Do Looks Matter in Dating?

In some ways a fair amount; in others less than you might think

Key takeaways

• In dating experiments, 'objectively rated' looks correlate moderately with popularity

• In initial selection contexts, both genders are influenced by looks to a similar extent, with at best weak tendencies to take their own desirability into account

• Nonetheless, couples end up being moderately ‘looksmatched’. This effect may be stronger for those who began dating without prior connection

• Looks’ association with dating experience and relationship status seem a bit weaker

• Looks don’t seem to be meaningfully linked to relationship quality, and people have especially positive perceptions of their partner’s looks

• More ‘looksmatched’ couples might have somewhat more stable relationships

‘Just be yourself’

Humans are visual creatures—people are attracted to attractive people. Most of us recognize this, even if at times this instinct is downplayed due to ‘judging a book by its cover’ carrying with it connotations of ‘superficiality’. Those of the ‘black pill’ persuasion contend that men in particular are gaslit into believing that women don’t care about looks, and that they just need to ‘just be themselves’. They not only reject this notion but invert it, claiming that it’s women who are excessively ‘shallow’. The concept of hypergamy is extended so that in an open dating market, men are forced to systematically date down in looks.

Evolutionary psychologists, on the other hand, have theorized that men place a higher premium on beauty and youthfulness because they signal reproductive potential, while women prioritize the ability to acquire resources to enhance the offspring's chances of survival. This perspective also aligns with conventional wisdom, and is sometimes explained through other lenses, such as the patriarchy ‘objectifying’ women. Support for these predictions has primarily come from responses to questionnaires about desired partner characteristics, such as in the classic cross-cultural study by David Buss (1989). In Alan Feingold’s meta-analysis (1990), a medium effect size (d = .54) was found for the gender difference in the importance placed on physical attractiveness (hereinafter ‘PA’, which in most studies is equivalent to facial attractiveness—the primary component of PA for both men and women) across mostly American college student samples. Thirty years following Buss’ study, the same pattern of sex-differentiated preferences was replicated in another large cross-cultural study (Walter et al., 2020). Gender egalitarianism and pathogen levels weren’t robust moderators of preferences, providing support for neither sociocultural nor evolutionary predictions. Women also placed slightly higher value on intelligence, kindness, and health than did men, but both men and women placed higher value on these traits than they did on PA. To what extent PA predicts men and women’s actual choices when faced with real people—and other important questions—will attempt to be answered here.

What dating experiments reveal

Walster et al. (1966) set the stage for a new research paradigm by arranging dates between people at random through a precursor to online dating called ‘computer dating’. Students were rated by judges on PA as they passed by on their way to the dance, which lasted from 8 to 10:30 pm. The dance partners also rated each other’s PA.

The judges’ ratings of women correlated .44 with their partner’s liking, .39 with their desire to continue dating, and .17 with actually asking them out. For men, PA correlated .36 with partner’s liking and .31 with their desire to date. The partner’s ratings of women’s PA correlated .78 with their liking, and for men .69. Other measures such as of intelligence didn’t seem to excite people in the same way.

There are a couple of ways to interpret the fact that the partner ratings were more predictive of date evaluations than were ratings from external judges. The authors suggested it may be a result of external judges only having a few seconds to view the subjects, but this is a consistent disparity.

One potential confounder is that the halo effect goes both ways; the quality of an interaction influences perceptions of PA (Albada et al. 2002; Hall & Compton, 2017). Since external judges typically aren’t interacting with the participants before rating them, their ratings are more objective.

It has become increasingly common to dismiss personal taste as a fanciful concept, but some researchers have quite convincingly argued that it may play a meaningful role in perceptions after all, perhaps most notably Hönekopp (2006). Essentially, while if you have two groups of 100 people rate a face, the mean rating will indeed be similar, but among people within these groups, about half of the stable variance in judgments of faces is attributable to consensus between judges, and half to individual perceptions. The personal taste of the subjects won’t be captured however if external observers are doing the ratings.

Personal taste could be seen as representing meaningful variance if we’re interested in knowing how PA influences the decisions of perceivers rather than just how it influences the outcomes of the perceived in general. However, due to the potential confounding effect of interaction quality and the reduced generalizability brought about by the influence of personal taste, it’s probably wise to utilize ‘objective’ (or ‘intersubjective’) ratings for this and subsequent analyses.

In the 2000s, this line of research was revived as researchers began to take interest in speed dating events as a new experimental paradigm. In a speed dating session, participants are rotated round-robin style after engaging in a brief interaction with one another and deciding whether they’d like to see their date again if the feeling is mutual.

