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September 15, 2007

Economics and cognative science of dating.

Peter M. Todd is a cognitive scientist at Indiana University. He has a new study (albeit small sample) on comparative dating habits of men and women. His paper Different cognitive processes underlie human mate choices and mate preferences, was mentioned on CNN.com.

Then Simplicitas Blog reported the following quote and then commented:

"Women made offers to men who had overall qualities that were on a par with the women's self-rated attractiveness. They didn't greatly overshoot their attractiveness," Todd said, "because part of the goal for women is to choose men who would stay with them." But, he added, "they didn't go lower. They knew what they could get and aimed for that level." That's actually very interesting. Women have a much better sense of their own value in the dating market, it seems.

This is not proof of what Simplicitas claims. Women have more incentive in dating to go for men of their approximate dating quality. Men have a much larger payout for going for women who are "out of their league" because on the outside chance that they succeed, then they payout for them is huge, even if the mate eventually leaves them, because their investment is much smaller. It isn't that women have better sense of their value, or at least they need not do so to explain this difference. Instead, women have incentives to bid for men of aproximately their quality, while men do not.

In game theory I'd say that the women are playing a separating direct revelation game (true type of quality dictates strategy) while the men are playing a pooling strategy (always try to get with the most desirable women possible regardless of fitness).

Posted by OneEyedMan at September 15, 2007 8:21 AM

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