As it turns out, I’m not crazy. In the working paper, What Makes you Click, by Günter J. Hitsch, Ali Hortaçsu, and Dan Ariely © at MIT, they state that in strategies, “a man with a low attractiveness rating may not approach a highly attractive woman if the probability of forming a match with her is low, such that the expected utility from a match is lower than the cost of writing an e-mail or the disutility from a possible rejection.” My point in reciting their example is that if economists believe that there might be a “disutility” from getting rejected, then the disutility does exist for some people.The authors decide to assume that such strategies aren’t used, although that’s merely for their study. And even supposing the strategies aren’t used they “cannot ultimately reject the possibility that some strategic behavior is present in the data.” All of this means that they know some people have disutility from getting rejected, and that it does exist, but that it’s hard to measure as well as the fact that people still prefer attractive mates. Moreover, the authors cite that the “market equilibrium” matches each mate to another. And of course, the reason I’m reading this and other paper is to help me find out what market I might be dealing with.
Therefore, the intense and constant rhetoric that I face from my fellow peers and friends about “nothing to lose” is an inherently flawed argument. The fact is that there is something to lose; it’s just not as big a cost to most. Also of note is the fact that past experiences and data do impact current events and possibly forecast what may happen in future ventures. Consequently, if we assume that I’ve been on the “dating market” for 8 years (since I was 15), then we can safely say that my current ratio of 0::21 (in girls who said yes to total girls asked out) is abysmal. Mind you, I’m not counting two girls because they are arguable cases. In short, neither of these girls wanted to “date” for more than two days. Trust me; you’ve probably been there too.
Some interesting statistics in this paper… “In our data, 71% of men’s and 56% of women’s first-contact e-mails in our data are rejected, i.e. do not receive a reply.” Those are not the kind of numbers I was hoping for. Fear of rejection, oh yeah, you can bet I have it now. And if you think that someone through the service might contact me, try on this finding… “56.4% of all men in the sample did not receive a first-contact e-mail at all, whereas only 21.1% of all women were never approached.”
In the end, here’s the major correlation. .71 (insanely significant) is the age correlation that the authors observed. Added, .33 (also significant) is the looks correlation. Therefore, age and looks do in fact matter, i.e. you need to be a good looking man if you would like to have a good looking woman. The authors even go far as to provide an attribute tradeoff. Therefore, it would take an ugly man (someone in the lowest decile of looks) an additional income of $186,000 a year would be needed for that man “to compensate for his poor looks,” against the good looking man who makes $62,500.
As for woman, their income factor does not have as much effect, so a ridiculously large sum of money would be needed if they would want to compensate for their poor looks. However, “these results should not be taken fully literally—functional form assumptions, distributional assumptions, and sampling error will generally influence the precise income compensation numbers.”
Personally, the utility for me as to a possible match from an online personal or dating service does not outweigh the disutility that I receive from the possible crazy people who might want to interact with me. Also of note, in mentioning that the market equilibrium will find each person a match, I believe that there is a possibility that my preference might not be in line with what would be the easy market-match mate for me. Simply put, I may not be attractive, funny, tactful, or rich enough to date the girls that I’ve asked.
My question to anyone who would like to respond… Do you know of someone whom you think has “too high” of a standard in just asking out someone? I’m not speaking of the break-ups; I’m speaking of just approaching and asking someone out. Do you know of someone who won’t ask someone out because they don’t like the way they look, and you think they’re crazy and need new glasses? In my own experience, I have yet to see anyone I know have overtly high standards just for asking someone out on a date.
6 comments:
Mikey my friend. Of course I could not resist adding my educational expertise to your blog - besides, my masters degree oughta be good for something. Check out this info on Matching Hypothesis. I conferred with our top Interpersonal Communication prof before posting this, but he says it's completely accurate. If you want more in-depth, research based literature, you know where to find me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matching_hypothesis
I know, and know of, quite a lot of people who have unreasonable standards for asking people out, and you are clearly one of them. This is apparent both from your claimed rejection ratio - you're articulate and there's nothing wrong with your picture, so unless you are asking out beauty queens or your friends you should have a decent acceptance rate (at least for the first date).
I assume it's the former - you are asking out beauty queens - because of the way you focus on physical beauty in the dating-related posts I've read. Of course that is what draws many people (especially men) to a partner initially, but I think most people eventually find other traits are more compelling. In the long-time limit, even beauty queens wrinkle and sag.
Actually, in my opinion, dating is indeed a numbers game (which means that as an economist, you are perhaps overqualified for it). Further, it can be incredibly difficult for smart, normally attractive, overly intelligent guys in their 20s. The reason for this is that almost all women under age 30 are certifiably insane.
I don't know if it's nature or nuture, but if you were to conduct an experiment where you put 50 single 20-something females in a room with 50 20-something males, and 90% of the females will develop an inexplicable attraction to the ones least likely to make good spouses or significant others. It's almost as if women in that age group (and I include myself, when I was that age) are hard-wired for self-destructiveness when it comes to dating. Almost without exception, we will choose the most aggressive, least intelligent men available, the ones most likely to crush our hearts like bugs.
That doesn't help you much given that you are probably at least 7 years from having sane female peers, but at least you have a little commiseration at the perilous task of being a sweet 20-something guy with a brain.
I don't envy you, my friend, nor do I envy any of the other cute, available 20-something single guys of my aquaintance (and in my field, that's a large number), all of whom are searching for Ms. Right.
I'd just encourage patience, developing a thick skin, working on your sense of humor (in order to keep your sanity), and an ongoing effort.
The more frequently you ask women out, or make contact with them, the more likely you are to inadvertently happen upon something that works for you, if you don't allow yourself to become too bitter and jaded.
You also might consider dating older. Dating older women is a sign of a confident guy who knows his way around women (and I'd suggest that a lot of 30-something women are just plain nicer).
I'd have to agree with Trouble on that. Women in their 20's are indeed insane. And if it's a numbers game then you have to talk to TONS of chicks before you can hook up any. My buddy Joe was in a dating slump until he tried the "ask out/talk to as many women as possible" and Holy SHIT it ended up working, he's happily married with kids. Even if marriage and kids isn't your end goal you should still be able to find a long term girlfriend.
Trouble is correct about the 50 single women in their 20's all choosing the "wrong" guy out of the group. Why is that? It comes down to basics...attraction. What makes women attracted to me in the first place. The ones those women want are confident with themselves and around women. They don't care what happens and the women know/ snese that. Thus, they want to be the one to "conquer" the hero or at least get to know him better. Heh.
Agree with a previous poster: 21:0 is unrealistically low for someone with your looks. I think something around 21:10 or 21:15 would be more realistic unless you're totally delusional about your own value or about the ritual. Good luck. And the folks are right - it's getting much nicer for guys as they approach 30.
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