Mate Preferences 1939 vs. 2008

belletaco · 2016-01-05T16:50:48+00:00

Interesting that men used to value a woman's education.

PetticoatRuled · 2016-01-05T20:59:37+00:00

What stands out the most is that both sexes began ranking mutual attraction and love as their number one preference.

That gives me warm fuzzies that we've gotten to a place where this is possible.

dota2nub · 2016-01-05T16:19:13+00:00

Changes in mating preferences over 69 years? Lol

wub1234 · 2016-01-05T15:27:50+00:00

I must be very different from the average man if sociability is more important than good looks.

transientfrustration · 2016-01-05T18:42:52+00:00

I'm mostly surprised by the women's leap in 'good financial prospect' by five ranks (which I'd expect not to be a random fluctuation). Wasn't 1939 the end of the Great Depression, and 2008 the start of the Great Recession? Neither were booming economic times, but 2008 should have a better financial outlook for women.

Hang on, doesn't the arrow chart get the genders the wrong way round? It's giving the numbers for the partner's gender when it should be participant's gender! So it's actually the men who jumped five ranks there.

Plugawy_Nedznik · 2016-01-05T21:09:30+00:00

You know a study was answered honestly when "good looks" is 8th.

themadhatterismad · 2016-01-05T21:55:47+00:00

In countries that are less militant and offer a high degree of social stability women prefer feminine appearing men.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704100604575145810050665030

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2015-07/29/content_21439999.htm

betterdeadthanbeta · 2016-01-05T15:16:08+00:00

For charts like these, i find it most useful to analyze the differences.

Point A:

So, you can see that men want a "dependable character" in women. It's their 2nd ranked pref, and hasn't wavered in 70 years.

My take: Men know women are flighty, apt to change with the winds, suddenly develop feelings or lack thereof out of nowhere, become inexplicably and deeply dissatisfied, and so on. Thus the burning need, 2nd only to love, for a dependable woman.

Sadly, there is not, nor has there ever been, such a thing.

Point B:

Men in 1939's third ranked desire was for a woman that has "ambition, industriousness." I believe that, like in any every other area of life, this reveals the superiority of the 1939 male mindset to the simpering male mindset of today. To the 1939 male, women are similar to a beast of burden or cattle; you want one that helps produce for the homestead.

Nowadays, women are more like a resource drain... and men are ok with that (resigned to it?).

You can compare this to the female preference list, where "ambition, industriousness" doesn't even make the top 18. Instead, these women are looking for "good financial prospect" (which, conversely, doesn't even make the top 18 in the male prefs list). This reveals that women care more about money than character. Kind of gives the lie to that euphemism women always throw around about wanting a guy who works hard and is ambitious - in reality, they want money and status. The man is merely a vehicle to acquiring those things.

Point C:

The male preference for a woman who has a "desire for home, children" shot up, from #7 to #4, while the female pref for a male who has same, shot down, from #6 to #9.

I find this the most revealing development of all the ones shown by this chart. This is what you get when feminism just drones out for decades about being a "strong, independent woman" who needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, and so on.

Women no longer give a shit if a man makes a good father or not. She wants tingles, cheap thrills, soap opera worthy emotional twists and turns, bad boy edge, tats, piercings ... in a word, entertainment. Men are clowns.

Meanwhile, dudes went from being the catch, to desperately looking around for even one female who gives a shit about being a good wife/mother, and finding nothing... save a few fucked out, 30something post carouselers who suddenly want kids and a high earning, stable male (at least, now that the Wall is fast approaching.)

Point D:

Whereas men once valued a partner with "education, intelligence" more highly than women (9th ranked pref for men compared to 11th for women), the reverse is now true. Education is 4th on the list of female prefs, and 5th on the list for men... while still close, the relative difference between the two prefs changed by 3, which is pretty significant.

Basically, this reflects the fact that women have successfully conquered academia by spreading rape hysteria, bigotry against men (feminism, patriarchy theory, and in particular social justice), pushing for ever more education programs and scholarships which exclusively benefit women, and so on.

These women, after whining that schools and workplaces are too male dominated, immediately turn around and whine "where oh where have all the good men gone?! Why can't a strong, independent, highly educated female like myself find a single 6' handsome male who makes more than me and is willing to settle down? Such injustice!"

This, of course, is blatantly hypocritical and illogical on part of women... but then, when have they ever cared about such things?

fruitenvrac · 2016-01-05T18:33:49+00:00

In that first link...women ranked 'good cook/housekeeper' as eighth in 1939 and it fell to thirteenth...and men ranked the same thing at sixteenth to fifteenth? Have they mixed up their charts?

pandorarosie · 2016-01-05T17:30:33+00:00

I recently read that back then people weren't a huge spectrum of fit and beauty.. Everyone was pretty much average. Now times have changed...

OlBastard · 2016-01-05T17:34:48+00:00

There lies a difference between 'mate preferences' and 'what people say they prefer in a mate'.

SirNemesis · 2016-01-05T19:05:10+00:00

The surveys are likely to reflect prevalent social norms rather than actual preferences (e.g. I'd argue that "good looks" is ranked unrealistically low in both time periods by both sexes). Still interesting.

Fuschia19 · 2016-01-05T15:12:47+00:00

So men care less about looks and chastity..TRP would disagree with that

PoopInMyBottom · 2016-01-05T18:12:27+00:00

The fact that men rated "good looks" as #12 really calls into question the reliability of these statistics.

Self-reported mate preferences are unreliable. They tend to say more about what someone didn't like in a mate they previously chose than what they actually go for.

disposable_pants · 2016-01-05T21:19:10+00:00

I wouldn't put much stock in this because it appears to require respondents to rank attributes on a linear 1-18 scale. The results then imply that (for example) the 5th-ranked attribute is nearly as important as the 4th-ranked attribute, and that's not necessarily the case.

To illustrate this, imagine you create a 10-team basketball league. Five teams are filled with LeBron James clones and five are filled with bowlegged 8th graders. Now imagine that you're forced to rank the teams 1-10. Someone who glances at the rankings would think that the 5th-ranked team must be about as good as the 6th-ranked team, but more information would show that they're miles apart.

It may be that there are a few extremely important attributes, a few attributes that are kind of important, and a few that hardly matter at all. Yet the data was collected in such a way that we're presented with a smooth 1-18 ranking that wouldn't demonstrate this.

Title	Mate Preferences 1939 vs. 2008
Author	TempestTcup
Upvotes	11
Comments	113
Date	January 5, 2016 3:00 PM UTC (10 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/3zkhcd/mate_preferences_1939_vs_2008/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/mate-preferences-1939-vs-2008.277232 https://theredarchive.com/post/277232

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