In the early 1970s, Gary Becker was hitting stride, knocking out economic theories of crime, the allocation of time, discrimination, marriage, and children in rapid succession. His theory of marriage treated the marriage scene like any other economic market, cleared by a price. Men bid for women, and women bid for men. In a shallow view of his model, women sought handsome men, and men beautiful women, and beauty was not in the eye of the beholder. Becker’s main theorem — whose proof he credits to my esteemed colleague Buz Brock — found that the men and women efficiently sorted by their beauty when their beauties were complements.
I visited the Cowles Foundation at Yale for the winter of 2006, and taught a senior elective course. Seven fortunate students took my seminar in information economics. One impressive woman student — who organized the gay and lesbian social scene — asked whether the shallow view of Becker’s model was so unrealistic. Did babes match with hunks?
We brainstormed on data sources and settled on two new web sites: facebook.com and hotornot.com. Facebook allowed users to indicate with whom they were “in a relationship with”. Facebook was still new, and not yet open to all email addresses. So the student asked her friends at various campuses across America for their logins. And so began our stealth project. Hundreds of photos of matched men and women were downloaded, and then uploaded to HotOrNot, all on the sly. HotOrNot afforded us the average evaluation of about 200 women for every man, and 2000 men for every woman.
The result: Regressing straight men’s or women’s hotness on their partner’s hotness gave a highly significant fit, with a slope of about 0.7 — so that a man rising in hotness from 7 to 8 expects his partner to rise by 0.7 points. But sorting was far closer for gays and lesbians, with a slope for each of about 0.9. As Becker implied, beauty is income in this meat market, and the “richest” men match with the “richest” women.
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June 21, 2011 at 11:27 am
bob
That exact study has been done several times by different undergraduates all with pretty similar findings. However, it violates user conduct to post someone else’s picture on hot or not so most schools prevent these studies from being done.
June 21, 2011 at 12:36 pm
Lones
That’s what a blog’s for, I guess. Reports of clandestine research, behind enemy lines newscasting, and whatnot.
June 21, 2011 at 12:42 pm
Evan
were the differences between hetero- and homo-sexual matching statistically significant?
Do you have any (potential) explanations for the difference?
June 21, 2011 at 1:36 pm
Lones
To be honest, I do not recall testing this. Visually, it was clear that the scatter of homosexual matching looked far more assortative, but I have lost the data. The student — obviously tuned into this distinction — claimed that matching markets were far more organized for gays than straights. I personally wondered if straight matching entailed many other considerations — is he rich? daddy material? — that muddied the purely superficial looks angle.
June 21, 2011 at 2:31 pm
k
where is the love?
June 21, 2011 at 3:58 pm
Lones
Ask the Black Eyed Peas.
June 21, 2011 at 9:12 pm
jeff
I predict that after gay marriage is legalized these coefficients will come closer in line. without a contract the financial dimension plays less of a role.
June 22, 2011 at 9:24 am
Tim Cameron
Any links to this study?
June 22, 2011 at 12:38 pm
Lones
I wish a polished paper emerged, but the student — an undergraduate senior at Yale — was quite happy with the project done, and moved on. So now this lands in the realm of results to be replicated and refined.
June 22, 2011 at 3:38 pm
k
I made the comment as a self deprecating semi-joke, but honestly, (some) couples do love each other.
Perhaps “looks” are a biological trick played to get us to live with people we are going to be able to get along with. Love may be nothing more than a realization of this.
But just saying we are all sorting on looks appears unsettling, and I cannot buy it as a sole explanation of how people choose partners.
June 22, 2011 at 9:42 pm
Lones
If we are scientists, then we must be willing to learn from data, right? Perhaps you need a new model rather than random love strikes. Maybe we choose whom to fall for amongst the set of mates who are the hottest in our opportunity set?
June 23, 2011 at 10:22 am
k
My (very) vague notion is that subjective elements like “hotness” perhaps arises from some biological coding. To take an analogy, we don’t like chocolate because it’s sweet; “sweetness” is a trigger in the brain used to tell ourselves we need sugar, because it gives energy.
I agree with you, I don’t argue for random love strikes as a plausible model.
Thanks for replying though, I’ll think about it.
June 28, 2011 at 5:50 am
TomGrey
I think marriage & age are significant “love” issues, where teen (thru 25?) “hotness” for dating and hookups is more dominant.
And I’d claim that for young gays, short term (5 min orgasm?) sex is far more important than long term relationships, so most gays want the hottest partner they can get; about what they are themselves. So gays dress better, work out more, take better care of their physical body to be more attractive to the potential hookups they want.
I’d guess the hot or not correlation is much much less after 30; also for married folk. Perhaps as much as a 50% reduction (0.35 increase in partner hotness for married men 7s as compared to married men 8s).
(I don’t believe there will even be 20% gays getting married if it was legal; not sure what percentage of women between 20-45 are who are or have been married; guess about 80%; for whites)
July 5, 2011 at 7:50 pm
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December 13, 2011 at 6:13 pm
Dasia
I’m imprseesd. You’ve really raised the bar with that.
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