Women are more attracted to taller men. However, shorter men may have psychological or physiological advantages over taller men.
The #1 determinant of body count is effort. A tall man has a much wider pool of available females. However, even if a shorter man has access to only 10% as many females, that shorter man need only apply greater effort than the tall man in order to compensate for the smaller pool of available females.
Promiscuity is likely heritable, and I would further hypothesize that shorter people tend to be more promiscuous (less sexually selective) than taller people, in line with R-K selection theory (more development, more parental investment, less promiscuity).
Two tall people who marry will tend to be, on average, more sexually selective than two short people who marry. Hypergamy and selectivity is inversely correlated with promiscuity. Short men are, on average, the result of low-hypergamy, low-selectivity pairings, which tends to cluster with promiscuous traits.
As a man, if you are extraverted, funny, athletic, promiscuous, and spend time and effort meeting women, you will have more sexual success than a shy, humorless, lanky, depressed tall guy who is a loner and puts no effort into meeting women. Short men compensate for their lack of attractiveness with increased effort.
Well put - I made some of these suggestions on the other height articles, didn't really feel like repeating them.
From briefly scanning the article on height & extraversion the association doesn't seem that straightforward though:
'Attained height at any specific age was not associated significantly with extraversion; only height growth conditional on previous growth between birth and 6 months and 7 and 11 years of age showed significant associations.'
I agree that it's 'an' interesting question. I posted a couple of studies on this in the one on height & relationships. It seems to be that shorter men have wider partners, and there's some evidence for them being less facially attractive (which you'd expect just based on BMI negatively correlating with women's facial attractiveness, but you'd expect both on the basis of 'desirability matching').
Pretty much, it doesn't really count when all they can get is a single mother way past her prime. I think this is increasingly the case now, men that cannont fulfill the rising standards of male attractiveness will not be given a chance by attractive younger girls, but if they're economically viable they may get the aforementioned older woman that has accordingly lowered her standards (the beta provider thing, basically). This may be mitigated by importing young and attractive wives from poorer countries, however.
I'm 22 and have seen alot, so seeing data showing that height is a real factor for men but is not the all-or-nothing that some people believe it is was interesting.
Something to mention though is your reference to the speed dating study. Looking through it it does show height having a pretty noticable impact; short men having 2x the rejection rate of tall men, short men being less likely to get a match despite tall men being about 10 percentage points pickier in their choices, being moderately shorter than a woman increasing a man's odds of rejection by almost 3x compared to towering over her at 40cm etc. By no means 'small' effects! Could be you saw the sentence near the top about being just barely shorter than the stated minimum decreasing your odds by 7-8%, but keep in mind this was only being 1" below, with it expanding noticably the larger the discrepancy became. And keep in mind these people were looking to date, so in the end only 1 man would be chosen by the time the women would send e-mails, with shorter men having noticably more competitors by the end.
There's also the factor of looks (consistently proven to be the biggest factor in speed dating outcomes for both men and women) not being accounted for, which could tip the scales in favor of handsome/cute shorter men, but that was a limitation of the study. As other comments mentioned in the thread, quality > quantity all the way.
Also if you're open to suggestions, an episode on the character trait Neuroticism could be an interesting read.
"For women, these same values were 32.2% for a preferred individual versus 25.4% for a non-preferred individual"
You're free to disagree, but the authors themselves describe these stated preferences as 'not strong' as predictors:
"This is consistent with previous studies, which show that reported partner preferences are not strong predictors of choice during speed dating."
"Could be you saw the sentence near the top about being just barely shorter than the stated minimum decreasing your odds by 7-8%, but keep in mind this was only being 1" below, with it expanding noticably the larger the discrepancy became."
It looks like they dropped to 15% for men 5 inches below the stated minimum. I'd say when almost 2 SDs below the stated minimum drops the 'yes' odds by just a bit over half, these preferences are not a terribly strong predictor of selection.
