silverfox
Don Juan
Yep - not opinions, prejudices or guesses but facts. As someone who has tried internet dating sites I found the following but not wholly surprising.
I was reading a great book called Freakonomics which mentioned a study of 30,000 subscribers (half in Boston, half in San Diego) on a popular dating site. The main gist was to see if all the people who put they were happy with a partner of any race were contacting people from a variety of races or just their own. For both men and women, over 90% who posted race was not important only contacted people of their own race.
However, in the course of doing this study the researchers came across a number of interesting statistics.
-Subscribers tend to be between 26 and 35.
-57% of subscribers were male.
-More than 4% claimed to earn over $200k.
-70% of women and 67% of men claimed above average looks.
-Both men and women typically reported being at least 1 inch taller than the national average.
-A man who doesn't post a photo gets 1/4 of the email of a man who does. The figure is 1/6 for a woman.
-Men looking for a long term relationship do well. Women looking for a fling do well.
-For men, a woman's looks are critical and the preferred types for dating are students, artists, musicians, celebrities, veterinarians but not secretaries or woman in law enforcement or the military.
-For women, a man's income is critical and the preferred types are financial executives, firemen, policemen, military personnel. Labourers, students and food service workers do not do so well.
-For men being short is a disadvantage so height is the thing most men lie about. Being overweight was not a big disadvantage.
-For women being overweight is a big disadvatage so weight is the thing most women lie about.
-For a man being ginger, curly haired, bald or balding was not good (shaven headed was ok.)
-For women being blonde was a huge advantage.
-57% of male subscribers and 23% of female subscribers did not even receive one email.
-On average subscribers claimed to be taller, skinnier, prettier, blonder and richer than national averages would suggest.
So what does this tell us? Nothing we probably didn't already suspect but it is interesting to see it stated in black and white. The original paper can be found at the link below for the scholarly among you.
http://www.aeaweb.org/annual_mtg_papers/2006/0106_0800_0502.pdf
I was reading a great book called Freakonomics which mentioned a study of 30,000 subscribers (half in Boston, half in San Diego) on a popular dating site. The main gist was to see if all the people who put they were happy with a partner of any race were contacting people from a variety of races or just their own. For both men and women, over 90% who posted race was not important only contacted people of their own race.
However, in the course of doing this study the researchers came across a number of interesting statistics.
-Subscribers tend to be between 26 and 35.
-57% of subscribers were male.
-More than 4% claimed to earn over $200k.
-70% of women and 67% of men claimed above average looks.
-Both men and women typically reported being at least 1 inch taller than the national average.
-A man who doesn't post a photo gets 1/4 of the email of a man who does. The figure is 1/6 for a woman.
-Men looking for a long term relationship do well. Women looking for a fling do well.
-For men, a woman's looks are critical and the preferred types for dating are students, artists, musicians, celebrities, veterinarians but not secretaries or woman in law enforcement or the military.
-For women, a man's income is critical and the preferred types are financial executives, firemen, policemen, military personnel. Labourers, students and food service workers do not do so well.
-For men being short is a disadvantage so height is the thing most men lie about. Being overweight was not a big disadvantage.
-For women being overweight is a big disadvatage so weight is the thing most women lie about.
-For a man being ginger, curly haired, bald or balding was not good (shaven headed was ok.)
-For women being blonde was a huge advantage.
-57% of male subscribers and 23% of female subscribers did not even receive one email.
-On average subscribers claimed to be taller, skinnier, prettier, blonder and richer than national averages would suggest.
So what does this tell us? Nothing we probably didn't already suspect but it is interesting to see it stated in black and white. The original paper can be found at the link below for the scholarly among you.
http://www.aeaweb.org/annual_mtg_papers/2006/0106_0800_0502.pdf
