The Difference Blog by Dan4th

Buunk et al's (2008) article has made significant press, starting with the New Scientist, being cited as proof of "short man syndrome." For example, Marie Claire magazine (2008) is polling its readers on whether their man suffers from it. The full article, however, examines the relationship between height and jealousy for both men and women:

"male height was found to be negatively correlated with self-reported global jealousy, whereas female height was curvilinearly related to jealousy, with average-height women reporting the lowest levels of jealousy"

In Study 2, Buunk claims that average-height women's jealousy is piqued by rivals with "masculine" (his quotes) characteristics like physical dominance or high social status, while men's height/jealousy relationship is not much changed by rival characteristics (short men were not as threatened by socially successful or "seductive" rivals). Previous research from Buunk has shown that men in general are threatened by financial success and physical dominance, while women in general tended to be threatened by physically attractive rivals (see DB 7/19/07, 10/25/06)

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I'd like to point out that this is at least the second "tall men are better" article covered in the New Scientist in 2008 (see DB 1/18/08). I wonder if some editor there is as touchy as I am. ;) Quick! Stop me before I complain about my height again! ;) I know, distract me with a delicious word like "curvilinearly." Yummy. I also wanted to show you a couple of the scatter plots for this relationship (click to enlarge). I find it very hard to believe that Buunk's jealousy instrument is sensitive enough for what he's trying to do with it.

One of my biggest concerns is with using identical scripts with switched pronouns for the rivals in Study 2. I don't think "physical dominance" has the same connotations for a male or female rival. The example items for physical dominance are "is more muscular, is more athletic, has a heavier build." I don't think those are gender-equivalent values (even if I'd like them to be). Nor is "slender", one of the items for "physically attractive." Buunk's theories hang on which tools are more powerful in assortative mating strategies, so the utility of slenderness or muscularity to a man or woman is fairly important. I didn't see any indication in the article that these items were varied by participant gender.

Eastwick and Finkel (2008) apply a longitudinal approach to speed dating. A Newsweek interview (2008) with the authors sums up their findings:

Finkel: "There was a disconnect between what they said they wanted and what they actually wanted."

Eastwick: "People have theories, and those theories guide us, but they might not always be correct."

In short, men (more than women) rank attractiveness as more important, and women (more than men) rank earnings as more important. But the people these same men and women chose to date did not correlate with their stated preferences. After mates were found, the attraction One theory, espoused in Newsweek by Eastwick, is that people adjust their priorities to match the mates they find, rather than finding mates who match their priorities.

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Don't tell my boyfriend*, but I suspect that I follow Eastwick's adjusted priorities model. Of course the person that I'm enjoying right now seems to have the qualities I admire: I notice myself admiring them in him. When filling out the "how would your ideal mate answer this question" forms on OKCupid, I usually find myself wondering how he would answer. However, I self-centeredly admit that I'd like to think I'm objectively awesome, and not just awesome because we're dating. The "adjusted priorities" model reminds me far too much of the Onion article "You Are The Most Beautiful Woman In The World Who Will Sleep With Me" (Babcock, 2004)

Eastwick and Finkel are apparently both in serious relationships, according to their interview, so I wonder how their partners feel about their research.

*this is a joke, because he reads D-blog

The site UKDating.com compiled the "seeking" information from 40,000 women's dating profiles to make a profile of "the perfect man." The Daily Mail (UK, 2008) claims that height was the most important attribute, specifying that "Mr. Right" should be at least 5'10". Good looks came in second to height. Perhaps the importance of height contributes to short men's greater tendency towards violent suicide (New Scientist, 2008).