Sure, height definitely has a noticeable effect overall. To put it into perspective however, in another study using the same dataset, the correlation was .2 (4% of variance), compared to -.5 for women's BMI (25%).
"There's also the factor of looks (consistently proven to be the biggest factor in speed dating outcomes for both men and women) not being accounted for, which could tip the scales in favor of handsome/cute shorter men."
If you eliminate other variables from the picture, then of course the variable of interest will have more explanatory power. You could apply this to anything. Looks would only need to be 'accounted for' if they interacted with height to moderate its effect (e.g., if taller men were uglier, causing taller men to have less success than they'd have otherwise).
"Also if you're open to suggestions, an episode on the character trait Neuroticism could be an interesting read."
Well I have one on extraversion planned which might interest you. I think neuroticism tends to be a surprisingly neutral variable when it comes to dating/sexual outcomes actually.
Yep it appears the effects aren't all too big until you get to noticably shorter heights. Seeing very short men's rarity most of the 'undesired' men would still be a more 'acceptable short' at like 5'6-5'8. I do disagree with conclusions that come down to concluding that height doesn't have a large impact on mens' potential succes. I don't disagree with the data but I've simply encountered far too many examples of noticably short men being passed over and noticably tall men being desired with ease, also seeing it irl. Would simply be a 'the sky is green' situation to me. That being said seeing the biggest impact doesn't show up until big differences was cool to see. Also the bit of looks would be to see by what degree shorter men would be saved by their looks and taller men could survive without (if they split it into 3 tiers of attractiveness for example). I'd find that very interesting to see.
Surprised neuroticism is a neutral variable to be honest. If you could spend maybe like a paragraph quickly covering it in the next episode I'd appreciate it alot.
Since facial attractiveness had a substantially larger effect than height in speed-dating studies I don't think it'd take much of a looks advantage for a short man to compensate
Short men have advantages in health and longevity:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1071721/
High testosterone during puberty can stunt growth:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/173825/
Women are more attracted to taller men. However, shorter men may have psychological or physiological advantages over taller men.
The #1 determinant of body count is effort. A tall man has a much wider pool of available females. However, even if a shorter man has access to only 10% as many females, that shorter man need only apply greater effort than the tall man in order to compensate for the smaller pool of available females.
Promiscuity is likely heritable, and I would further hypothesize that shorter people tend to be more promiscuous (less sexually selective) than taller people, in line with R-K selection theory (more development, more parental investment, less promiscuity).
Two tall people who marry will tend to be, on average, more sexually selective than two short people who marry. Hypergamy and selectivity is inversely correlated with promiscuity. Short men are, on average, the result of low-hypergamy, low-selectivity pairings, which tends to cluster with promiscuous traits.
Extraversion is associated with shorter height:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23713700/
As a man, if you are extraverted, funny, athletic, promiscuous, and spend time and effort meeting women, you will have more sexual success than a shy, humorless, lanky, depressed tall guy who is a loner and puts no effort into meeting women. Short men compensate for their lack of attractiveness with increased effort.
Well put - I made some of these suggestions on the other height articles, didn't really feel like repeating them.
From briefly scanning the article on height & extraversion the association doesn't seem that straightforward though:
'Attained height at any specific age was not associated significantly with extraversion; only height growth conditional on previous growth between birth and 6 months and 7 and 11 years of age showed significant associations.'
This is all matches up with observed reality around me.
Sure short men can get women , but what’s the quality ? That’s the interesting question . Maybe they can get women because they lower their standards.
I agree that it's 'an' interesting question. I posted a couple of studies on this in the one on height & relationships. It seems to be that shorter men have wider partners, and there's some evidence for them being less facially attractive (which you'd expect just based on BMI negatively correlating with women's facial attractiveness, but you'd expect both on the basis of 'desirability matching').
Pretty much, it doesn't really count when all they can get is a single mother way past her prime. I think this is increasingly the case now, men that cannont fulfill the rising standards of male attractiveness will not be given a chance by attractive younger girls, but if they're economically viable they may get the aforementioned older woman that has accordingly lowered her standards (the beta provider thing, basically). This may be mitigated by importing young and attractive wives from poorer countries, however.