With some assistance from the supplementary material provided by Eastwick et al. (2014), I’ve conducted a meta-analysis on post-date evaluations and their correlations with objectively rated PA. A correlation for men here indicates how men’s PA predicted receiving a yes from partners. A high degree of heterogeneity across studies indicates that it’s probably best to be conservative and go with random-effects models. The random-effects summary effect estimates: .35 for men, and .44 for women—relatively strong by social psychology standards. The difference isn’t statistically significant for these models.

Meta-analyses of objectively rated physical attractiveness and dating outcomes (Figure 1: Males; Figure 2: Females)

Women tend to practice a higher degree of selectivity in speed dating events. For instance, in one large study, men were yessed 34% of the time while women were yessed 49% of the time (Kurzban & Weeden, 2005). This however doesn’t seem to be the result of women’s attention being more highly concentrated among the most attractive members of the opposite sex than men’s.

If we see a strong effect of PA for these date outcomes, you can be sure that there is one for online dating. In case you were somehow unaware of this, I point you to ‘Chadfish experiment reveals SHOCKING black pill reality’ video #92834 which was uploaded just five seconds ago. What may surprise a lot of people is that PA doesn’t actually predict men’s outcomes more strongly (Lee et al., 2008; Rudder, 2009; Hitsch et al., 2010; Kreager et al., 2014; Egebark et al., 2021), and when there is a significant difference, it’s in the ‘expected direction’. Egebark et al. summarizes their findings:

Two key results about profile preferences emerge from our analysis. Our first result is that the effect of attractiveness on the likelihood to respond is significantly positive, quantitatively large, identical for men and women, and insensitive to the attractiveness of online daters themselves.

Basically—similar to the graph seen above—while women receive many more initial messages overall, the gradient for PA is about the same for messages received and replied to. Of course, this may be especially counter-intuitive in the case of dating apps, owing to the swiping dynamics whereby a lot of men blindly mass swipe right and then (if they get any matches) check to see if any are women and if so whether they have that ‘gravitational pull’. At least after controlling for this, we might see a similar effect.

Do people go for their ‘looksmatch’?

The ‘matching hypothesis’ is a key concept in social psychology. This states that people not only end up with people of comparable social desirability to themselves, but actively seek them out so as to balance their aspirations with a realistic assessment of their chances.

The data that has been presented thus far should provide a hint as to the validity of this notion. If people only went for people on their level, there wouldn’t be any correlation between PA and outcomes in dating experiments; ugly people would be chosen with the same frequency as pretty people. Still, it’s possible that there is still hope for some effect of similarity. For example, if the disparity between one’s own self-perceived PA and that of a more attractive prospective partner is wide enough, at least sometimes it might accepted that they are too far out of their league.

This was not the case in the Walster et al. study, in which there was a −.03 correlation between the liking of partners, and −.07 between their wanting to date again. Berscheid et al. (1971) suggested that this may be because dates were arranged for them, bypassing the initial stage in which people choose who to ask out. Maybe in this condition people temper their aspirations. They tested this by replicating the Walster et al. experiment while assigning some subjects to a low and some to a high probability of rejection condition. They also conducting a separate one which had subjects choose from six pre-rated photos who they would like to date. Surprisingly, evidence for matching was detected in both experiments and whether or not a date was guaranteed.

No effect was detected in the Luo & Zhang (2009) speed dating study, however. A small effect was found in the larger Asendorpf et al. (2011) speed dating study (β = 0.044, p < .03). They put a − before the 0, but it was probably a mistake, as they said it was a positive effect. People’s PA also tends to correlate quite weakly with their selectivity in speed-dates: at .17 for men and .12 for women in Asendorpf et al., and .14 for men and .29 for women in Humbad (2012).

In the Hitsch et al. online dating study, the relationship between PA and contact behaviour was monotonic for both men and women, with similar effects observed across the board. There was a surprisingly high chance of people responding even to those in the bottom decile—not only from similarly ugly people but also from those in the top 20%; the top 20% of men and women responded to first-contact emails from the bottom a bit over 20% of the time.

Probability of sending and responding to a first-contact email by the attractiveness of the sender and receiver (Hitsch et al., 2010).

Kreager et al.¹ showed similar results—men and women , though as the below tables show, peoples’ aspirations were to a degree tempered by their own desirability. As people move down the desirability ladder, a smaller percentage of their messages are directed to the top 20%. They also found that people became more matched in desirability the more messages were exchanged (especially the first), but this should probably expected simply from more desirable people having higher standards.

Proportion of messages sent to each desirability quintile by the desirability of the senders (Kreager et al., 2014).

The OkCupid dataset shows a relatively uniform pattern of more attractive senders having more success and more attractive recipients responding to less messages (though even if they responded to the same absolute number I guess they’d have a lower response rate due to receiving more messages). Intriguingly, there appears to not be a greater advantage for the two most attractive groups when messaging the least attractive people—in the case of female recipients they even have less success than ‘mids’. In Lee et al., people who were too much more attractive than someone also didn't have an advantage over people who were moderately more attractive, and at the end of the graph it began to become a disadvantage. Perhaps they’re intimidated by them—though this didn't seem to be the case for initial messages in the previous studies, or suspect that they are catfish.

