5: Dating and Mate Selection

Sixty years ago if you were of marrying age, you'd most likely select someone based on how your parents felt about it, how healthy the person appeared to be, how good/moral their character appeared to be and how stable their economic resources appeared to be. Today we search for soul mates. Look around you in the classroom. How many potential mates are sitting there? In other words, how many single females or males are there in the same classroom? Now of those, how many would you be attracted to as a date and how many can you tell just by watching them that you'd probably never date? These are the types of questions and answers we consider when we study dating and mate selection.

Dating as we know it developed in the \(20^{\text {th }}\) century. It is a practice in which people meet and participate in activities together in order to get to know each other. Prior to dating, courting was common in the United States. Courting, which involved strong rules and customs, evolved into dating due to wide-spread use of the automobile after the Industrial Revolution.
Automobiles enabled young people to have more freedom. After the Industrial Revolution, with the change from agriculture and farming to support families to factory work, love rather than necessity became the basis for marital relationships. Today, dating is more casual than ever, taking on many forms (couple, group, online, etc.)

In the United States there are millions of people between the ages of 18-24 (18-24 is considered prime dating and mate selection ages). The U.S. Statistical Abstracts estimates that \(9.5 \%\) of the U.S. population or about 15,675,000 males and 15,037,000 females are in this age group \({ }^1\). Those numbers should be very similar after the 2010 Census data are analyzed which takes several years after collection. Does that mean that you could have 15 million potential mates out there somewhere? Yes, potential, yet no in realistic terms. You see, it would take more time than any mortal has in his life to ever interact with that many people. Besides dating and mate selection is not about volume it's about quality and intimacy in the relationship.

When we see people we filter them as either being in or out of our pool of eligibles. Filtering is the process of identifying those we interact with as either being in or out of our pool of people we might consider to be a date or mate. There are many filters we use. One is physical appearance. We might include some because of tattoos and piercing or exclude some for the exact same physical traits. We might include some because they know someone we know or exclude the same people because they are total strangers. Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\) shows the basic date and mate selection principles that play into our filtering processes (This inverted pyramid metaphorically represents a filter that a liquid might be poured through to refine it; e.g., coffee filter).

Propinquity is the geographic closeness experienced by potential dates and mates. It's the proximity you might experience by living in the same dorms or apartment buildings; going to the same university or college; working in the same place of employment; or belonging to the same religious group. Proximity means that you both breathe the same air in the same place at about the same time. Proximity is crucial because the more you see one another or interact directly or indirectly with one another, the more likely you see each other as mates.

Attraction and the evaluation of physical appearance is subjective and is defined differently for each individual. Truly, what one person finds as attractive is not what others find to be attractive. There are a few biological, psychological, and social-emotional aspects of appearance that tend to make an individual more attractive to more people. These include slightly above average desirable traits and symmetry in facial features.

According to the Centers for Disease Control \({ }^3\) the average man in the United States is five feet ten inches tall and weighs about 177 pounds. The average woman is about five feet four inches tall and weighs about 144 pounds. Did you just compare yourself? Most of us tend to compare ourselves to averages or to others we know. That's how we come to define our personal level of attractiveness. This is important to understand that we subjectively judge ourselves as being more or less attractive; because we often limit our dating pool of eligibles to those we think are in our same category of beauty.

If you are six feet tall as a man or five feet eight inches as a woman, then you are slightly above average in height. For men, if they have manly facial features (strong chin and jaw and somewhat prominent brow), some upper body musculature, and a slim waist then they'd have more universally desirable traits. For women larger eyes, softer facial features and chin, fuller lips, and an hour-glass figure facilitate more universally desirable traits.
So, here is the million dollar question "What if I don't have these universally desirable traits? Am I excluded from the date and mate selection market?" No. There is a principle that has been found to be the most powerful predictor of how we make our dating and mating selection choices-homogamy.

Homogamy is the tendency for dates, mates, and spouses to pair off with someone of similar attraction, background, interests, and needs. This is typically true for most couples. They find and pair off with persons of similarity more than difference. Birds of a feather flock together, but you also have probably heard that opposites attract. Some couples seem to be a vast set of contradictions, but researchers tend to find patterns that indicate that homogamy in a relationship can be indirectly supportive of a long-term relationship quality because it facilitates less disagreements and disconnections of routines in the daily life of a couple. We filter homogamously and even to the point that we tend to marry someone like our parents. Here's why; people from similar economic classes, ethnicities, religions, political persuasions, and lifestyles tend to hang out with others like themselves. Our mates resemble our parents more because we resemble our parents and we tend to look for others like ourselves.

Heterogamy is the dating or pairing of individuals with differences in traits. All of us pair off with heterogamous and homogamous individuals with emphasis more on the latter than the former. Over time, after commitments are made, couples often develop more homogamy. Some develop similar mannerisms, finish each other's sentences, dress alike, develop mutually common hobbies and interests and parent together.

One of the most influential psychologists in the 1950-1960s was Abraham Maslow and his famous Pyramid of the Hierarchy of Needs \({ }^4\). Maslow's pyramid has been taught in high schools and colleges for decades. Maslow sheds light on how and why we pick the person we pick when choosing a date or mate by focusing on how they meet our needs as a date, mate, or spouse. Persons from dysfunctional homes where children were not nurtured nor supported through childhood would likely be attracted to someone who provides that unfulfilled nurturing need they still have. Persons from homes where they were nurtured, supported, and sustained in their individual growth and development would likely be attracted to someone who promises growth and support in intellectual, aesthetic, or self-actualization (becoming fully who our individual potential allows us to become) areas of life. It may sound selfish at first glance but we really do date and mate on the basis of what we get out of it (or how our needs are met).