It seems logical for people with high mate value to insist on comparable partners, and thereโs some evidence that they do. By observing singles pursuing one another at online dating sites and in speed-dating experiments, researchers have found that people tend to end up with those of similar mate value.
That pattern also occurs in married couples: Attractive, well-educated, high-earning people tend to marry people like themselves. In fact,ย economists sayย that this growing trend of โassortative matingโ is a major cause of income inequality, because a household with two high earners makes so much more money than a household with two low earners (or only one earner).
But just how ruthlessly superficial are people in assessing the value of potential mates? To investigate, psychologists at the University of Texas at Austin asked students to rate the romantic appeal of their opposite-sex classmates.
At the start of the semester, the students pretty much agreed on who in their class was most desirable. But when they were asked again three months later, after spending a semester in a small class together, their judgments varied widely on who was hot and who was not.
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โPerceptions of mate value change the more time that people spend together,โ said Lucy Hunt, a graduate student who publishedย the studyย last year withย Paul Eastwick, an assistant professor of human development and family sciences.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: For Couples, Time Can Upend the Laws of Attraction
