Ray Fisman of Columbia Business School completed a two year study using speed dating to examine the pursuit of love and how we choose who we date. In the NY Times article by Maureen Dowd, Fisman says the results surprised him. In Slate last week Fisman recapped the experiment saying that the stereotypes are true. He tells how men put more weight on their assessment of a partner's beauty and that women got more dates when they won high marks for looks.
"We males are a gender of fragile egos in search of a pretty face and are threatened by brains or success that exceeds our own." Fisman goes on to say "When women were the ones choosing, the more intelligence and ambition the men had, the better."
Fisman's study shows that men do like smart , ambitious women, as long as they weren't smarter or more ambitious than themselves.
Is this news to anyone?
while somewhat predictable, the results of this study are also interesting. a further study could be to test LGBT dating practices and determine what happens when women are looking for women, and men for men...can anybody venture a guess?
Posted by: kbosch | November 14, 2007 at 06:32 PM