Job status/prestige are not significant determinants of initial interest on Tinder, for both men and women. However, after this initial phase, men less frequently start a conversation with unemployed women, but they still do not care about the particular job prestige of employed women.

Significant_Lake2986 · 2022-09-30T06:54:26+00:00

"We found that in the first stage of the dating process on Tinder (i.e. when deciding on whether to like another user), both males and females do not care whether other users have a job, nor do they care about their job prestige if those other users are employed. However, during the second stage (i.e. when deciding whether to start a conversation with a Tinder match and potentially organise a date), we established that males less often start a conversation when the female user does not have a job. Again, conditional on females having a job, differences between females in job prestige did not influence males’ decision to start a conversation with these females. These findings suggest that males do not want females to be (completely) financially dependent on them but do not care about the particular earnings potential of females. An alternative explanation is that males expect unemployed females to start the conversation more often as these females may have a greater need to find a potential partner. "

It's a lot, but let's start from the top.

So there is likely still a looks threshold that users have to pass independent of one's job or status before likes are exchanged. We can see from already existing literature (as below) that this looks threshold is most likely much higher overall from women to men than from men to women.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100725135317/https://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/

Men's evaluations of women's looks tend to nearly follow a bell curve while women's evaluations of men's looks is shifted to the right such that they rank ~79% of men as below average.

During the second stage (after the looks threshold has already been passed), men don't really care about how much money women make; they just don't want potential partners to be completely financially dependent on them or expect unemployed women to start the conversation more.

The men's behavior seems more than reasonable to me from a logical standpoint. Men in the study don't really care if women have a much lower earnings potential or status than they do, and this is after their appraisal of women's looks follows a (very nearly) smooth bell curve. So a woman who is making minimum wage would be practically just as likely to be paired up with a six-figure male earner as her six figure-earning counterpart.

Given that marriage involves large transfers of money, it is fair to call it a "business deal" of sorts on paper. As someone with some familiarity in business, I can state that most businesses that would operate this way would likely not be in business for long.

The women's behavior seems less than reasonable to me from a logical standpoint. Women in the study care a lot if men have a much higher earnings potential or status than they do, and this is after their appraisal of men's looks ranks the bottom ~79% of men as below average. So a man who is making six figures would be much more likely to be paired up with a six-figure female earner than his minimum wage-earning counterpart after the woman in question will rank him as below-average four out of five times. But if the looks aren't there, the money and status are meaningless.

Note: "Minimum wage," and "six figure" are placeholders; I will acknowledge that people in different socioeconomic brackets and different communities may behave differently from each other.

A personal, more off-the-cuff note:

This further solidifies why it has been so hard for me to date. As a guy in my late 20s who makes six figures, is fit, and is average height, it should not be this difficult considering that the average male is my height, is overweight (along with ~75% of other men), and makes roughly 60k a year.

If it weren't for escorts, I would really be an incel in technical terms.

Now, consider that I'm Asian-American and have autism. ~95% of women of all other races will not date an Asian man, and ~40% of Asian women will not date an Asian man. More Asian women cohabitate with white men than Asian men in the U.S.

I often hear people saying that I should "stop complaining and go back to my own country." On top of being quite racist (as I was born in the U.S., which is literally my country), these people should realize that Asian men have it ten times harder than white men in online dating in China.

And it is not only Asian men who struggle. Women of every ethnicity prefer white men the most. Women of every ethnicity except for South Asians prefer South Asian men the least.

Regarding autism, I don't need to say much. A staggering 98.5% of autistic adolescent males do not have sex while a nice 69% want to. In adulthood, it doesn't get much better. 16% of autistic men are in relationships while 46% of autistic women are. All of these data are based on samples of "high functioning" autistic people.

Since this is a personal note, I will hold off on giving data unless requested since my comment is already very long, but rest assured: I can back up each of these claims with even more studies.

tl;dr: in online dating, men nearly don't care about a woman's status and money and rate women's looks on a bell curve. Women have a much higher looks threshold for men (4/5ths of men are "below average" to women) and care much more about a man's status and money after the looks threshold is passed.

RSDevotion1 · 2022-09-30T04:36:05+00:00

The Tinder experiment was run in Belgium in 2018. The profiles were all set to age 23, and the researchers claimed to have controlled for physical attractiveness.

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