Who's the fairest of them all: people strive for higher things in online dating

The majority are looking for people who are "out of their league", as US researchers put it in the journal Science Advances call. According to the study, when looking for a partner online, men and women write to people who are on average 25 percent more attractive than themselves.

For a long time now, couples have not only met at work or through friends, but also to a large extent via the internet. In Germany, for example, one in six internet users aged 14 and over has tried to find a partner via online dating portals or corresponding apps, as summarized in a survey by the Sigmund Freud Private University in Vienna. The popularity of this type of dating is independent of education or income.

For the new study, sociologist Elizabeth Bruch and computer scientist Mark Newman from the University of Michigan investigated which strategies heterosexual people use when dating online. To do this, they rated the attractiveness of users of an online network from New York, Boston, Chicago and Seattle according to a specific evaluation mechanism.

Who gets attention?

This was based on the number of messages a person received in response to an ad and the attractiveness of the people who sent them messages. "If you are contacted by someone who is attractive, then you are probably more attractive yourself," the authors explain.

The result was a hierarchy of user attractiveness. "Instead of relying on estimates to find out what people find attractive, this approach allows us to measure attractiveness according to who gets the most attention from whom," explains Newman in a press release. This approach is the first of its kind, the authors emphasize - an assessment shared by psychologist Christiane Eichenberg from the Sigmund Freud Private University in Vienna. She calls the approach "interesting".

The insult of potential rejection online is less drastic than it would be in a face-to-face situation.

For Eichenberg, the choice of a more attractive partner in online dating is linked to the advantages of the internet: "It seems that those looking are less shy, as the insult of potential rejection is less drastic online than it would be in a face-to-face situation." In the worst-case scenario, you simply don't get a response online. According to Eichenberg, online dating gives people the feeling that they can constantly initiate new contacts: "So why shouldn't they try the 'best', especially when the costs are so low, for example in terms of the potential for offense?"

Perseverance pays off

According to the study, since people looking for a relationship online write many and longer messages to people "out of their league", the messages often go unanswered. "This is a common complaint among users of online dating sites," says sociologist Bruch. "But although the response rate is low, our analysis shows that 21 percent of people who engage in this kind of ambitious behavior receive a reply from someone more attractive. So persistence pays off."

Christiane Eichenberg adds another aspect: success with a partner who is more attractive would mean an enhancement of one's own self. Much more important, however, is the question of whether such partnerships come about at all and how sustainable they are. The study by the University of Michigan only found that longer messages - with the exception of users in Seattle - were not rewarded with a response more often. The further course of the pairing was not tracked.

The US scientists also compared the attractiveness hierarchy with the attributes of the users. One result, for example, was that older men up to the age of 50 had higher attractiveness values than younger men. For women, on the other hand, this value decreased continuously between the ages of 18 and 60. Nevertheless, the results of their study do not just confirm common clichés, according to the authors. "There is a great deal of heterogeneity when it comes to the question of who is attractive to whom," emphasizes Bruch. "Our values reflect general attractiveness scales based on users' preferences."

Getting to know each other from the inside out

However, there may well be niches in which these rankings do not apply and in which people who are not high up on such a scale still have a "great and fulfilling dating life", according to Bruch. In addition, the attractiveness level calculated in the study was only significant in the first phase of dating. Other studies have shown that unique character traits become increasingly important as the process progresses.

Psychologist Eichenberg also emphasizes this: In online dating, getting to know each other takes place "from the inside out" - if the first photo is a good match, outward appearances are put aside for the time being and a lot is communicated: "But these outward appearances come into play again at the latest at the first meeting and then the question is whether the relationship built up online has already reached such an intensity by then that visual attractiveness is no longer so important."

In addition, perceptions of partnerships are heavily dependent on culture. For example, it would be necessary to check whether Bruch and Newman's findings could be transferred to other countries or to people living in rural areas, and whether these might be different in different age groups. (SDA DPA)