OkCupid messages responded to by the attractiveness of the sender and recipient (Rudder, 2009).

Shaw Taylor et al. (2011) found mixed evidence for the matching hypothesis across four online studies. The study which strictly used PA as the measure of desirability found no evidence for a similarity effect in people’s messaging behaviour, only in replies, so that people were more likely to receive responses the closer in PA they were (this wasn’t moderated by the PA or gender of the initiators). Another study which used a more broad ‘popularity’ measure (which correlated higher with PA for women) found evidence also in the case of initial messages. Bruch & Newman (2018) similarly found that people were at least partially realistic, on average messaging people about 25% more desirable than themselves.

While we may be able to squeeze out a small similarity effect, it looks like peoples’ ‘horizontal’ preferences are clearly subordinate to their ‘vertical’ preferences. It’s possible that in these speed dating and online dating environments, people felt more comfortable shooting above their league as it’s much lower effort, the sting of rejection is less acute, and the reputational risk is minimized. In a ‘live-action setting’, men may be more careful to pick their targets wisely: Van Straaten et al. (2009) found that men displayed more ‘approach behaviour’ towards female confederates of similar PA, while the same wasn’t observed in women; Hoplock et al. (2019) likewise found that attractive men engaged in ‘mate poaching behaviour’ when a female confederate is accompanied by a less attractive partner, but not a ‘looksmatched’ one.

The fact that people’s self-perceived PA is only weakly tethered to how others see them (Feingold, 1988) and most people consider themselves to be above average (Greitemeyer, 2020) might seem to preclude this from being a significant factor in the courtship process, but I guess people may learn from social feedback without letting it affect their self-perceptions much. It seems like it would have to since contrary to popular belief, objectively rated PA doesn’t seem to be related to self-esteem (Feingold, 1992). They might just begin to see attractive people as too picky in general, or it may even be a mostly unconscious process. People’s personality will also play a role independent of their desirability; people higher in attachment anxiety or fear of being single are less selective despite these traits being unassociated with PA in the same studies (McClure et al., 2010; Spielmann et al. 2020).

Are couples ‘looksmatched’?

Even if people may not actually ‘prefer’ a ‘looksmatched’ partner, there is not an infinite supply of ‘Chads’ and ‘Stacies’, so most people will have to settle with what they can, even if this process ends up being less efficient than it could be. It seems like general intuition is that couples tend to be around the same looks level and that there might be something up when there’s a noticeable gap. In ‘Revenge of the Nerds’ for instance, one of the nerds pretends to be the sorority girl’s jock boyfriend while disguised as Darth Vader to fool her into having sex. I think it’s fair to say that a large part of why we expect sorority girls to go out with a fratenity jock rather than the archetypal ‘nerd’ is that there is typically a noticeable PA disparity in the latter case.

So to what degree are actual pairs matched in PA? In a meta-analysis conducted by Feingold (1988) emerged a correlation of .39 for objectively rated PA across 1,299 dyads (.26 for self-rated PA across 741). For reference, this is comparable to the effect size for intelligence (Horwitz et al., 2023). Correcting for attenuation—the diminishment of effect sizes owing to imperfect rating reliability—drove this up to .49. After doing a quick meta-analysis of some more recent studies, the resulting correlation was just slightly lower (data not shown).

Ellis & Kenney (1999) came up with a pairing game whereby random numbers were placed on each participant’s foreheads. They were then tasked with pairing up with the highest number they could find, and they would matched after mutual agreement and a handshake. The resulting matches’ numbers correlated at .7, and people’s estimates of their own numbers correlated with their actual numbers at .65. Those assigned a low number often realized this and adjusted their selectivity and solicitation strategy accordingly.

While the size of the real assortative mating correlation falls short of that yielded by the pairing game, as mentioned earlier, personal taste may be a crucial element in attraction, and this element is missing in an experiment which operates on a purely objective metric. Eastwick & Hunt (2014) employed the social relations model—which incorporates target (how someone tends to be perceived), perceiver (how someone tends to perceive targets), and relationship effects (how someone perceivers targets while holding the prior two effects constant)—to compare target and relationship variances in romantic evaluations and how they shift with longer acquaintance. In study 2, after two weeks of being classmates, 22.3% of the variance in romantic evaluations of opposite-sex classmates’ vitality/attractiveness was attributable to target effects, and 20.2% to relationship effects. By 14 weeks, the target variance had dropped to 17.6%, and the relationship variance had risen to 27.9%. In study 3, among long-term acquaintances, the relationship variance dwarfed the target variance.

