One trait where opposites attract is money. I noticed often in couples, there is one with money and one without. I guess this is out of necessity and it satisfies both the poorer person's need for sustenance and the richer person's need for control over the relationship.
In general, in many relationships, one is controlling and the other is controllable. Relationships with two tigers often don't last because they can't stop fighting and few people tolerate that kind of constant emotional discomfort. For relationships, it's probably best if both people are moderate.
Are you describing not an opposite, but a difference? Obviously, given any two randomly selected persons, it is much more likely that they will earn different salaries than that they will earn the same. Men tend to make more than women, largely because of differences between what men and women prioritize in life and career, because women often leave their jobs for extended periods of time to raise children, etc. Ergo, you can expect that for any married couple, the husband is more likely to earn more than the wife. This is desired by many women, because someone has to earn a living when they are on maternity leave.
> I noticed often in couples, there is one with money and one without.
Where did you "notice" this exactly? Because this is false. People tend to mate according to similarity of socioeconomic class. That means similarity of economic class. Cultural factors (the "socio" in "socioeconomic") are also important and correlate with economic factors. Greater similarly of cultural factors and economic factors creates greater opportunity and affordances for pairing. There's a greater common ground to work with. You're not going to find many classically educated billionaires married to barely literate burger flippers.
> I guess this is out of necessity and it satisfies both the poorer person's need for sustenance and the richer person's need for control over the relationship.
I don't know what bizarro world you live in, but this is not the general case. Again, people tend to mate according to socioeconomic similarity. That means both are earning within a similar-ish range or some from families with similar socioeconomic characteristics. The only way you can conceivably control someone in this manner is not to out-earn them, but the one earning less must earn less than needed to survive, have no realistic prospect of providing for themselves, and have no family or friends he or she can rely on. Telling someone you'll take away their Birkin bag isn't much of a threat to a poor person; starvation is. Your view of what most marriages are like is, frankly, delusional and dark, like something from an incel forum.
> I don't know what bizarro world you live in, but this is not the general case.
So called "west" is not the whole world, it's actually minority of the world. What you describe as "general case" is probably accurate in case of many western countries but not in many countries in Asia, Africa and South America.
I'm an Australian living in Australia, and of the people I know, and have I known over the years, it is overwhelming the case that the male earns more, and often much more, than the female.
You clearly didn't read anything I cited. It supports exactly what I wrote, read more than the title and in two cases more than abstract. Unless you think children are marrying older man in these countries (Africa and Asia) because they are in love with them and it's just a coincidence that their economical situations improves (as shown in the papers I linked). And I only provided child marriages because intent is the most obvious one. But you can also look at Chinese where 55% males that have university education mary woman without it. Then look at almost fully patriarchal countries in Africa and Asia where men is providing food on the table. In 18 countries woman can't even get a job without men permission. When I was in SEA all of this was a common knowledge, especially in more rural areas.
In many cases they don't have agency because of economical reasons, in some of them because of other reasons (religion, culture). But most of it is because of no economical power, making it relevant. The biggest (by population number) example was China, where they have agency.
Given that most Chinese women do not have a college education, you would expect that men, if choosing randomly, would marry non college educated women. Your stat shows college educated Chinese men are marrying college educated women far more than at the random rate. That is, the opposite takeaway from what you’re concluding.
Whenever you appeal to anecdata, you might want to pause a moment and check for actual data. Turns out that no, wealth alignment is likely one of the largest factors for finding a partner[1] and the number of couples with similar wealth is increasing [2].
"Relationships with two tigers often don't last because they can't stop fighting and few people tolerate that kind of constant emotional discomfort."
And no, most relationships aren't divided in "controlling" and "controllable" either. In fact, that's a pretty good predictor for partner violence. [3]
Making up a story and fitting the data around it only happens in psychology or economics. It doesn't happen in the hard sciences, whose papers are always completely trustworthy.
You can’t claim this is connections after marriage.
I strongly suspect the social factor is that high earning professionals (doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc) are already on the same professional tracks when they get married. They have social circles consist mostly of other professionals. When the meet someone to marry, odds are high that person is part of their professional circles.
