33 Comments

I have no data to back this up, but we all know it's true: Men don't believe they are "different," but instead are continually reminded by the culture of their moral inferiority (superficiality) relative to women. Women do believe they are different in that they are less superficial. The "gold digger myth," if anything, is an attempt to balance moral accounts between the genders. As someone pointed out, wealth probably doesn't matter unless it is very low - 9.4% unemployment suggests that might be the case for quite a guys these days. For fun google "recession gender gap." Interesting reading.

Your income potential, as a female, does not matter, something else that we all know is true. I don't care about your one male friend who only dates women with Harvard MBA's, it means nothing, so you can save it. Your meandering post dances around the elephant in the room and smacks of desperation.

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Imprecise flippancy != dishonesty

And the rest of Mr. Hanson's description is pretty fair. Why bother criticizing tone when there's substance to talk about?

But yes, I'd be interested in some data on how people choose in circumstances where there's more opportunity for the "deeper" traits to be revealed. Anyone know where to find this?

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Typo in post name. Equally has 2 ls, not 3.

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It's necessary, and inevitable, that we have the full spectrum of shallow to deep matters in culture. However that is distributed among the sexes or across the Earth is of no consequence; discuissing which sex or population is more interested in deeper or shallower matters doesn't get you anywhere. We know the facts and we can do nothing about them.

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http://nobelprizes.com/nobe...(out of 777 total)

I think you have to be rather un-shallow to go into hard sciences; you really have to care about non-superficial things. Fashion is nothing but shallow and superficial and women seem to fall for that.

The genders equally shallow? Or do we have a clear winner in the most-shallow-gender contest?

Also interesting to note Nobel prizes per country/IQhttp://www.iqcomparisonsite...

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics."

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@Jay: the opening line is a smug, dismissive smack at women for which i can find no basis in the paper presented. (i do hope someone will thoroughly upbraid me if i am missing something.) women and men were asked to describe their own preferences, and then those preferences were measured. nowhere in this paper is there any indication that were women asked to give their expectations of what they thought men wanted (or vice versa), so there is no grounds for claiming that members of one sex "think they are different" from the other.

@Grant: i am not disputing that women (and men) thought looks were less important relative to earnings than turned out to be the case. that is clear from the data. Robin could have very reasonably said, "what women [and/or men] think they want is different from what they actually want." and if the stats show that women misjudge their own preferences by more than men do, then there is no problem saying so. but that is not the statement presented here. instead, he states that "women think they are different [presumably from men, because men are the norm/standard for everything, right?] but they are not," when the data that follow say nothing about that. women were not asked what they think men want, so there is no information here about whether they would attribute to men preferences that were similar to or different from their own.

even if one wants to argue that it's fair to say women think they're different because their stated preferences differed from men's, it still makes no sense to single out one sex. he could use the same logic and data to snipe that "men think they're different, but they're not." in which case, why not skip the sniping altogether and simply state that men and women both think they are different from each other (but they are not)?

[apologies to all for comment length.]

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curious,

I think its pretty clear that women thought they placed less emphasis on looks than they actually did. However, I agree with the others in that this result could partially be due to the speed-dating process.

I'm not familiar enough with statistics to say if men's claims were equally inaccurate (can anyone read the study and tell us?), but most studies I've seen indicate that women's claimed preferences and demonstrated preferences diverge more than men's.

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I suspect curious was implying that not only did Robin get it wrong, but that he wasn't even trying.

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Bill Gardner is right. How are the speed dating participants being informed of each others' earnings?

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"could you please attempt to represent the study in your post instead of spewing blather in the opening line?"

CuruousAny particular reason for the bad manners? Even if you disagree with the conclusions that Robin draws from the study (as do I), I don't understand the purpose of your rude interrogative attitude.

I have always thought that posting on someones blog is like an after dinner chat at their house. Courtesy matters.

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could you please attempt to represent the study in your post instead of spewing blather in the opening line? what, exactly, do you mean, "women think they are different but they are not"? the study didn't ask the participants to rate their preferences for looks and earnings relative to how they thought the opposite sex would rate the importance of those attributes; it simply asked them to rate their preferences, period. and both sexes grossly underestimated the importance of looks relative to earnings.

funny how no one has pointed out that in the real trials, men actually placed a slightly higher emphasis on potential partners' income than women did. but no one here seems to be keen to highlight a blow to the "gold digger" myth.

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I have to agree with Jay: in speed dating the most reliable data you have on your date is your observations of what he looks like.

On the other hand - you have no reliable means of judging what he earns.

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At jamie, there are a lot of visual hints that made that test easy. Unfortunately the photos didn't really allow you to judge based on the people's eyes. I'd be interested in seeing a controlled study to see if people could better guess the IQ of another person after seeing their eyes (in person).

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Datebit, take a look at this:

http://www.malevole.com/mv/...

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Datebit, take a look at this...

http://www.malevole.com/mv/...

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