Preferences in the Early Stages of Mate Choice.

MATE selection; ONLINE dating; ROMANTIC love; HOMOGAMY; INTERPERSONAL attraction; SOCIOECONOMIC factors

Romantic partnership is often considered an optimal barometer of intergroup relations. To date, however, it has been challenging to distinguish the characteristics people prefer in a partner from the types of partners that are locally available. Online dating presents a new opportunity to address this puzzle. In this paper, I use behavioral data from a popular online dating site to answer three questions regarding preferences in the early stages of mate choice: First, to what extent do people prefer similarity versus status in a partner—and do these preferences vary by gender? Second, what is the relative importance of different types of preferences—and to what extent are apparent preferences for one characteristic merely a “by-product” of preferences for another characteristic with which the first is correlated? Third, do preferences vary at different moments of selection—and if so, how? These analyses not only provide a nuanced portrait of how interpersonal dynamics shape broader social structures—here, a network of romantic ties—but they recommend a future approach to mate choice that prioritizes processes over outcomes and more deeply engages the literature on gender, social networks, and symbolic boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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