Several UK papers call the survey a counterpoint to recent research on the attractiveness of long legs. This comparison is incorrect, however, because Sorokowski and Pawlowski (2008) rated leg-to-body ratio attractiveness on both men and women. Sorokowski and Pawlowski had 118 women and 100 men rate the attractiveness of 7 men and 7 women in photographs, height-matched but with the images manipulated to change leg length. Legs 5% longer than average were most attractive; legs 15% longer than average were too long (±15% was the greatest variation tested). Pawlowski suggests that longer legs signal health, making them attractive on an evolutionary basis. It seems the author himself may be a "leg man"; Pawlowski (2001) theorizes that fat deposits on women's hips and buttocks evolved to counterbalance pregnancy.

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The news articles give the average height of a Polish woman at 5'4" with an inseam of 29". I'm probably only 5'3.5", and I think my real inseam is probably a 28", but I tend to wear a 30" because I like a little slouch at the ankle. Also, no one sells a 28". "Big and Tall" stores are everywhere; "Short and Slim" -- let alone "Short and Hippy" -- men's clothes are almost impossible to find, which is a frequent point of complaint in the FTM communities. Testosterone, time, and exercise has melted away most of my hips, but the bone structure remains, making it extremely hard to find clothes that fit. Seriously, buying jeans is enough to make me consider violent suicide.

Steve Chenoweth is suggesting a radical idea: females may also be targeted by sexual selection. Chenoweth has been studying sexual dimorphism in Australian fruit flies (Drosophila serrata), in both laboratory-manipulated and wild-caught populations. Contrary to the common perception of males as the evolutionary scratchpad, Chenoweth's team found that females, not males, responded to sexual selection (ScienceDaily, 2008). Chenoweth published last year (with Foley et al, 2007) that although both male and female Drosophila melanogaster use pheromones (created from the same base compound) to attract mates, the genetic control of these pheromones seems to be different for males and females.

An interesting gender difference noted by Chenoweth is in the difference between mate-selection traits between male and female fruit flies. Chenoweth et al (2006) found what they called "exaggerated male traits" -- traits that led to sexual selection even when they were exerting negative survival selection. In contrast, Chenoweth et al (2007) found that male sexual selection was a "stabilizing" rather than "directional" influence. The researchers admit that the male flies may be using different markers of fecundity than were manipulated.

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Wait, so females choose the exaggerated male form, but males prefer a realistic body type? Well, I guess there are differences between fruit flies and humans. I'm back from two weeks in Vegas, and I've seen enough exaggerated female form to last me several months. I recognize that I'm falling prey to a culturally-informed anthropomorphic world-view here, but I'm having a really hard time with believing that any male's tastes, of any species, have stabilizing effects. I find this a nonsensical statement, but maybe I'm not giving the fruit flies enough credit?

Both men and women rate "sense of humor" as important in their dating choices. However, as Bressler et al (2006) found, they don't mean the same things. Bressler found that when men look for a "sense of humor" in a woman, they want a woman who appreciates their jokes. A woman wants a man who will make her laugh. Humor production and appreciation, according to Bressler, are differentially important to the genders in assortative mating. Priest and Thein (2003) point out that similar senses of humor are key to the survival of a marriage.

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There's a "factoid" circulating (I've been looking for a citation) that children laugh 300 times per day while adults only laugh 15-20 times daily. I mentioned it to my partner, commenting that I probably laugh more than 300 times per day. He grinned and lovingly said "I know." We frequently talk about how important silliness is to our relationship, but it wasn't until this conversation that I really appreciated how much the laughter was important to him. I know I need both production and appreciation out of my partners. I probably want appreciation more.

According to Wikipedia, "Speed Dating" was introduced in 1998, and by 2000 had gained national recognition, partially thanks to an episode of Sex in the City wherein a successful lawyer pretends to be an airline stewardess to stop scaring away potential dates. The repetitive format of speed-dating made it a natural choice for the study of mating choices, providing many interacting pairs in a brief period of time. Finkel et al (2007) offer a "methodological primer" for those interested in performing speed dating experiments.