While this may be true and borne out by data, I believe jongjong is trying to delicately illustrate something along the lines of the “women be shopping” phenomenon illustrated by the 1996 economics treatise “The Nutty Professor”
It was many years ago, but I recall seeing some kind of study with a considerably large n and it basically boiled down to male doctors marry secretaries, schoolteachers, and nurses and female doctors marry other doctors and CEOs. There is definitely some kind of sex-related factor controlling for how important partner income is viewed to be.
What I haven't seen is any data on same sex relationships. Are men as indifferent to a male partner's earning potential as they are to a female partner's? How about for women, do same sex attracted female doctors also prefer other female doctors, or do they pair with female nurses and secretaries?
Out of curiosity: Let's say the poor person is sexualy attractive. Is sex appeal vs money always in favor of the later? I know couples where the sexy one is the controller even against a person with more financial leverage.
I agree with your assessment. I guess the more wealth imbalance there is, the more room there is for physical attractiveness imbalance. There is some kind of equilibrium at play.
It's tempting to think that the one with money is getting the better deal (e.g. in terms of evolutionary biology) but I feel like it's a flaw in our psyche as it overlooks the power of capital and capital's ability to make itself more valuable over time. Attractiveness generally only declines over time, unlike capital which only appreciates.
It's not that simple. A women who has looks, but no class, no education, is ill-mannered, etc., is not going to find much interest among men who are well off, educated, well-mannered, etc. She may attract the attention of new money, yes, but this proves the point, namely, that there exists a segmentation by SOCIOeconomic class. The nouveau riche men in question belong approximately to the same social class. He isn't offended by this lass's cursing, press-on nails, vinyl pants, and high esteem of trash TV. It's what he grew up around.
And look at the wives of many of the richest men. The beauty of wives is not strongly correlated with husband earning, certainly not beyond middle/upper middle class and upward where each additional dollar earned means less. Other factors are at work. This should be obvious.
And it's not as if mating takes place at some grand event where every person is a potential candidate for everyone else of the opposite sex. We're distributed, we are embedded in social and kinship networks in time and place. We are exposed to an exceedingly small number of people in life, certainly before the typical age at which we tend to marry. No idea where all these boneheaded ideas about mating comes from that defy basic reason and experience.
> richer person's need for control over the relationship
Sometimes, it's not necessarily about control, as a sexually attractive female alpha may not be controlled by a male beta, the dynamics can be the other way around. However, it still works because a wealthy male can have a trophy wife/gf that can show off around, get satisfied sexually, while female gain control and access to resources.
I'm averse to drawing too many conclusions, as impressive as the study is. For one thing, it always seemed to be that the primary feature in finding a long term partner is simply geography: everyone in my hometown linked up with people in highschool, many got pregnant, and that was that.
Second, I'm looking through the article and not seeing analysis on whether this idea of similarity in partner choosing is a mechanism in choosing a partner or holding a partner, or both. Personally I've found I have a habit of being initially very attracted to people with certain traits that I find really unattractive long term. As I got older it tempered me into working a bit harder to learn more about someone to find what traits they have that I find long-term attractive that you really can't know from just a few dates.
I know so many people in unhappy relationships that are either truly stuck or believe they're stuck, due to economic factors, a child, or simply being unable to face the uncertainty of life without the partner they don't love or even hate. That's without even getting into abuse traps.
People with good career prospects tend to marry each other. A side effect is increased household inequality. The day of the high-wage finance guy marrying a low-wage school teacher are mostly gone. Now it’s a well-paid lawyer marrying a well-paid doctor.
I mean, how many interracial couples do you see around you? In PA, USA, I see around 98% of white girls with white guys, 99.9% of Indian girls with Indian dudes, and around 85% of Asian girls with Asian guys (the rest are exclusively with white guys). Interestingly, even among white-white couples, I've seen the majority of blonde girls with blonde guys (the rest prefer black dudes for some reason).
Yes, it's a relatively small sample (just a US state), but I've seen enough to conclude that at least when it comes to ethnicity/race/skin-color, opposites don't attract each other. There's a term for it—homophily.
