The Science of Dating

Some people find the odds of 1 in 562 being unrealistically low. Others found themselves luckier than that and already have beat the odds. But there’s a bunch of other things that you need to know before jumping to conclusions.

Are you looking for someone who’s ‘out of your league’? If so, you may have already found yourself out of hope when looking for ‘the one’. You may not be the only one having this problem, since it seems like a lot of people are dating aspirationally.

A recent study conducted on the online dating market in US revealed that on average both men and women pursue partners who are 25% more desirable than themselves, even though this so called aspirational mate pursuit is calibrated to one’s own desirability. As one may have expected, some mate seekers still pursue people of similar average desirability to themselves, but the vast majority have a tendency to reach up the hierarchy towards more desirable partners. The results indicate that people tend to pursue the most attractive partners, especially when it comes to attributes such as physical attractiveness and income. Therefore people are following an interesting strategy of being aware of their position in the dating hierarchy, but at the same time they adjust their behavior accordingly while competing modestly for more desirable partners.

The same pattern is confirmed by Pew Research Center in a survey conducted in 2019. The study followed the attitudes of US daters: those who are not married, living with a partner or in a committed romantic relationship, that have indicated they are currently looking for a committed romantic relationship, casual dates or both. Those who had difficulties in finding and dating people in the past year were asked about few possible reasons that might describe their misfortune.

The most frequent explanations include the challenge of finding someone who is seeking for the same kind of relationship (53% declare this is a major reason), difficulties in approaching people (46%) and troubles finding someone who meets their expectations (43%). Aspirational pursuit of mates confirmed again!

There are very interesting and large differences by gender on this topic. Women are far more likely than men to say the major reasons were finding someone who was loooking for the same type of relationship or who meets their expectations. However, men are more likely than women to say that a major reasons is approaching people.

Other less common explanations included in the study were having a limited number of people to date in the area, being too busy or people not being interested in dating them. But researchers couldn’t find any significant differences by gender with regard to any of these aspects.