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Beautiful people seek beautiful dates15 February, 2008 Birds of the same feather flock together. This is true of romance, too. A new study has endorsed the idea that people with similar levels of physical attractiveness tend to date each other and that more attractive people seem to be very particular about the physical attractiveness of their suitors. Researchers also found that people, as a rule, prefer to date those who are moderately more attractive than they themselves are. Leonard Lee, professor of marketing at Columbia University, the United States, and colleagues George Loewenstein (Carnegie Mellon University), Dan Ariely (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and James Hong and Jim Young (HOTorNOT.com) analyzed two sets of data from an online dating website called HOTorNOT.com. While one set of data contained members’ dating requests, the other set contained the ‘attractiveness ratings’ of other members. The website HOTorNOT.com allows members to rate others on their level of physical attractiveness. Both the data sets also contained ratings of members’ own attractiveness as rated by other members. Compared to females, the analysis of the data revealed, males were more influenced by how physically attractive their potential dates were – but less affected by how attractive they themselves were – when deciding whom to date. Irrespective of how attractive people themselves were, they apparently judge attractiveness of others in similar ways. That is, the new findings support the concept that people generally have “universal, culturally independent standards of beauty like symmetric faces,” according to the study to be published an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. In short, a person’s own attractiveness does not affect his/her judgment of attractiveness of others. The researchers also observed that while more attractive people placed more importance on physical attractiveness in selecting their dates, less attractive people placed more weight on other qualities like sense of humor.
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