This study looked at how important each gender rated: Physical Attractiveness, Personality, and Earning Power in a relationship. Then they studied to what degree these traits actually led to success in speed dating. Speed dating is the fairest model to allow personality or earning power to shine, since you have at least 10 minutes to demonstrate how charismatic or successful you are.
Here was their primary result:
On the left, you can see the degree to which men (blue) and women (red) rated the importance of Attractiveness, Personality, and Earning Power. On the right, you can see to what extent any of those characteristics actually led to dating success (where 0 would be no effect, and 1 would be 100% effect).
In this study, both genders underestimated the importance of looks. Men rated looks as second just barely under personality (8.04/10 vs. 8.1/10). On the other hand, women were WAY off. They rated looks as the LEAST important of all (7.18/10) while for them it was by far the most important thing. In fact, it was slightly more important for women than it was for men.
For getting a woman, looks correlated 0.46 with dating success. This means that as a man, your looks will predict at least 46% of your success or failure in a speed date. Personality correlated 0.32 with dating success. So 32% of your results will be attributed to your personality. Lastly, money only correlated 0.16 with success. So only 16% of your results will depend on money.
What does this tell us? A few primary things:
- For both genders, the order of importance is: Looks > Personality > Money. This reinforces the study findings here, which also showed money is comparatively the least important parameter. In this study, money was actually less important to women than it was for men, yet women said they thought it was quite important at the start.
- Women dramatically underestimate how important having a good looking guy is to them. I'm not sure why this is. Women in general tend to lack self awareness and insight compared to men. Perhaps this is just a manifestation of that. Or it is some form of deeply internalized virtue signalling.
As a whole, this provides scientific evidence that women really have no idea what they find important. They were completely wrong on the relative importance of all three attributes studied. One therefore truly cannot trust what a woman says about dating. One must look at her behavior to understand her values. When we do that, we see as always that looks are top of the totem pole. And if you are a man trying to compensate through money, you will have a very steep climb.
Reference
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18211175
Here was their primary result:
On the left, you can see the degree to which men (blue) and women (red) rated the importance of Attractiveness, Personality, and Earning Power. On the right, you can see to what extent any of those characteristics actually led to dating success (where 0 would be no effect, and 1 would be 100% effect).
In this study, both genders underestimated the importance of looks. Men rated looks as second just barely under personality (8.04/10 vs. 8.1/10). On the other hand, women were WAY off. They rated looks as the LEAST important of all (7.18/10) while for them it was by far the most important thing. In fact, it was slightly more important for women than it was for men.
For getting a woman, looks correlated 0.46 with dating success. This means that as a man, your looks will predict at least 46% of your success or failure in a speed date. Personality correlated 0.32 with dating success. So 32% of your results will be attributed to your personality. Lastly, money only correlated 0.16 with success. So only 16% of your results will depend on money.
What does this tell us? A few primary things:
- For both genders, the order of importance is: Looks > Personality > Money. This reinforces the study findings here, which also showed money is comparatively the least important parameter. In this study, money was actually less important to women than it was for men, yet women said they thought it was quite important at the start.
- Women dramatically underestimate how important having a good looking guy is to them. I'm not sure why this is. Women in general tend to lack self awareness and insight compared to men. Perhaps this is just a manifestation of that. Or it is some form of deeply internalized virtue signalling.
As a whole, this provides scientific evidence that women really have no idea what they find important. They were completely wrong on the relative importance of all three attributes studied. One therefore truly cannot trust what a woman says about dating. One must look at her behavior to understand her values. When we do that, we see as always that looks are top of the totem pole. And if you are a man trying to compensate through money, you will have a very steep climb.
Reference
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18211175
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