pre-rejecting) someone, you're ranking them lower than you in some fashion. And there's really only two ways to increase your relative status: bring yourself up or tear someone else is down. Which is easier? It also doesn't look that bad if the height question is mixed in with tons of other questions, and she isn't looking anyone in the eye when answering. This is the private milieu. Here, it's a questionnaire. She's at least taking a swing at being honest with her preferences. Well, it's been a few decades, so my memory is limited. "Attractiveness" was a general self-reported category and women rated themselves higher. Interestingly, attractiveness and height overruled religion for women, even those who reported the religion answer as being at the highest rating on the scale. We did have some psych tests besides the "barely above astrology" MBTI, namely the Taylor-Johnson. I don't think you're going to see a lot of hardcore studies. Even OKCupid redacted their conclusions. It's really one of those areas where average people aren't ready to hear the results. The results would be unpleasant for the tabula rasa crowd and their buddies, the people who are against gender essentialism. And if it might present women in a less than brilliant light, consider the "Women Are Wonderful" effect.
    - 3y ago