(Eastwick & Hunt, 2014).

Eastwick & Buck (2014) redesigned the pairing game to account for this relationship variance, as the original experiment assumes perfect consensus on people’s desirability. When they replicated the original experiment, an extremely high correlation of .86 emerged. In their modified version—which awarded additional points to people depending on the partner’s suit the card they were given—the correlation was reduced to .55, which is closer to the value observed in the real world. Participants were also somewhat more accurate in self-assessments and high-value participants paired up faster in the original game.

Is there someone for everyone?

It has been established that looks are indeed a desirable trait in prospective partners, but does this necessarily imply that more attractive people have greater dating and relationship experience, or that looks are a key determinant of singleness? One could imagine a scenario wherein everyone passes the looks bar of at least somebody out there and can therefore looks isn’t a big barrier to entering a relationship even if it means adjusting their own expectations. As most people seem to aim for people more attractive than themselves however, they would presumably compete for the most attractive people in the dating pool until they were taken out of it, typically by someone of similar attractiveness, and so on down the line. This would end up leaving the people not in relationships increasingly scraping the bottom of the barrel.

When it comes to the black pill hypothesis, there are a couple of possible directions it could take. On the one hand, black pillers will often talk about how monogamous relationships are for ‘betas’, and ‘Chad’ refuses to commit to one woman as he is having too much fun effortlessly feasting from his all you can eat pussy smorgasbord. It wouldn’t necessarily follow that men in relationships will be below average in looks, however. It might be that men at the bottom of the barrel will still be barred from romance, and men around the middle or somewhat above have the highest chance of being in relationships. A common sentiment even outside of black pill philosophy is that men will ‘take what they can get’, but it could be that people are conflating who men might hypothetically sleep with with who they'd seriously date, and that men and women have similar standards when it comes to committed relationships—at least for looks. A potential corollary of this view is that partnered women may even be less attractive on average since unattractive women will still receive plentiful offers from men more attractive than themselves while even a lot of ‘mid’ women will be holding out for ‘Chad’. Regardless, one clear prediction of the black pill is that men in relationships will be more attractive than their partners (at least in terms of standardized within-gender PA), meaning either a stronger positive effect of PA for men or negative effect for women, as female looks-hypergamy is a core tenet of the ideology. There is only one way to find out: examine more data.

Actual dating outcomes

In a meta-analysis (Feingold, 1992), PA was found to significantly correlate with popularity with the opposite sex as measured by dating experience (e.g., dating frequency, number of romantic partners) at .27 for men and .35 for women, and this difference was statistically significant. It also correlated with freedom from heterosexual anxiety (i.e., dissatisfaction with one’s love life, awkwardness when meeting the opposite sex) at .22, with no sex difference.

In Diener et al. (1995), in one sample (N = 155) PA correlated with number of dates in the past 3 months at .18 for people’s natural photos and .21 for adorned-smiling photos, with nonsignificant correlations of .11-.13 for adorned-neutral photos, unadorned-neutral photos, and unadorned-smiling photos. Another sample (N = 131) found .15 correlations between number of dates and the rated PA of people’s natural head and shoulders and natural full-length photos, but nonsignificant .04-.07 correlations for video interviews and unadorned photos.

Harper (2000) found no effect of PA measured at 7 or 11 on the probability of males (N = 3,117) or females (N = 2,918) being married or living as married at 33, with the exception of a weak and marginally significant positive effect for ratings at both ages combined for attractive females (4% more likely to be married) and marginally significant negative effect for unattractive males (9% less likely to).

In Leck et al. (2006), photo-rated PA correlated at .09 with lifetime dating frequency for men (N = 81), and .26 for women (N = 94). Video-rated PA correlated at .39 and .26. For satisfaction with dating frequency, photo- and video-rated PA correlated at .23 and .21, and for women .49 and .37.

In Weeden et al. (2007), PA didn’t significantly correlate with relationship status among 456 undergrads (47.8% male). Self-rated PA did weakly at .15.

Poulsen et al. (2013) followed 138 young male and 104 young female Mormons. They responded to weekly text messages over a 32 week span in which they were asked to indicate any relationship updates in the past week. For men, Facebook photo-rated PA correlated with dateless weeks at −.24, having formed a relationship at .23, while first dates (r = 0) and 2nd or more dates with the same person (r = .12) didn’t significantly correlate. For women, PA correlated with dateless weeks at −.37, first dates at .22, number of 2nd or more dates with the same person at .36, and having formed a relationship at .29. As the below table shows, there was a gender interaction effect in the cases of number of first dates and number of 2nd or more dates with the same person.

Poulsen et al. (2013).

