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About this paper
Elizabeth E. Bruch, M. E. J. Newman
Bruch and Newman use first messages and replies to reconstruct a dating-market hierarchy, ranking users by attention from sought-after people. Men’s and women’s messages reach 26% and 23% further up the normalized ranking, respectively, while reply rates decline with upward gaps; messages to more desirable women never exceed 21%. The four-city heterosexual online sample limits generalization beyond this setting.
Key insights
- Mate pursuit represents a hybrid strategy, blending awareness of one's relative desirability (matching) with consistent aspirational pursuit of more desirable partners (competition).
- The concept of dating 'leagues' operates as a continuous hierarchy, where 'reaching up' is prevalent and possible, though success rates significantly decline with increasing desirability gaps.
- Strategic messaging, such as longer messages or varying emotional content to more desirable partners, often yields only modest or even negative returns in terms of reply rates, indicating potential inefficiencies in courtship behaviors.
Summary by alphaXiv.
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