Decoding Love (17 page)
Authors: Andrew Trees
This unfettered market has created entirely new problems. In the first place, you have a much greater chance of a mismatch than you did when your dating pool was a small town with local men or women you had known for years. We live in massive societies in which we are—wittingly and unwittingly—competing with friends from our own social circles, random passersby, waiters and waitresses, old flames from college, and so on. In the second place, people are becoming increasingly befuddled about their own criteria for selecting a partner. In many species, there is only one criteria that determines who will mate with whom. If you are a female lobster, you are looking for a male with big claws. If you are a female peacock, you are looking for a big tail on your bird. If you are a female sperm whale, you are looking for—well, who knows what female sperm whales want? But it’s not that simple for us. Perhaps it once was. Back on the African savanna, there weren’t many things to consider. Perhaps Moog was a good hunter, while Horg built great fires. Today, on the other hand, we face a virtually endless number of criteria. Is he funny? Does she like emo rock? Does he cook? Does she look too much like his ex? When anything is possible, it becomes less clear what is essential. In response to this complexity, people are increasingly turning to experts to help them. In fact, anyone who uses an Internet site’s own selection formulas to find someone is, in effect, relying on an expert. Ironically, this turn to expertise has simply added a whole new layer of complexity and a greater loss of control.
Let’s turn our attention for a few moments to Internet dating sites. Almost all of them are engaged in a race to come up with a system to figure out the mating market, and while they aspire to science, they are still closer to medieval alchemists than modern chemists. Seemingly every site has hired its own “love guru” and developed some sort of top secret algorithm for matching couples.
Chemistry.com
has Dr. Helen Fisher, who has come up with a modified version of the Myers-Briggs personality test (if you ever spent time in a career counseling office trying to figure out what to do with your life, you probably took some version of this). She has written a number of wonderful books on love, but as she would be the first to admit, she isn’t even trained in this area—her degree is in anthropology. When
Chemistry.com
’s Web site tried to claim that its algorithm was based on the latest science of attraction, eHarmony complained to the Better Business Bureau and forced them to remove the claim.
Match.com
has created Perfect Match with its attendant guru Dr. Pepper Schwartz (also the writer of a number of excellent books), who has come up with the “Duet Total Compatibility System,” a more complicated reworking of Myers-Briggs than Fisher’s. The most complicated of all is on eHarmony, where hundreds of questions measure people across twenty-nine core traits. And the mathematical formula that makes sense of all those traits? They guard that as if it is the secret formula for Coca-Cola.
Chemistry.com
has Dr. Helen Fisher, who has come up with a modified version of the Myers-Briggs personality test (if you ever spent time in a career counseling office trying to figure out what to do with your life, you probably took some version of this). She has written a number of wonderful books on love, but as she would be the first to admit, she isn’t even trained in this area—her degree is in anthropology. When
Chemistry.com
’s Web site tried to claim that its algorithm was based on the latest science of attraction, eHarmony complained to the Better Business Bureau and forced them to remove the claim.
Match.com
has created Perfect Match with its attendant guru Dr. Pepper Schwartz (also the writer of a number of excellent books), who has come up with the “Duet Total Compatibility System,” a more complicated reworking of Myers-Briggs than Fisher’s. The most complicated of all is on eHarmony, where hundreds of questions measure people across twenty-nine core traits. And the mathematical formula that makes sense of all those traits? They guard that as if it is the secret formula for Coca-Cola.
The first problem with all these sites is that while they may claim to be scientifically based, none of them has yet to pass the real test of science—peer review. In other words, it’s not enough to say that you have come up with a magic formula. You have to submit your research in a forum where other scientists can judge the validity of your claims. This may sound nitpicky, but it is the bedrock of scientific inquiry. While many of these dating services say that they intend to publish their results, talk is cheap. I guarantee you that if any of these sites had clear evidence of success, they would rush to publicize it.
If you start examining these sites using mathematics, the problems run even deeper. Lori Gottlieb wrote a very funny article for
The Atlantic Monthly
a few years ago in which she complained, among other things, that she wasn’t matched with a single person on eHarmony. Neil Clark, eHarmony’s founder, cheerfully explained that her problem was that she was too exceptional and that eHarmony did a much better job of matching average people. Of course, that answer makes one wonder what help, if any, these dating sites provide. The vast majority of people fall within one standard deviation of the statistical mean for virtually every trait, so if you are average, it would be almost impossible not to match you with similar people and also virtually impossible to figure out if there was any validity to the matching system.