Utilizing the raw data of 165 male undergrads provided by Kordsmeyer et al. (2018), I managed to squeeze out a small just-significant effect of video-rated sexual attractiveness on being in a relationship, but only after adding sociosexual attitude, sociosexual desire, and age to the regression model. This didn't work for photo-rated facial attractiveness, however. I’ll add that these ratings were conducted by different groups.

Logistic regressions on being in a relationship (Kordsmeyer et al., 2018).

In Allen et al. (2020), 165 adolescents (43% male) were followed from ages 13 to 30. PA rated from videos when participants were 13 had a small effect (r = .16) on the number of boy or girlfriends had at age 17, but PA rated at 17 didn’t. Physical romantic involvement—operationalized as the number of romantic partners with which participants reported having made out—correlated at .34 and .29 at each respective age. These effects weren’t moderated by gender.

In the supplementary material provided by Spielmann et al. (2020), objectively rated PA correlated with either casually or seriously dating nonsignificantly at .16 for men (N = 47) and significantly at .24 for women (N = 75). The correlations for self-rated PA were .27 (still not quite significant) and .35, respectively.

Survey analyses

I have also conducted my own analyses on a few surveys, the first of which is the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. 4,306 men’s and 4,597 women’s 1957 senior yearbook photos were rated. Among both genders, more attractive people were more likely to be married at around age 25, with a small but highly significant Cohen’s d of .15 for men and .24 for women. This difference wasn’t statistically significant. There was also a slight quadratic effect for both whereby slightly above average people were more likely to be married than highly attractive people (have a harder time finding people up to their standards perhaps?), and there was a very small and just-significant correlation of r = −.05 between PA and year of marriage for men, meaning that more attractive men got married earlier on average.

In 1975, when participants would’ve been around 35, this time the gap between married and unmarried was a bit larger for men (d = .28) than women (d = .11). The difference was significant at p <0.05, but it probably wouldn’t be robust to controls, and I’d guess it’s a false positive given the overall pattern of results so far.

There was now a significant correlation of −.06 for men and −.08 for women between PA and year of first marriage, and PA and number of marriages correlated at .04 for men and .03 for women.

By this time only 6.6% of men and 5.5% of women had never yet married. This cohort was significantly less attractive than those who had married before, with a Cohen’s d of −.35 for men and −.43 for women (difference ns).

When participants would’ve been around 53, there was a Cohen’s d of .12 for men and .05 for women for PA between those currently married vs. not. There was no longer a significant correlation between PA and number of marriages for men (r = −.01), but there was for women (r = .05). More attractive women were more likely to have had their first marriage end, but there was no effect for men. Make of this what you will.

There exists a study by McClintock (2011) which revealed an impressive 2.5 odds ratio for very attractive men and women for having had relationship experience, but it also showed that between 95-99% of men and women had depending on their PA. Because they were 18-26 when this question was asked in Wave III, this seems highly implausible. For me, I found that 37% of men and 44% of women had been in a committed relationship. While I only have access to the restricted sample which is about half the size of the full sample, I found no effect at all of PA on the chances of having been in a relationship for unattractive (I combined very unattractive and unattractive since so few were rated as unattractive—perhaps because they were rated by someone who interviewed them face to face), attractive, or very attractive men (N = 2,243) or women (N = 2,622). Therefore I’m assuming some kind of mistake must have been made in the study.

Logistic regression on having lived with someone in a marriage-like relationship for one month or more (controls: education, race, age). Add Health WIII (2001-2002).

Finally, we have the General Social Survey. Like the Add Health, it had a single interviewer rate the participants on a 1-5 scale, so it’s admittedly not the most reliable data. Nevertheless, data is data. PA was rated in the 2016, 2018, and 2022 surveys. Among 18-34 men (N = 730) and women (N = 887), once again no significant effect of PA was found on being in a romantic relationship of any kind. It doesn’t mean there isn’t one, and unattractive people were slightly less likely to be in relationships, but it does indicate that there probably isn’t a much larger effect now than there was 60 years ago.

Logistic regression on being in a relationship (controls: education, race, age). GSS (2016-22).

The scientific white pill

We’ve established that PA matters a fair amount in partner selection and relationship formation, but does its effect persist beyond this? It has been argued that relationship satisfaction serves as an indicator of how well people’s preferences are being met. When it is low, people may seek more desirable partners. The manosphere is of course always telling men that they should be in constant fear of their partners ‘trading up’ for a higher value male, and the black pill view of relationships are—as with anything—they suck unless you’re ‘Chad’. Since women are only ever attracted to a small sliver of the male population, most men have to slave away tirelessly just to maintain joyless relationships in which they receive mandatory begrudging sex once a month in between her having a passionate affair with ‘Tyrone’. Under this view, relationship satisfaction of the man and woman might be expected to be driven primarily by the PA of the man. Only ‘Chad’ will be expected to have a satisfying relationship and sex life with a committed and enthusiastic partner. On the other hand, ‘Chad’ may feel less commitment for his partner as he may feel like he is wasting his ‘slaying’ potential and be more unfaithful due to his greater options. Still, I think the black pill would predict an overall positive effect. If the conventional wisdom that looks matter more to men holds true, we might expect the effect of women’s PA to be stronger.

