Many years ago I dove head-first into the strange world of online dating. Things may be different now but in 2002 on match.com, the process began with whittling down the desired personal criteria like a library search! Athletic build (definitely, but no Incredible Hulks please), roommates? (no! even though I still live at home), level of education (college graduate, but um, I’m still working on my degree). Then you gain entry to a sea of faces to scroll through and add to your cart like online shopping for throw pillows. I precisely remember thinking that the whole process of looking for a mate via hundreds of digital headshots was futuristic, impersonal, bizarre, exhilarating, horrible, and convenient. I thought I was such a deep soul searching for a meaningful connection, and while that was true, here I was passing by the photos of the unattractive guys and marking the hot ones with a favorites heart. In reality, I would never ever be able to tolerate dating a beautiful boy with a small heart or shallow spirit and was always attracted to intelligence, playfulness, depth, humor, and kindness, and dated men that had these characteristics. But everyone has to find the qualities they like in a physical package to which they are sexually attracted. The interesting thing is that people seem to have a dichotomy of behavior in the looks department: we have upward attractions on the hotness spectrum but tend to end up with mates on our own level of physical attractiveness (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012).
Research over the last 50 years has consistently shown that the number one trait people use in selecting people to date is physical attractiveness. It’s difficult in this day and age to tease out how much of our superficiality is evolutionary-based or culture-specific, but we are hardwired to some degree to associate a pretty or handsome face and figure with vitality, longevity, and virility/fertility, and therefore place a serious value on looks. Men especially use these prejudging assumptions (unconsciously). Furthermore, studies reveal that good-looking people are associated with numerous advantages like better social skills, personal character, and job performance, as well as increased sexuality, kindness, and overall competence. Yet research also confirms that these physical attractiveness stereotypes are erroneous judgments and people’s actual ratings of those virtues don’t vary at all with regard to physical attractiveness. Perhaps that explains why, despite the urge to go for a 9 on the hotness scale when you consider yourself a 5, the matching phenomenon exists where people tend to choose long-term partners that more closely match their own hotness rating (Schneider et al., 2012).
The matching phenomenon is born out of people’s avoidance of rejection (upwardly seeking to date a 10) and disappointment (downwardly seeking to date a 2) (Schneider et al., 2012). I’m not sure I understand why, but it seems that we collectively like this tendency for couples to look similarly attractive. There seems to be something visually appeasing about that message of beauty: stay in your lane. But why? It even becomes a spectacle when people breaks these rules – the beauty and the beast. I know a couple in their forties and they are both funny, sweet people and I never thought much about their discrepancy in attractiveness, but my husband has known them for years and says that it’s always been their defining feature. He is short, round, mostly bald with some red hair and pale skin. She is tall, thin, and blond, with blue eyes and lovely defined features. My husband says that all these years everyone always joked and remarked about their physical differences and that no one ever understood why she married down or how he got so lucky to marry up so high. Maybe they just love each other! While I recognize their outer incongruity, I don’t quite understand the controversy. It seems to create cognitive dissonance for people to see a very attractive person with an unattractive one. Why? I wonder if there is an evolutionary reason for this or if any research has been done.
Regardless, these predispositions seem quite consistent. When I was on match.com, just like the research said, I felt disappointed when less attractive guys “liked” me just as I feared reaching out to the few very successful (according to self-reports), supermodel guys. (I have a theory that they have a certain number of really hot confederate “plants” on these sites, or maybe that’s just sour grapes!). In the end I actually met someone online who I think perfectly matched my own level of attractiveness and we fell madly in love.
References
Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., & Coutts, L. M. (2012). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.