{"id":62883,"date":"2014-06-10T09:00:47","date_gmt":"2014-06-10T14:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=62883"},"modified":"2014-06-28T18:22:15","modified_gmt":"2014-06-28T23:22:15","slug":"louis-c-k-on-assortative-mating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2014\/06\/10\/louis-c-k-on-assortative-mating\/","title":{"rendered":"Louis C.K. on Assortative Mating"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Usually, you want to match up with someone at about your level, or a little higher.\u00a0 The trouble is that many people overestimate their own level.\u00a0 Maybe that\u2019s especially true of men.<\/p>\n<p>One summer many years ago at the tennis courts, a guy I didn\u2019t know\u00a0 came over and asked me if I\u2019d like to play. I hadn\u2019t arranged a game with anyone, but I didn\u2019t want to wind up playing some patzer.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cAre you any good?\u201d I asked. He paused.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, I\u2019m not Jimmy Connors,\u201d he said (I told this was many years ago), \u201cbut neither are you.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In chess and other games, serious players have ratings. Give a roomful of possible partners, they can sort through the ratings and find a match with someone at roughly the same level.\u00a0 It\u2019s called assortative mating, though that term usually refers to the other kind of mating, not chess.\u00a0 It\u2019s the basis of the conflict in this poignant scene from \u201cLouie.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KFdWcNJ17YY?list=RDKFdWcNJ17YY\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Vanessa is not a ten, neither is Louie.\u00a0 According to principles of assortative mating, the tens will wind up with other tens, the nines with nines, and so on down the attractiveness scale. One problem in the \u201cLouie\u201d scene is that Louie seems to have an inflated view of his own attractiveness.\u00a0 He\u2019s aiming higher than Vanessa.\u00a0 That\u2019s typical.\u00a0 So is the importance that Louie, the man, places on physical attractiveness. This excerpt begins with Louie telling Vanessa that she\u2019s a really beautiful . . . . He can\u2019t bring himself to say \u201cgirl\u201d; he&#8217;s probably going to say \u201cperson.\u201d But he\u2019s obviously not saying what he thinks.<\/p>\n<p>Or as Dan Ariely and colleagues concluded from their <a href=\"http:\/\/papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/papers.cfm?abstract_id=950782\" target=\"_blank\">study<\/a> of HotOrNot members:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[Men] were significantly more influenced by the consensus physical attractiveness of their potential dates than females were. [Men also] were less affected by how attractive they themselves were . . .\u00a0 In making date choices, males are less influenced by their own rated attractiveness than females are.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Another dating site, OK Cupid, found a similar pattern when they looked at <a style=\"color: #747474;\" href=\"http:\/\/blog.okcupid.com\/index.php\/your-looks-and-online-dating\/\">data<\/a>\u00a0about who gets messages. \u00a0They asked their customers to rate profile photos of the opposite sex on a scale of 0 to 5. They then tracked the number of messages for people at each level of attractiveness.\u00a0 The graph below shows what women thought and what they did \u2013 that is, how attractive they found men, and who they sent messages to.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/06\/1-2-Copy1.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-62884\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/06\/1-2-Copy1-500x318.jpg\" alt=\"1 (2) - Copy\" width=\"500\" height=\"318\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/06\/1-2-Copy1-500x318.jpg 500w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/06\/1-2-Copy1.jpg 554w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Men who were rated 0 or 1 got fewer messages than their proportion in the population.\u00a0 That figures. But even men who were only moderately attractive got more than their share. Generally, the fewer men at a level of attractiveness, the fewer total messages women sent. The 4s, for example, constituted only 2% of the population, and they got only 4% of all the messages.\u00a0 The Vanessas on OK Cupid are not sending a lot of inquiries to guys who look like George Clooney.<\/p>\n<p>But look at the men.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/06\/1-2.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-1\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-62885\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/06\/1-2-500x327.jpg\" alt=\"1 (2)\" width=\"500\" height=\"327\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/06\/1-2-500x327.jpg 500w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/06\/1-2.jpg 553w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Men are more generous in their estimates of beauty than are women. But they also ignore the Vanessas of the world (or at least the world of OK Cupid) and flock after the more attractive women.\u00a0 Only 15% of the women were rated as a 4, but they received about 26% of the messages.\u00a0 Women rated 5 received messages triple their proportion in the population.<\/p>\n<p>What about those with so-so looks?\u00a0 Women rated as 2s received only about 10% of the messages sent by men. But men at that same level received 25% of the messages women sent.\u00a0 The women seem more realistic.<\/p>\n<p>Vanessa too has no illusions about her own attractiveness. She refers to herself as \u201ca fat girl,\u201d and when Louie, trying to be kind, says, \u201cYou\u2019re not fat,\u201d she says: \u201cYou know what the meanest thing is you can say to a fat girl? [pause] \u2018You\u2019re not fat.\u2019\u201d But it\u2019s only when she challenges Louie\u2019s view of his own attractiveness that their relationship starts to change.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Y\u2019know if you were standing over there looking at us, you know what you\u2019d see?<\/p>\n<p>What?<\/p>\n<p>That we totally match. We\u2019re actually a great couple together.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>She doesn\u2019t explain what she means by \u201ctotally match.\u201d It could be their interests or ideas or personalities, but the imaginary stranger looking at them from over there couldn\u2019t know about any of that. What that generalized other could see is that they are at roughly the same place on the assortative mating attractiveness scale.<\/p>\n<p><em>Cross-posted at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.psmag.com\/navigation\/health-and-behavior\/louis-c-k-assortative-mating-men-overestimate-level-attractiveness-83197\/\" target=\"_blank\">Pacific Standard<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"> Jay Livingston is the chair of the Sociology Department at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/profilepages\/view_profile.php?username=livingstonj\">Montclair State University<\/a>.  You can follow him at <a href=\"http:\/\/montclairsoci.blogspot.com\/\">Montclair SocioBlog<\/a> or on <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/JayLivingston\">Twitter<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Usually, you want to match up with someone at about your level, or a little higher.\u00a0 The trouble is that many people overestimate their own level.\u00a0 Maybe that\u2019s especially true of men. One summer many years ago at the tennis courts, a guy I didn\u2019t know\u00a0 came over and asked me if I\u2019d like to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":62885,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[218,244,23645,387,55,2089,2103,2088,2087,2098,272,283,37],"class_list":["post-62883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bodies","tag-fat","tag-bodies-prejudicediscrimination","tag-dating","tag-gender","tag-gender-beauty","tag-gender-bodies","tag-gender-marriagefamily","tag-gender-masculinity","tag-gender-prejudicediscrimination","tag-marriagefamily","tag-prejudicediscrimination","tag-social-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/06\/1-2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62883"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63161,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62883\/revisions\/63161"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}