Here is how people’s reported relationship satisfaction, love for their partner, etc. correlated with their partner’s PA as rated by objective observers. In not a single study except the one with the smallest sample size do we see a correlation of .15 or above, and the summary effect sizes area pitiful .04 and .05. Apparently even uggos can learn to love each other.

Meta-analyses of objectively rated physical attractiveness of partners and own relationship satisfaction (Figure 1: Males; Figure 2: Females)

Own PA fails to predict relationship satisfaction any better—e.g., in Allen et al., own PA rated at 13 correlated with romantic life satisfaction at -.11 at age 17-19 and .11 at age 27-30; own PA rated at 17 correlated at 0 and .06, respectively. Russell et al. also asked specifically about sexual satisfaction in the relationship, which also had no relationship with either men or women's PA, whether their partner’s or their own.

A stronger and more consistent effect emerges when instead looking at partner-rated PA, but perceptual biases will have an particularly big confounding effect in the context of relationships, as people more satisfied with their partners for whatever reason will tend to give them a more favourable rating and vice versa. While it’s possible that their idiosyncratic liking of their partner’s looks could lead to a stronger association with relationship satisfaction, it’s unlikely to explain why this effect is so much lower than the effect sizes found elsewhere such as in the case of assortative mating.

It might seem intuitive to think that the traits or behaviour of someone’s partner would be the main determinant of how satisfied they are with that partner, but people’s own traits tend to much more strongly predict their relationship satisfaction than their partner’s (Joel et al., 2020). Another possible factor is that people habituate to the attractiveness of their partners and those they date. Just like winning the lottery, the thrill of scoring a hot mate will inevitably wear off.

Another pertinent finding which may be considered a ‘white pill’ is that people generally hold an idealized image of their partners, a phenomenon referred to as ‘positive illusions’. People’s view of their partners is more a reflection of their ideals than their partner’s self-reported attributes, and they tend to view their partners in a more positive light than they do themselves (Murray et al., 1996). This has been found to have a variety of self-fulfilling relationship benefits, such as persisting longer and in the face of conflict and doubt, increases in satisfaction and decreases in conflict and doubt, and even perhaps becoming closer to one’s partner’s idealized image (Murray & Griffin, 1996). People’s mind simply deludes them into thinking their partner is much more wonderful than they ‘objectively’ are, and this mechanism may serve to strengthen pair bonds.

This phenomenon also applies to perceptions of PA; people rate their partners higher than they do themselves or do others (Swami et al., 2007; Barelds et al., 2011). As is always the case however, this may have its downsides; viewing your partner as too attractive may induce jealousy and anxiety, e.g. over potential infidelity (Swami et al., 2012). It may also function as a self-serving cope, as believing your partner is more attractive than they are could also help maintain your inflated self-image—which is not just a symptom of narcissistic personality disorder, but is both normal and associated with better mental health (Taylor & Brown, 1988). Of course it's always possible that people are being charitable because you're supposed to feel positively towards your partners. To my knowledge at least it's not possible to get into their heads and find out for sure whether people actually perceived their partners as more attractive than others do (beyond idiosyncratic preferences, which probably couldn't explain the full effect).

Are ‘looksmatched’ couples more successful?

People are generally suspicious of mismatched couples. For instance, Hoplock et al. found that people assume that the more attractive person is less committed (especially if female) and that men who are less attractive than their partners compensate with status/resources (though the effect only emerged for long-term relationships and with a moderate disparity).

‘Equity theory’—derived from social exchange theory—states that people strive for fairness within their relationships. In economic terms, if one partner’s costs outweigh their rewards, they may feel a sense of injustice. In an attempt to restore equilibrium, those who are overbenefitted may go the extra mile to keep their partners pleased as they fear them leaving for a more attractive alternative, while those who are underbenefitted may feel entitled to make more demands of their partners. For instance, Critelli & Waid (1980) found among 123 dating couples that while absolute PA had no effect on how loved partners were, those who saw their partner as more attractive predicted loving and being submissive to their partner more. When it came to outside ratings though this effect held only when the female was more attractive (for both the male and female partner).

Are relationships between partners mismatched in the ‘social currency’ of PA more unstable and discordant? Maybe the assortment for PA we see is to a degree the result of a selection effect. On the other hand, maybe a PA discrepancy indicates that the relationship was founded on a less ‘superficial’ basis.

