An Economist Goes to a Bar And solves the mysteries of dating.

A friend of mine forwarded the link to this published article in Slate today by Ray Fisman, “An Economist Goes to a Bar And solves the mysteries of dating“:

“To really understand what people prefer, you need to pair men and women randomly in an experimental dating service and document the decisions they make. And so for a couple of years at a local bar just off the Columbia campus, I ran a speed-dating experiment with two psychologists, Sheena Iyengar and Itamar Simonson, and fellow economist Emir Kamenica. Some of our findings confirm well-worn clichés. But others surprised us.”

The most interesting results relevant to 8Asians readers were:

“Another clear gender divide, this one less expected, emerged in our findings on racial preferences, reported in a forthcoming article in the Review of Economic Studies. Women of all the races we studied revealed a strong preference for men of their own race: White women were more likely to choose white men; black women preferred black men; East Asian women preferred East Asian men; Hispanic women preferred Hispanic men. But men don’t seem to discriminate based on race when it comes to dating. A woman’s race had no effect on the men’s choices. Two wrinkles on this: We found no evidence of the stereotype of a white male preference for East Asian women. However, we also found that East Asian women did not discriminate against white men (only against black and Hispanic men). As a result, the white man-Asian woman pairing was the most common form of interracial dating—but because of the women’s neutrality, not the men’s pronounced preference. We also found that regional differences mattered. Daters of both sexes from south of the Mason-Dixon Line revealed much stronger same-race preferences than Northern daters.”

So according to all of those who complain about the imbalance of Caucasian men with Asian women, it’s all the Caucasian’s men fault, NOT Asian women….Hmmm. I wonder what kind of comments I will get with this posting 🙂 . If you click through to the Slate article, the study confirms the obvious that men put more emphasis on physical attractiveness than women, and that men like women who are as smart, but not smarter, than themselves. And women value intelligence and ambition in men.