This month, the Czech scietists published a study analyzing, among other things, the relationship between attractiveness and preferences.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0327477
It takes two to tango: A directed two-mode network approach to desirability on a mobile dating app
I am writing about it because there are articles in serious media suggesting that the problem lies with men who try to choose women “out of their league,” while women choose people of similar attractiveness. The results obtained by scientists contradict not only the results of other studies, but also common sense. That is why I decided to take a closer look at them.
The post is a bit chaotic and difficult to understand, and I expect it to be too difficult for many readers, but in the end, it describes something that escaped a group of scientists who spend their entire lives learning to spot such errors.
Several questions were attempted to be answered, but I will focus on two.
First, let’s give the researchers (and the press, which focused on only one aspect) a little credit. They tried to determine whether invitations to dates are distributed evenly, or whether we invite more attractive people more often, as well as which gender is more selective. Yes, men were more likely to send invitations to a smaller group of women, those at the very top, while women did not focus on just a few men. However, the scale of this phenomenon was marginal compared to the second aspect. Here, there was a division into two groups, so the results are quite reliable.
The problem is that women received proportionally many times more invitations than men. For Brno, it was literally 23 times more. A 2,300 percent difference. Yes, the invitations sent by men were slightly more (several percent) oriented towards the group of the most attractive women, but men still tried to date practically all women, omitting literally a few percent, while women tried to date only a narrow group of men, omitting almost all others. Simply put, this dozen or so percent of “bias” on the part of men when choosing partners is too little to affect the several thousand percent advantage of women.
The second question poses more problems: are you looking for a date with someone who is equally attractive or more attractive than you? The scientists divided users according to attractiveness; the more people wanted to date them, the higher the “value” of a given user. At first glance, everything makes sense; statistically, men sought to meet users who had significantly more offers than they did. Statistically, women met more often with users who had fewer offers than they did.
One could conclude that in the world of dating, men are picky, seeking to meet women who are much more attractive than themselves, while women are sensible and often choose men who are not at the top of the list.
Where was the mistake made? It is so obvious that it is hard to believe it exists. It seems impossible that scientists did not notice such an obvious problem. Users were not divided into two groups! As a result, the least attractive women were still higher on the list than even the most attractive men.
There were fewer women in the study (1/4 to 1/3 of users), which inevitably meant that they received invitations more often than they sent them, as simple mathematics shows. In addition, it is a social norm that men initiate contact, which further distorted the results.
Let’s reduce the situation to absurdity, as this sometimes allows us to see the error, even when it is too complicated to understand. Imagine that there are 1,000 men and only 1 woman in the app. Each man sends her one invitation, and she… it doesn’t matter what she does. Her attractiveness level in the algorithm adopted by the authors of the study is 1,000 because she received 1,000 invitations to date, and no man has an attractiveness level higher than 1.
With this model in mind, would it really be reasonable to claim that men try to date women who are “more attractive than themselves”? Since the accepted model for calculating attractiveness makes a woman literally 1,000 times more attractive than the most attractive man, and it is simply physically impossible for a man to send an invitation to a woman who is on a similar level to him, because no such woman exist, even for the most gorgeous of men?
Yes, the model is wrong. It might be true, but only in one case. If there were several times more women than men in the world. Then, in fact, every woman could choose a man from among the most attractive ones, and all women would have partners. But there are roughly the same number of women and men in the world.
In summary, in the study, the vast majority of women received at least a few date proposals, while the vast majority of men did not receive even one. This was completely overlooked in press commentary. Men focused more on trying to date the most attractive women (and this aspect was emphasized by the press commenting on the results), but attractive men still tried to date less attractive women literally ten times more often than the other way around. No mistake here, ten times. This aspect was also completely ignored by the press.
Many people believe that finding the right partner is a big problem and look for the reasons for this state of affairs. Both the published study and articles in the press on the subject attempt to find this reason. However, I fear that there is a lot of ill will in this search; it is not about actually solving the problem, but about blaming someone you dislike for it. In this case, men.
If we really want to find a solution, it should give everyone a chance to find their other half. For the simple reason that if the solution only gives a chance to the 20% most attractive men, then 80% of men will remain single. And that means that 80% of women will also remain single. If every woman is to have a chance to find a partner, then every man must also have that chance.
How do we define attractiveness? The only model that makes social sense is to simply line up all people of a given gender, from the least attractive to the most attractive. Only this will give every person a chance to find their other half. To illustrate the absurdity of the model adopted by the researchers in this study, let’s assume that we define attractiveness as they do. Then only the most attractive men would be on an equal footing with below-average women. The problem is that these men make up 5%, maybe 10%, of the population, and only that many women can find a partner with an equal level of attractiveness, because there simply aren’t more men like that. In a society where every woman wants a chance to find a partner, attractiveness must be assessed as I defined it above. The top 10% of men for the top 10% of women.
I saw an article in a serious newspaper commenting on this study, with a big headline saying, “Men on dating apps are the problem because they try to date women who are more attractive than them.” It was suggested that they should lower their standards and date less attractive women. However, according to the model of attractiveness adopted by the researchers, only the top few percent of men were considered “attractive,” while virtually all women were.
Let’s correct this headline to make it fully consistent with the study’s findings and the methodology adopted by the researchers. “Men on dating apps are the problem. The 20% most attractive men should lower their standards and date less attractive women.” It doesn’t sound so nice anymore, does it? What’s more, even if 20% of men find partners, only 20% of women will enter into a relationship, and 80% will remain single. This includes the most attractive ones, because men have “lowered their standards.”
Even if we take these suggestions at face value, even if the most attractive men actually lowered their standards and dated less attractive women, it wouldn’t change anything, because 80% of women would still try to date 20% of men. Both 80% of women and 80% of men will remain single. Lowering their standards will result in a few percent of the most attractive men forming relationships with less attractive partners, but it will also eliminate them from the pool, making them unavailable to the most attractive women. The end result will be the same.
Unfortunately, the problem was, is, and will remain the same. Women often try to find a partner among the most attractive men, additionally comparing them to what is promoted on social media, where we are bombarded with scenes from the lives of not the 10% most beautiful and richest, but literally the 0.01% most attractive.
What’s more, the most attractive men don’t want to commit at all. Why should they? They are inundated with offers of no-strings-attached romances, and marriage offers men no benefits.
Yes, as a society, we have a big problem with forming stable relationships, which is one of the reasons for low fertility rates and the impending demographic disaster. Yes, the top few percent of the most attractive men do not want to enter into permanent relationships. But even if we literally force them into marriage, it will not change much. The vast majority of men, and therefore women, will continue to be single. Society constantly tries to blame men for this state of affairs, because any suggestion that women should change something about themselves is met with aggression. I fear that, as a civilization, we are on a slippery slope.
Why am I writing about this on a blog dedicated to medicine? The study caught my eye, and it nicely shows how slightly changing the definition of just one word can produce a result that is literally the opposite of the truth.