Good effort post.
I'm 22 and have seen alot, so seeing data showing that height is a real factor for men but is not the all-or-nothing that some people believe it is was interesting.
Something to mention though is your reference to the speed dating study. Looking through it it does show height having a pretty noticable impact; short men having 2x the rejection rate of tall men, short men being less likely to get a match despite tall men being about 10 percentage points pickier in their choices, being moderately shorter than a woman increasing a man's odds of rejection by almost 3x compared to towering over her at 40cm etc. By no means 'small' effects! Could be you saw the sentence near the top about being just barely shorter than the stated minimum decreasing your odds by 7-8%, but keep in mind this was only being 1" below, with it expanding noticably the larger the discrepancy became. And keep in mind these people were looking to date, so in the end only 1 man would be chosen by the time the women would send e-mails, with shorter men having noticably more competitors by the end.
There's also the factor of looks (consistently proven to be the biggest factor in speed dating outcomes for both men and women) not being accounted for, which could tip the scales in favor of handsome/cute shorter men, but that was a limitation of the study. As other comments mentioned in the thread, quality > quantity all the way.
Also if you're open to suggestions, an episode on the character trait Neuroticism could be an interesting read.
Cheers!
The part I was mostly referring to was this:
"For women, these same values were 32.2% for a preferred individual versus 25.4% for a non-preferred individual"
You're free to disagree, but the authors themselves describe these stated preferences as 'not strong' as predictors:
"This is consistent with previous studies, which show that reported partner preferences are not strong predictors of choice during speed dating."
"Could be you saw the sentence near the top about being just barely shorter than the stated minimum decreasing your odds by 7-8%, but keep in mind this was only being 1" below, with it expanding noticably the larger the discrepancy became."
It looks like they dropped to 15% for men 5 inches below the stated minimum. I'd say when almost 2 SDs below the stated minimum drops the 'yes' odds by just a bit over half, these preferences are not a terribly strong predictor of selection.
Sure, height definitely has a noticeable effect overall. To put it into perspective however, in another study using the same dataset, the correlation was .2 (4% of variance), compared to -.5 for women's BMI (25%).
"There's also the factor of looks (consistently proven to be the biggest factor in speed dating outcomes for both men and women) not being accounted for, which could tip the scales in favor of handsome/cute shorter men."
If you eliminate other variables from the picture, then of course the variable of interest will have more explanatory power. You could apply this to anything. Looks would only need to be 'accounted for' if they interacted with height to moderate its effect (e.g., if taller men were uglier, causing taller men to have less success than they'd have otherwise).
"Also if you're open to suggestions, an episode on the character trait Neuroticism could be an interesting read."
Well I have one on extraversion planned which might interest you. I think neuroticism tends to be a surprisingly neutral variable when it comes to dating/sexual outcomes actually.
Thanks for the reply.
Yep it appears the effects aren't all too big until you get to noticably shorter heights. Seeing very short men's rarity most of the 'undesired' men would still be a more 'acceptable short' at like 5'6-5'8. I do disagree with conclusions that come down to concluding that height doesn't have a large impact on mens' potential succes. I don't disagree with the data but I've simply encountered far too many examples of noticably short men being passed over and noticably tall men being desired with ease, also seeing it irl. Would simply be a 'the sky is green' situation to me. That being said seeing the biggest impact doesn't show up until big differences was cool to see. Also the bit of looks would be to see by what degree shorter men would be saved by their looks and taller men could survive without (if they split it into 3 tiers of attractiveness for example). I'd find that very interesting to see.
Surprised neuroticism is a neutral variable to be honest. If you could spend maybe like a paragraph quickly covering it in the next episode I'd appreciate it alot.
Since facial attractiveness had a substantially larger effect than height in speed-dating studies I don't think it'd take much of a looks advantage for a short man to compensate
Heightism is real. Boomer your fake article cannot change that.