In Feingold’s 1988 meta-analysis, a weak but significant .13 correlation emerged between PA matching and relationship length from four samples of couples in three longitudinal studies, with some evidence for heterogeneity across studies. Committed couples (.44) were slightly more matched than the other three categories (.37), though this difference wasn’t statistically significant.

Oltmanns et al. (2017) found that less attractive partners were more likely to utilize ‘intrasexual mate retention behaviour’ when they had attractive partners.

Prall & Scelza (2022) had Himba pastoralists rate headshots of opposite-sex locals on how desirable they were as a partner, which can probably be seen as more or less a proxy for PA. Pairs (N = 128) correlated at .51 in this measure, without much difference between marital and nonmarital pairs. Well-matched pairs had longer-lasting relationships (though the effect wasn’t large), and were in more frequent contact. Moreover, those whose partners were higher in desirability were more likely to say that those partners had other partners.

Relationship duration by desirability gap (Prall & Scelza, 2022).

It’s also possible that the duration of acquaintance prior to forming a relationship might predict the level of matching on PA. This is what Feingold (1982) found: couples who’d formed their relationships within 3 months or less of meeting were more matched in PA than those who’d been acquainted for at least 8 months before dating. Hunt et al. (2015) observed a similar pattern among a sample of 167 couples. Those who were friends before they begun dating were significantly less matched on PA than those who weren’t, and this relationship was stronger the longer they’d been acquainted. For couples who weren’t friends before dating, their PA correlated at .7 or .52 depending on whether they were rated together or separately, while for those who had been, they were .4 or .2.

Assortative mating correlations by status as friends and length of acquaintance before dating (Hunt et al., 2015)

No effect of similarity on relationship satisfaction was detected for either men or women, however. Avilés et al. (2021) likewise found no effect of perceived similarity in PA on commitment.

The so-called ‘mere exposure effect’ may help explain the findings of Hunt et al. Familiarity tends to breed liking. Moreland & Beach (1992) had four women of similar appearance pose as students, each attending a different number of classes. Their ‘peers’ rated those who they’d been exposed to more higher in PA, despite having no interactions with them. Other studies (Thiruchselvam et al., 2016; Han et al., 2020) have documented this effect in relation to perceptions of facial attractiveness.

Based on these findings, we might expect people meeting online to be especially ‘looksmatched’, as unlike people meeting through friends and so on they wouldn’t have had as much time to get to know each other. Somewhat surprisingly then, Hitsch et al. (2010) found that the PA of online dating matches correlated at .31, which is not particularly high. This could be seen as extra surprising considering online dating allows people to match more efficiently by expanding the pool of available partners. Of course these matches didn’t necessarily lead to anything, though when looking at matches in which both users became inactive within 14 or 21 days after the initial match—which may suggest they started dating offline (though there’s no guarantee they were very successful dates)—the correlations were actually smaller (.22-.25). This could be because online dating profiles resemble hypothetical people in a vignette rather than real in-the-flesh people, leading to people basing their decisions on idealized preferences. In the other Hitsch et al. study, the sex differences seen in stated preferences emerged as revealed preferences, with income influencing women’s decisions more and looks influencing men’s more (though not much more in the latter case). In the Shaw Taylor et al. online dating study, women’s popularity correlated at .53 with PA, while men’s did at just .28. There is evidence that income and education have become less important to people since these studies were conducted (Dinh et al., 2022). Additionally, dating apps have since come to dominate the online dating world, and these are more visual than traditional dating websites, so maybe we’d see a different result today.

Final thoughts

It may not be as revelatory as some people act like it is, but yes—’looks matter’. To throw black pillers a bone, there might be some validity to the notion that it’s often understated the extent to which they also influence men’s desirability. While it’s common to assume women place less value on PA, when we go past abstract ideals and look at how people operate in initial partner selection, support for this assumption is lacking. In Eastwick et al. (2008) for instance, while the typical sex-differentiated stated preferences were replicated, no significant sex difference was found in the effects of PA or earning prospects when it came to romantic interest in partners both in and outside of the speed dating event, nor did participants’ ideal preferences predict romantic interest on an individual level. Across 5 different experiments, Eastwick et al. (2011) as well found no association between explicit and implicit preferences for PA, and the sex difference closed when it came to the implicit preference measures.

Both men and women effectively identify as sapiosexual on mate preference questionnaires, but intelligence doesn’t seem to have an effect on initial attraction when tested objectively (Driebe et al., 2021).