Speed dating studies have released many interesting, if not particularly unexpected, results. Pentland et al (2004) found that mutual attraction was best predicted by female vocal cues. Fisman et al (2006) suggests that women place more importance on race than men do, although this may be confounded by social status. Todd et al (2007), which found that women were choosier than men. The more attractive a woman was, the pickier she was. The 4 subjects who rejected all the other participants (1 men, 3 women) were all more than 1 SD above the mean for attractiveness; the 5 individuals who received no offers for second dates (2 women, 3 men) were more than 1 SD below the mean for attractiveness. However, these less-attractive men made more offers to compensate; the unchosen women did not make more offers than the women who were chosen.

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Now, I'm confused. I was absolutely, positively sure that I'd already cited Fisman et al, but apparently not. Well, damn. [edit: Found it. I posted in November as "Kamenica and Simonson (2006)"]

At any rate, it seems that one of the main purposes of the Todd study was to examine whether people were aware that they had to offer something to attract a mate. The "trade-offs" hypothesis is the status/wealth for attractiveness/youth model that seems to dominate evolutionary psychology assortative mating papers. I wonder how many evolutionary psychologists are wealthy, somewhat-funny-looking men. I'm certainly not surprised that no one admitted to "trading off" attributes when selecting the best partner. Of course we're all looking for "kindred spirits" and no one is any "better" than anyone else -- just a better match. I think it's very comforting to think that way, and probably only partially false.

Evolutionary psychology suggests that men and women value different characteristics in a mate. Wade and Fowler (2006) attempted to test this model to see how the features of the partner in infidelity affected the level of upset in men and women. Their results suggest that only women may rate the competitor in their mate's terms. While attractiveness has been found to be more important to men, and financial well-being as more important to women, women were more upset when the competitor was attractive. Men's level of upset was not affected by the financial success of a competitor. However, as discussed in October ("The Jealous Type", 10/25/06), this is is contrary to findings by Dijkstra and Buunk (2002), who did find that men became more jealous of more successful rivals. Nadler and Dotan (1992) suggest that men's jealousy is more focused on protecting their egos, while women's is focused on protecting the relationship.

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The relationship between attraction criteria and jealous reactions seems to be largely a theory of mind (ToM) question, as much as I'm loathe to admit it. I think ToM is a red herring, but I can't think of a better way to describe people reacting to their partner's predicted reactions. The idea in most of today's studies is that people will not react to what is important to them, but to what is important to their partner in a rival. While I don't think that knowing a partner's tastes is unusual, it seems likely that people would prioritize these factors inaccurately. Actually, I think that, for me, this ties in with yesterday's post on emotional memories (6/18/07), because it is so hard for me to imagine being good at accurately judging someone else's reactions. Does that idea feel natural or easy to you? How much do you stake on your ability to judge others?

The Daily Mail (UK, 2007) reports on research (publication pending) by Lynda Boothroyd of the University of Durham (UK) that indicates that women are attracted to men who resemble their fathers, mediated by their relationship with their father. Girls who like their fathers are more likely to be attracted to men who resemble them. Boothroyd was also a contributor on Cornwell (2006), which suggested that rate of sexual development played a role in the assortative mating choices.

The idea that people are attracted to mates who are like their parents is hardly a new one, going back at least to Sigmund Freud. However, most modern research has focused on the ways that people are attracted to mates that behave like their parents, rather than physically resemble them. For example, Olivetti et al (2002) found that men whose mothers had worked or were educated were more likely to marry educated, working women themselves.

[edit, 11:18am: See also Perrett et al (2002), who found that children born to older parents were less impressed by youth in rating attractiveness in potential mates.]

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Obviously I have been using the wrong keywords, because despite all of the times I've heard people say that men marry their mothers or women marry their fathers (metaphorically speaking), finding any research that addresses this issue from a non-Freudian perspective is proving nearly impossible, and there's only so much castration theory I can read before breakfast. This is another case where I'm putting it out to you folks. If you're aware of any other sources discussing physical resemblance between parents and mates, I'd love to see them.