
Why Beautiful Women Marry Less Attractive Men - pius
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20080410/sc_livescience/whybeautifulwomenmarrylessattractivemen;_ylt=Ai6I3iUl8T7NM4lI499n0h8DW7oF
======
osipov
Simple answer: money

it is interesting that article mentions height and money because while back i
read another study that figured out how much money a man should make to
compensate for a situation where the man is shorter than the woman. apparently
there was an almost a linear correlation, for every inch of extra height that
a woman has on a man, the man must have at least an extra 6 million of net
worth.

~~~
menloparkbum
Money isn't everything. Silicon Valley is filled with thousands of ugly rich
dudes who can't find a date.

~~~
ardit33
I'd say that SV is a sausage fest, but if these guys are rich, and mobile,
than what prevents them to move to a place where they would have much better
ods at finding good looking and smart women? If you have money, NYC is a
blast. Maybe they can work a pet project from there.

I'd say, if you have more than 3-4 millions on your bank account, you are
really well off, and the only thing that prevents from finding a woman, is
your character, or lack of trying.

Bad looks, can be fixed with some good fashion, exercise, and maybe some litle
surgery.

~~~
ken
True, but the cash is largely irrelevant. You could have 3-4 cents but if you
have character and willpower you can find someone.

In fact, I would hypothesize that the kind of women who care whether you have
$3-4 million are not the kind who care so much about character in the first
place.

------
lacker
This title is misleading. In fact the text of the article contradicts the
title:

"About a third of the couples had a more attractive wife, a third a more
attractive husband and the remaining partners showed matching looks."

Regardless, the article is stretching pretty far to make its conclusions. The
study just showed couples where the woman is more attractive than the man were
happier. That doesn't mean women should "marry down". It could just mean that
men care more about looks, and therefore an attractive woman contributed more
to the couple's happiness than an attractive man.

~~~
yters
If that were the case, then the happiness of the couple would be independent
of the attractiveness of the man, or at least have little correlation.

Anyways, it's probably because the match hits an equilibrium. Men are
statistically much more likely to commit adultery than women (22%:14%).

[http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id...](http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=226300)

A difference in attractiveness in the woman's favor means there is much less
incentive for the man to cheat, since a woman more attractive than his wife is
unlikely to try and seduce him. Consequently, it isn't worth the risk for the
man.

------
vitaminj
These kinds of studies are ridiculous.

First there's the element of subjectivity and discretion in the "trained
coders" that rate a person's attractiveness. On a single overall number scale
no less.

But more importantly, how do they even hope to attain any semblance of ceteris
paribus ("all things being equal") in this study? Of the millions of factors
that contribute to pair selection and how couples interact, the researchers
want to isolate disparities in attractiveness and test whether this is
significant. Short of cloning a whole bunch of people and pairing them up with
ugly and beautiful partners, AND THEN doing the tests, the sheer number of
conflating variables makes this kind of research worthless. I don't think even
the clones would make the results valid given the variables that aren't
genetic eg. upbringing, mood on the day, individual preference etc.

It comes accross as if they came up with the conclusion first, and then fit a
flimsy experiment to prove the point. The correlations are no doubt
statistically significant, but to imply that they mean anything without even
attempting to isolate any other conflicting factors is a joke.

Human interaction is a complex system. There's every possibility that
attractiveness does contribute to pair selection as the researchers assert,
but what is the proportion of that influence? What billion other factors
contribute? My guess is that you'll never be able to isolate just one factor
that accounts for the bulk of the influence.

This is not to say that social science experiments can't be done right, but
it's not easy. This kind of reductionist tripe only serves to muddy the really
good research out there.

------
attack
There is probably a strong inverse correlation between working hard for
success and attractiveness in men. That could be reversing the results.

Women don't prefer less attractive men, all else being equal.

~~~
pius
_There is probably a strong inverse correlation between working hard for
success and attractiveness in men._

Why?

~~~
attack
Instead of getting into a numbers match between all the influencing factors,
I'd rather just point out that there are many confounding factors and that the
authors of this seemed to miss that point entirely.

------
TammyK
"with the perfect 10 representing the ultimate babe."

Sounds real credible.

------
weezus
Women can fall in love with guys that aren't hot. Guys don't fall in love with
women who aren't hot to them. Love, yes; in love, no.