One contention is that the speed-dating paradigm is really just testing people’s ‘short-term’ preferences. While people tend to place less hypothetical value on PA in a ‘short-term’ context (Buss & Schmitt, 1993; Li & Kendrick, 2006), the same sex-differentiated stated preferences remain. Eastwick & Finkel (2008) tested for interactions between sex, desire for a committed relationship, and the influence of PA and earning prospects, and still failed to detect the expected sex moderation effect. The dates at the dance in the Walster et al. (1966) lasted for 2 hours, which you’d think would have been enough to attenuate the effect of PA if the duration of the dates were helping to amplify it. In a recent big study by Eastwick et al. (2024), when comparing stated ideals with evaluations of partners (both among people currently in a relationship and who ended up entering one) both men and women underestimated how much they desired PA, though women did more. Sex differences once again failed to appear in in revealed preferences for PA and earning potential.

As to why women apparently understate the extent to which they value PA relatively more than men do, it may partly stem from cultural expectations which could be a remnant of a time when women were more dependent on male provision. Some would argue that it’s because of social desirability bias; placing a lot of emphasis on looks is seen as ‘shallow’. Is placing emphasis on money really considered any less shallow though? After all, this can get you branded as a ‘gold-digger’.

Part of why the assumption that men are more visual is common may be that people conflate men being more horny and spontaneously aroused by visual stimuli with being more looks-focused overall, such as in this Dennis Prager video. However, it might instead be the case that it manifests differently. While there are gender differences in who’s into porn vs. erotic literature, most women are probably not usually imagining the male protagonist as the comic book guy from The Simpsons.

What there doesn’t seem to be any good evidence for is the popular idea that ‘looks-hypergamy’ is a uniquely female behaviour. Of course both genders can’t date above their own looks on average at the same time, but both at least as likely to try and punch above their weight. Nonetheless, people end up with someone reasonably close to them on average. In the Kreager et al. study, this was increasingly the case the more messages which were exchanged. The level of ‘looksmatching’, while moderate, is impressive considering that it’s about the same as the effect size observed for initial selections in the dating experiments. This lends further credence to the idea that they’re not only capturing people’s ‘short-term’ preferences.

When it came to dating experience and relationship status, the effect was weaker. It’d be surprising if a central component of your desirability had no effect at all on your relationship prospects. This would only realistically occur if people actively went for their ‘looksmatch’. Still, most people who are single or have minimal dating experience probably aren’t this way due to physical inadequacy; there is much more overlap in the PA of single and partnered people than divergence, and the bulk of the variance in dating experience remains unexplained by PA. When a small sex difference did show up here, it was in the direction predicted by the conventional perspective rather than the black pill. To the extent that looks affects women’s more than men’s success, part of the reason could be that men are typically the initiators; if men across the looks spectrum are all approaching attractive women, sometimes less attractive men will get lucky. To be fair, one thing that isn’t captured by dating experience or relationship status is rejection experience. Even if ugly people end up having not much less dating experience on average, ugly men in particular may have dealt with a lot more rejection to get there.

Perhaps surprisingly, PA doesn’t seem to make any real qualitative difference in relationship experience. People with attractive partners aren’t appreciably more satisfied with their relationships, nor are the attractive partners. There’s a few possible reasons for this, including people seeing their partners as more attractive than most do due to perceptual biases and idiosyncratic liking, acclimation, variation in affective responses probably being explained more by individual psychological differences than external circumstances, and perhaps PA being a double-edged sword in some ways.

We saw some evidence that relationships preceded by longer acquaintance were more disparate in PA on average, perhaps because people become more willing to overlook their unremarkable appearance, or even begin to see them as more subjectively attractive. Of course this isn’t a guaranteed method, which is where we get the ‘friendzone’ complaints. It could even go the other way if you have an especially unpleasant or unexciting personality. With more relationships beginning online though, the initial looks screening stage simulated by speed-dating studies seems all the more unavoidable, unless you first get to know each other through something like Discord. What the implications of this would be aren’t certain, but it’s possible that contrary to the black pill (or really mainstream at this point) concerns about them facilitating female looks-hypergamy whereby men are forced to date down 2-3 ‘points’, couples might even become closer in looks on average. We’ve seen how men and women actually tend to be similarly influenced by PA even in online dating environments, and as I’ve previously documented, dating apps are not facilitating 'chadopolies'. It’s possible that some people who would've done better before may struggle more if they are being filtered more before having the chance to 'rizz someone up'. At the same time, the impact of online dating has probably been overstated to an extent (next article will be on this). Some people say that it may make people, and especially women, not want to settle because they feel like there's an infinite pool of attractive potential partners available at their fingertips, and that this could have a detrimental effect on relationship satisfaction and stability, but I’m not aware of any evidence for this, and the previously linked article reviewed some evidence against it.

All in all, while looks clearly matter in dating, they’re by no means the full picture. Some other neglected factors will have to wait until future installments to go into properly. Even if black pillers were correct that ‘dating success’ could be reduced purely to physical characteristics though, it seems like the worldview is still flawed in some major ways.

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1. ‘Desirability’ was operationalized as overall profile ratings, which would have been largely determined by the attractiveness of the photos.