HOTorNOT? Researchers Take a Hard Look

“The gender difference we found could suggest that men are simply bolder and less likely to consider their own qualities when choosing whom to date, or that in searching for their perfect partner, they are less cognizant of the fact that their partners themselves are also looking for the perfect partner.”

-Leonard Lee, Columbia University marketing professor

You’ve got to love scientific research that involves the infamous HOTorNOT.com physical attractiveness rating site. You’ve also got to love a study that confirms that men do indeed think they can hook up with much hotter women, which explains why Chuck over in accounting won’t stop asking you out. With Valentine’s Day around the corner, this study should help shed light on why hot girls can expect a few cards from guys who don’t stand a chance…or do they?

Columbia University marketing professor, Leonard Lee, and colleagues analyzed two data sets from HOTorNOT.com containing members’ dating requests, with the other set containing the attractiveness ratings of other members. Both data sets also included ratings of members’ own attractiveness as rated by other members.

The results, to be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, were consistent with previous research, but also held a few revealing surprises. As predicted, people with similar levels of physical attractiveness indeed tend to date each other, with more attractive people being more particular about the physical attractiveness of their potential dates. That makes sense, considering that if you have an asset (beauty) you have more leverage in expecting that same asset in return.

The researchers were also able to conclude that people across the board prefer to date others who are moderately more attractive than them. In other words, they want the better end of the deal, but also know better than to reach too high.

However, while males are more influenced by how physically attractive their potential dates are, they are personally less affected by how attractive they themselves are, when deciding whom to date. Perhaps men are more delusional about their looks than women, and have a tendency to hopelessly chase women out of their “league”. On the other hand, perhaps men have correctly surmised that hot women really are often willing to date less attractive men, even though the converse may not be true. The study did not speculate or conclude on why this is, but merely asserted that this does appear to be the case. Men are more likely to go for hotter women than women are to go for hotter guys. The Daily Galaxy asked Professor Lee for his expert opinion on why guys feel more entitled than women to go after significantly more attractive dates.

“We do not have sufficient data to conclude one way or the other,” Lee explained to The Daily Galaxy, but he was willing to hypothesize about some possible explanations including that perhaps men are just clueless to the fact that women, generally, also want an equally or more attractive partner than themselves.

However, Lee also agreed that it is also possible that these overreaching guys are smarter than they may seem.

“On the other hand, given that there can be substantial gender differences in the qualities that individuals look for in their partners (for example, males might focus more on physical attractiveness whereas females on non-physical attributes such as socioeconomic status), our finding seems to suggest that people are implicitly aware of these differences and internalize them into their own dating decisions. Specifically, males might be aware that females are less concerned about physical looks compared to socioeconomic status, and thus focus less on their own physical attractiveness in dating.”

What the researchers also found was that regardless of how attractive people themselves are, they judge others’ attractiveness in similar ways. This finding supports the notion that there is a culturally independent standard for beauty (e.g. symmetric faces). The fact that unattractive people and attractive people alike generally agree about what is attractive, also indicates that one’s own attractiveness does not affect their judgment of others’ level of attractiveness.

However, people of different physical attractiveness levels might instead vary the importance they place on different desirable qualities in their dates. Lee and colleagues conducted a follow-up speed-dating study in which more attractive people placed more weight on physical attractiveness in selecting their dates, while less attractive people placed more weight on other qualities (e.g. sense of humor). Perhaps this is because unattractive people know they probably won’t land a hot date, so they relisticlaly choose different priorities. Or perhaps less attractive people are more likely to realize that beauty isn’t everything and go after traits that are likely to benefit a relationship over the long haul, such as humor, kindness and generosity.

Posted by Rebecca Sato