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As a platform for meeting people, online dating has been growing in popularity. As the dating sites were growing, there wasn't a lot of easily available data on the people who used them to draw many conclusions from a sociological standpoint, but now that the numbers of people who use these sites is in the tens of millions, that is changing. When looking at the balance between choosing traits that make for a good relationship match verses eliminating people based upon negative attributes, aka "deal breakers", it appears people predominately employ the latter strategy.
A group of sociologists from the University of Michigan led by Elizabeth Bruch obtained data from one of the large dating sites and they looked at a randomly-selected group of people from New York City to determine what factors in their decision-making process led them to select or eliminate potential mates.
Bruch and her team divided the rules into two broad categories, "deal breakers" and "deal makers," used to exclude or include people for the next level of contact. Bruch wondered: Is mate selection like a job interview process, where the person with the best combination of positive factors wins? Or is it more like a Survivor-style reality show, where contestants are picked off one by one for a single failing?
Among the deal breakers are:
- No profile photo: Men and women were 20 times less likely to look at this profile.
- Smoker: A 10-fold drop in interest.
- Age difference: Young women (20 yo) were 10X less likely to look at a profile of a man ten years older than her, older women (45 yo) were 10% more likely to consider a man ten years older than her, and men overall preferred women younger than them.
- Height difference: Women were 10X more likely to look at a profile of a guy 17 cm (6 in) taller than her while guys were 3X more likely to look a the profile of a woman 17cm shorter than him
- Body weight: Men were less likely to view a profile of a heavy-set woman while women showed no aversion to a heavy-set guy.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 06 2016, @09:40AM
See also: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/fashion/modern-love-to-fall-in-love-with-anyone-do-this.html [nytimes.com]
More than 20 years ago, the psychologist Arthur Aron succeeded in making two strangers fall in love in his laboratory. Last summer, I applied his technique in my own life, which is how I found myself standing on a bridge at midnight, staring into a man’s eyes for exactly four minutes.
My interpretation on that is if there aren't any deal breakers, you can fall in love with most people. Judging from many couples*, many people still fall in love even if there are deal breakers (e.g. guy is an abusive violent asshole)... :)
So my advice is be careful to not do the "falling in love stuff" with assholes. You can bond with all sorts of people, so for your sake and the sake of those who have to put up with your spawn make sure you pick decent grades of people to bond with.
* http://web.mit.edu/4.441/1_lectures/1_lecture12/1_lecture12.html [mit.edu] ;)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday September 06 2016, @10:19AM
Preachers share your interpretation. Or they used to. The sermon went along the lines of, "Stop looking for the perfect mate, and focus on BEING a perfect mate."
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday September 06 2016, @01:59PM
Sounds good to me as long as both people are doing that. Often times that line seems directed at the wife to perform her "wifely duties" regardless of how the husband is treating her.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday September 06 2016, @02:56PM
You're right, in that women hear that lecture more often than men do. But, in my church at least, the guys were all treated to it. Not that it had much obvious effect.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 06 2016, @04:36PM
Well I certainly didn't say that. I said:
So my advice is be careful to not do the "falling in love stuff" with assholes. You can bond with all sorts of people, so for your sake and the sake of those who have to put up with your spawn make sure you pick decent grades of people to bond with.
I took a more negative view. With 7 billion on this planet I think erring on the side of quality isn't such a bad thing. If people want to keep looking for the perfect mate and never find one that's fine with me - since they won't be producing crappy kids to plague the rest of us.
For similar reasons I'm not against gay marriage. It's better to have gays marrying gays than pretending to be heteros and popping out kids for stupid reasons. Yeah gays can produce kids or adopt, but the current barriers are high enough that it increases the odds that they'd do a better job of it than the heteros who often accidentally have children...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 06 2016, @01:43PM
That example there is just Stockholm Syndrome, not love.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 06 2016, @01:52PM
You mean the evolutionary-based survival mechanism. You can call it syndrome if you like, but there is no fuckin cure.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Tuesday September 06 2016, @04:26PM
That example there is just Stockholm Syndrome, not love.
Same thing, different name.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday September 06 2016, @04:23PM
A list of "deal breakers" is how someone with a little maturity avoids getting trapped in a bad relationship like what you describe. It's quite possible to develop feelings for someone who has some serious problem, but that problem will cause the relationship to be dysfunctional or to fail, so consciously refusing to enter into a relationship or get too close to someone with one of these "deal breaker" traits is a protection mechanism. You can develop feelings for many different people, so it's best to avoid ones which have severe problems to give yourself a chance with someone who doesn't.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Tuesday September 06 2016, @05:21PM
absolutely. Love is mainly a set of practices and habits. A long as there aren't any deal breakers and you enjoy spending time together that's almost all it takes. Compatible views are a plus.