Speed dating is one of the hottest trends in the match-up business: You go to a non-threatening restaurant or bar, then spend five minutes or so face-to-face with each of up to 30 members of your preferred gender. Everyone has a card or some other method by which they indicate whether they'd like to meet again; only when both people in a pair express interest are they given contact information. The trend is so prevalent that I've seen at least two movies recently featuring speed dating ("Hitch" was one of them; I can't remember the other one).
But do you actually learn enough about the person you meet in a speed date to make a judgment about whether they're a good match? The Anterior Commissure points to a Fox News article suggesting that both men and women use superficial traits to pick matches, even after they've had a chance to meet face-to-face.
Kate mocks the Fox headline ("Earth-Shattering Study: Men Like Good-Looking Women"), so I'll mock their photo choice: a Victoria's Secret publicity shot (Did we have to go there? Really?). But still, the article actually seems to provide a decent summary of the as-yet unavailable PNAS article by Peter Todd and colleagues. What they actually found is that speed-dating men actually choose women based on physical appearance, not their stated preferences, while women (according to the press release) pick men based on wealth and security, somewhat less contrary to what they say they prefer.
But Kate goes on to ask another question: What makes a face attractive?
One common theme pursued by researchers is the idea of facial symmetry. Faces with a high degree of symmetry are typically considered more attractive.* Symmetry has been associated with good health and genetic quality (or "phenotypic condition"). It's been proposed that asymmetry might reflect genetic factors that would "disturb bilateral symmetry" in a developing animal. If that developing animal is one's offspring, it makes a good deal of sense that we'd look for genes that would promote even-keeled development across the midline, right?But some convincing evidence suggests that it's not the symmetry as much as the expressiveness and emotionality of a face. A study manipulated the features of asymmetric faces and found that, when the features were altered to enhance the symmetry of the face, the face was rated as less attractive. I'm not sure how much distortion occurred, but researchers believed that the newly symmetric faces were less attractive "because of the reduction of natural directional asymmetries, perhaps making the faces appear unemotional.
Fascinating stuff! I'd encourage you to read Kate's entire article.
For more on facial attractiveness, you might also want to check out these CogDaily articles:
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i couldn't bring myself to maturely address the victoria's secret model picture without being snide, so i left it. glad you said something :)
as a result, however, i intentionally didn't discuss how physical attributes play a role in determining the attractiveness of an individual. will save that for a future post...
I don't buy that guys go against their stated preferences. The non-physical traits they desire obviously refer to their choice of a long-term mate, wife, etc. Are guys looking for wives in a speed-dating setting? Not a snowball's chance in hell. They're there for shorter-term mating. Is it any wonder that they value hotness for short-term hook-ups?
Re: symmetry, meta-analyses show that symmetry is probably attractive, but it has nothing to do with genetic quality. It either reflects predictable aspects of the environment (poor nutrition) or stochastic aspects (a molecule zigs instead of zags). All meta-analyses on the additive genetic variance (or heritability) of symmetry show that it is effectively 0, no matter what species. Thus, differences in symmetry cannot be due to differences in genes.
I reviewed some of this lit here:
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/02/fluctuating-asymmetry-honest-truth-and…
If you can get your hands on the Polak 2003 edited volume, that's a treasure trove of info. It's basically a house-cleaning after all the hoopala about symmetry and evolution that exploded in the 1990s.
The other movie to feature speed dating was (I'm pretty sure I'm remembering this right) "The 40-year old Virgin." Funny stuff!
I hate to post and run, but I just have time here for a very quick thought.
Women prefer men with "wealth and security"?
Howzabout, many women have had experience with freeloading teenage boyfriends, who spend wads of cash on a car stereo then sponge off their girlfriend to buy lunch and drinks because they're broke...."wealth and security" may simply be markers for "they have less excuse to use up your own scarce resources." Not to mention the fact that it can be a flag for a general sense of responsibility -- someone with a steady, well-paying job is often (note I say "often", not "always") less likely to end up on a drunken kerb-crawl on weeknights, and a steady, well-paying job also generally marks the ability to maintain routine and discipline.
Given that I understand this woefully small study used a university population (as so many do) this kind of recent experience and subconscious calculation may have been quite common.
The unquestioned assumption behind the bald "prefer wealth and security", though, is usually that men will provide these for women, who are presumably looking for this to be provided rather than providing money/resources/security for themselves. This is not a given in the current day and shouldn't be considered one. It is true, however, that women tend to have lower-paid jobs, so it may be more an issue of not being saddled with a parasite; a concern in slightly older populations as well.
Small sample and unquestioned assumptions in this study, as with too many. Dangerous.
Anyway, it would be interesting to see a broader study including:
(a) different ethnic backgrounds, such as African-American, white European, traditional Korean, and indigenous South American, frex.
(b) sample groups in older and younger age brackets in those ethnicities, to see if age affects attitude.
(c) something that tracked longer relationships than just speed dating.
...but that requires time and funding I haven't got. Anyone else out there who might do this?
Very interesting. Thanks for posting.
A question that has always intrigued me is, evolutionarily, why men care about looks in their partners. Yes, I understand that looks can indicate youth and fitness, so if the male is interested in propagating his genes, then he shouldn't waste his time with someone who isn't going to produce healthy offspring. But for a male, reproduction is cheap. He can produce millions of sperm cells, so what difference does it make if he wastes a few on infertile partners? In many species in the animal kingdom, this is the way it works; the female is picky, but the male isn't.
So why are looks important to human males?
A couple of ideas: (1) If a species is monogamous, then there is definitely an incentive for both partners to be picky, because you may only get one chance to mate. Is there evidence that humans are biologically predisposed to monogamy? I don't think so, but I'm not sure.
(2) If there is widespread fatal sexually transmitted disease, then there would be a definite incentive for picking out mates that appear to be healthy. This isn't completely satisfying, either, because not all healthy-looking faces are attractive.
Perhaps there is some kind of consensus about this that I'm not aware of, but the pat answer that males prefer mates that are healthy enough to bear children doesn't seem like a complete answer to me.
agnostic,
The fact that symmetry is not genetic suggests to me that the visual clues that males look for are not indicators of good genes, but instead are indicators of health and youth.
well, male does make millions of sperms, but only the healthiest of them will fertilize with an ova .
and, i think the law of nature is not just to propogate human race, but the genetically stable and healthier ones. so, maybe its a developmental mistake of nature ( nature isnt always right in whatever it does! ) due to which beautiful females are thought to be healther . not always does all beautiful women are healthy, anybody can have an asthma or some other disease.
and, for all females reading this,wh do you think taller men are 'suitable' to be your partner?