All the uncomfortable truths about the dating scene
Uncomfortable (not really) truth #1:
This is one of the few times I will bring up the evolutionary perspective during the discussion of relationships, because it personally makes me feel very uncomfortable to think that men are after the big booties and women are gold diggers (these are exaggerations). However, it can explain some of the unconscious attraction we experience despite them being easily overridden by culture and experiences.
The bad news is that physical attractiveness is the #1 predictor of whether you get asked out. It makes sense though, because appearance is the only thing you can judge about a stranger when you don't know anything else about them. The good news is that there is considerable variability in what individuals find attractive and how cultures define beauty.
However, it is true that across cultures, averageness and symmetry (bilateralness) are two characteristics of faces deemed as most attractive. It is hypothesized that they are indicators of good health and reproductive fitness in our ancestral past.
Now comes the most uncomfortable part of it all. Females and males have different mate preferences due to differential parental investment in offspring. Females invest significant time and biological costs via 9-month pregnancies and the strenuous childbirth process. As a result, they are more selective and prefer higher social status, wealth, intelligence, skills/abilities, and ambition because they translate to more resources to help raise offspring. On the other hand, males only need to invest a little... technically, they could be making babies every day, and this is a highly conservative estimate. Thus, they prefer short-term mating, more sexual partners, and younger and more attractive partners that usually have higher reproductive success.
Uncomfortable (sometimes) truth #2:
Some of us lie when we create dating app profiles! Self-presentation refers to presenting ourselves in a way that we would like others to believe we are. Face specifically refers to the public image of ourselves that we want others to believe. This is why we engage in impression management, which are attempts to control how other people will view us. Especially with advanced technology (Photoshop), it's easy to distort who we are as individuals in order to secure first dates.
It might help to know that we usually have accurate portrayals of our personality and non-physical attributes such as occupation and hobbies but inaccurate portrayals of physical attributes including weight, height, appearance, etc.
Blogger's Words of Caution
It's easy to fall into the natural fallacy when thinking about attraction. However, we are far from the homo sapiens we have evolved from and are no longer solely concerned about reproduction and passing on our genes. There are now, in my humble opinion, much more factors in play than simply how hot someone is in deciding if they're the right person for you.
Blogger's Friends Say...
Most of them have not used dating apps before, so they are not able to weight in on the matter of self-presentation.
Chapters covered:
- Chapter 3 (self-presentation)
- Chapter 9 (evolutionary theory of attraction)