The Atlantic Monthly
a few years ago in which she complained, among other things, that she wasn’t matched with a single person on eHarmony. Neil Clark, eHarmony’s founder, cheerfully explained that her problem was that she was too exceptional and that eHarmony did a much better job of matching average people. Of course, that answer makes one wonder what help, if any, these dating sites provide. The vast majority of people fall within one standard deviation of the statistical mean for virtually every trait, so if you are average, it would be almost impossible not to match you with similar people and also virtually impossible to figure out if there was any validity to the matching system.
You might think that the way around this is to measure more traits. From this point of view, eHarmony’s twenty-nine core traits look pretty good. It is reassuring to have a long list of questions about yourself and what you are looking for in a partner. You can carefully calibrate just how important ambition or sense of humor or kindness is. When you finally stop clicking with your mouse, it probably feels as if all you have to do is sit back and wait for the computer to spit out your true love. But a little mathematical analysis reveals a fatal flaw with multiplying the criteria. Unfortunately, the more qualities a dating questionnaire includes, the more unlikely it is that you will find anyone who matches you. Even if you limit the survey to include only six possible attributes, you only have a one in twenty-eight chance of finding a match. And it quickly gets much, much worse. With as few as ten attributes, it can become impossible to find a match in any meaningful sense of that word. Mathematicians call this the “curse of dimensionality,” which basically means that the more dimensions you consider, the harder it becomes to find any concept of similarity that makes sense. That much data is simply open to too many possible interpretations. In other words, piling on lists of qualities doesn’t help narrow the field. It makes it impossible to narrow it.
All of this is not to say that these dating sites don’t successfully match many people. They undoubtedly do. What I am suggesting is that their success has little to do with their so-called scientific algorithms. If you match enough people, some of them are bound to end up together, regardless of what sorting system you use. As the most honest scientific advisers to these sites admit, this field is in its infancy, and no one has cracked the code yet. The key word, though, is yet. The good news is that these dating Web sites and social networking sites such as
Facebook.com
and
MySpace.com
are starting to provide researchers with an enormous amount of information on the how and the why of what draws one person to another, and in a few years science may be able to provide much more refined and nuanced answers to these questions. That said, something as elusive as the nature of attraction between a man and woman remains a daunting scientific challenge. To offer a point of comparison, just think of IQ tests. You would imagine that measuring someone’s intelligence would be a relatively easy task. The tests were developed in the early part of the twentieth century and have had plenty of time to be refined and improved. And it’s not as if lots of money hasn’t been thrown at this problem. Despite all of these efforts, though, IQ tests still do only a crude job at best of measuring intelligence. They do an excellent job of revealing things like your parents’ socioeconomic background, but that is a little like congratulating a dancer for having good handwriting. So, while the formulas that these sites use for finding love will undoubtedly get better over time, I wouldn’t wait around hoping for them to solve your romantic problems.
Facebook.com
and
MySpace.com
are starting to provide researchers with an enormous amount of information on the how and the why of what draws one person to another, and in a few years science may be able to provide much more refined and nuanced answers to these questions. That said, something as elusive as the nature of attraction between a man and woman remains a daunting scientific challenge. To offer a point of comparison, just think of IQ tests. You would imagine that measuring someone’s intelligence would be a relatively easy task. The tests were developed in the early part of the twentieth century and have had plenty of time to be refined and improved. And it’s not as if lots of money hasn’t been thrown at this problem. Despite all of these efforts, though, IQ tests still do only a crude job at best of measuring intelligence. They do an excellent job of revealing things like your parents’ socioeconomic background, but that is a little like congratulating a dancer for having good handwriting. So, while the formulas that these sites use for finding love will undoubtedly get better over time, I wouldn’t wait around hoping for them to solve your romantic problems.
The real question is, can we use the idea of the market to our advantage when it comes to dating? To put it in economic terms, we want to look for undervalued assets that we can get for a bargain and avoid overpriced qualities for which we will pay a hefty premium. Once you look at the dating market in these terms, you can find good and bad deals all over the place. Take, for example, short men. Women place an enormous value on height. In a study of personal ads, 80 percent of the women said they wanted a man at least six feet tall. Women value it so much that they end up overvaluing it in market terms. In a recent study of online dating, researchers found that a 5’6” man needed to earn about $175,000 a year more than a six-foot man in order to overcome his height disadvantage. A different online study basically replicated these results, finding that a 5’8” man needed to earn $146,000 more than the average salary to attract the same women as a six-foot-tall man, while a five-foot man needed to earn a whopping $325,000 more than the average.
By any measure, women are wildly overpaying for these extra inches of height, asking for roughly $30,000 a year in salary for each
inch
they are giving up. It’s enough to make you wonder why any man 5’11” and under isn’t wearing lifts. There is no denying that height is what biologists call a fitness indicator, a sign of good genes and good health, and studies have shown that women attribute all sorts of excellent qualities to tall men based on their height. Other studies have shown that tall men do enjoy many societal advantages as well. For example, it’s virtually impossible to become president of this country if you aren’t tall. You have to go all the way back to the nineteenth century to find the last president who was of below-average height. Even so, it looks as if a certain amount of irrational exuberance has crept into women’s valuation of men’s physical stature. Compare, for example, how much a man’s height is valued in the workplace. In one study of men’s salaries, each inch of height for a man is worth less than six hundred dollars a year in salary. That’s more than a $29,000 spread per inch between the value that the economic marketplace places on height and the value that women place on height, a classic example of a market imbalance ripe for exploitation.
inch
they are giving up. It’s enough to make you wonder why any man 5’11” and under isn’t wearing lifts. There is no denying that height is what biologists call a fitness indicator, a sign of good genes and good health, and studies have shown that women attribute all sorts of excellent qualities to tall men based on their height. Other studies have shown that tall men do enjoy many societal advantages as well. For example, it’s virtually impossible to become president of this country if you aren’t tall. You have to go all the way back to the nineteenth century to find the last president who was of below-average height. Even so, it looks as if a certain amount of irrational exuberance has crept into women’s valuation of men’s physical stature. Compare, for example, how much a man’s height is valued in the workplace. In one study of men’s salaries, each inch of height for a man is worth less than six hundred dollars a year in salary. That’s more than a $29,000 spread per inch between the value that the economic marketplace places on height and the value that women place on height, a classic example of a market imbalance ripe for exploitation.
If a woman wants to be really smart about it, she can squeeze out even more value from a short man. She just has to find a short man who was tall in high school. This is not the oxymoron it may at first appear. What she should look for is a man who had his growth spurt early, giving him a chance to tower over his peers before they surpassed him in later years. Why is this an advantage? It turns out that adolescent height is an excellent predictor of intelligence. In addition, the height advantage during those formative years gives the men greater self-esteem, which also increases their chances of success later in life. In fact, all those salary statistics don’t hold up when it comes to men who were tall in high school but short later in life. Those short men earn more like a tall man, despite their stature. The reverse is also true—short men in high school earn less later in life even if they are tall—so, considered from an economic point of view, women should avoid those men.
It is even possible to date a short man who is perceived as a tall man. The combination of status, power, and height is so ingrained in all of us that short men with the first two assets will often be credited with the last as well. In one study, the same man was introduced as either a lowly student or an esteemed professor. Afterward, when the students were asked to estimate the man’s height, they guessed that the professor was several inches taller than the student. So, in some cases, you can get all the advantages of dating a tall man, including the perception of those around you that you are dating a tall man, even though you are actually dating a short man. Where can you get a better deal than that?
Once you start looking, there are lots of niches that can be explored. For instance, if you are a white woman who is open to marrying someone of another race, you can also take advantage of a market imbalance. According to one study of online dating, an African-American man needs to earn an extra $154,000 a year above the average salary to equal the success with white women that a white man enjoys, while a Hispanic man must earn an additional $77,000. Asian men are selling at an even steeper discount. They must earn an additional $247,000 a year. Men are more rigid in this regard than women. According to the study, women can’t compensate for racial or ethnic differences with higher salaries.
And we’ve already seen how men undervalue intelligent women, even though intelligence is one of the most precious genetic gifts we can pass on to our children. Men also shy away from women who make too much money, which is completely irrational from an economic standpoint. Similarly, men avoid dating women taller than themselves, even though a woman’s height is also a sign of genetic fitness. Of course, to take advantages of these market imbalances, people will have to overcome their natural tendencies, which is no easy thing. A recent survey found that only 4 percent of women were open to the idea of dating a man shorter than they were. But if people can make it over that hurdle, there are plenty of bargains to be found in the dating market.
Needless to say, some qualities never sell at a discount. For example, if looks are important to you, you are going to have to pay up. Women are a little more flexible on this score and are willing to trade looks for financial resources. A man judged to be in the bottom 10 percent in terms of attractiveness needs to earn an additional $186,000 over and above the average salary to compensate for his unattractiveness. For an unattractive woman, though, the market is unforgiving. No level of income will raise her success to the level of a woman in the top 10 percent in terms of attractiveness. Unattractive people also get penalized in the workplace. Unattractive women earn 5 percent less in salary and unattractive men earn 10 percent less than their attractive counterparts, while beautiful people earn on average 5 percent more than the rest of us ordinary people. And one of the most straightforward ways for an overweight woman to boost her market value is to lose weight—she’ll get an added benefit in the workplace, as well. Economists estimate that an extra sixty-five pounds costs a woman roughly 7 percent in salary.
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