Over 40% of marriages in Hawaii are interracial and around 15% of new marriages nationwide are [1]. And this is 10 year old data. I'm sure it's more now.
Isn't this because of how you develop beauty standards internally?
Like, if you grew among same race people, your standard for partner beauty will point to what you grew up with.
I know for sure that's the case with me.
My dad one time told me that the reason he married my mom was because they were opposites. He's antisocial and she is a social butterfly, he thought it would be a good idea... 27 years later, ¯ \ ( ° _ o ) / ¯
Introversion/extroversion is very surface-level. If you look at the study, you see that "value-oriented" traits (views on politics/religion/children/education/family etc.) tend to have higher correlation when compared to personality traits:
> Across analyses, political and religious attitudes, educational attainment and some substance use traits showed the highest correlations, while psychological (that is, psychiatric/personality) and anthropometric traits generally yielded lower but positive correlations.
See an interesting chart here[1]. Anecdotally, I'm also pretty introverted and attracted to extroverted women. On the other hand, I'm also a Christian and have a hard time dating someone that doesn't at least share some set of overlapping moral and ethical values. I also don't smoke, and could probably never date a habitual smoker (no matter how attractive she was on other axes).
Values is definitely the thing that needs to overlap. My wife and I have talked about this quite a bit, and my anecdata would roughly support the study. I think one person being anal, and the other carefree, outgoing vs homebody, that’s the opposites attract part. But if you have one person that thinks you need to go to church, or that school is the most important thing for a kid and the other doesn’t, it’s trouble. My wife and I are from different cultures and are different types of people, but are values really overlap where it counts.
Given how much social filtering is implicit in much of life, self-assorting, it should be seen as "opposites [in a mere few attributes] attract".
Narcissism of small differences provides an informative context for opposites. People from deeply similar niches, of social habits, education, work and other attributes, pair well with other people, highly similar, who maintain a few essential differences.
> including millions of male-female co-parents, engaged pairs, married pairs or cohabitating pairs
The study was looking at long term couples which is fair to do. I believe internally, we all know this - I'm looking for a long term partner with similar desires.
Opposites attract during short term relationships - a lot. There's something "exciting" about it, but long term the excitement doesn't make a healthy relationship, probably the most toxic.
We do the - Marry, Fu__, Kill for a reason. Many times Fu__ turns into Kill given enough time.
The less punchy title would be: Opposites Don't Attract in Long Term Relationships
Hard disagree. What are some obvious opposites - fat/skinny, smart/dumb, rich/poor, short/tall, crazy/not crazy… does anyone really think the greater the distance between those qualities the stronger the attraction, in any type of relationship? No. Sorry. That is just silly and not born out by anyone’s experience.
To be fair, for the average male when looking for a quick hookup, it makes no difference if the woman is his "opposite" or not. The only variable that matters is "is she hot or not". Knowing that, it makes perfect sense for the study to focus on long term relationships.
Because I have lived 41 years on this planet and I have experienced how the world works. If we're talking about averages, your average male is waaaay more willing to ignore traits that he dislikes on a female in order to have a one night stand, than the opposite. It's basic evolutionary biology.
My thoughts here are in the heteronormative sense. No hate or disrespect to other pairings. I'm sure anthropologists and sociologists study this rigorously. These are just some random layman musings.
Just like in softwre engineering, I find human social systems fascinating. A recent example is the so-called "Bama Rush", which is rushing sororities at the University of Alabama, something I honestly probably never would've heard about were it not for Tiktok. Where I'm from we have nothing like Greek life so I find this fascinating.
UA is an SEC school. SEC schools are a sporting division for the NCAA. UA college football is a big feeder for the NFL. Non-Americans may not realize that the Ivy League too is a sporting designation, not an academic one.
Here are some things I learned:
1. UA itself is a feeder into Alabama politics, called The Machine [1];
2. Pre-Civil War southern society had a very rigid structure. Correct or not, I tend to refer to this as plantation society. This is the realm of cotillions and debutantes. This harkens back to Regency England and earlier. The concept of a "debut" isn't exclusive to the South but it's more pronounced (it seems);
3. "Social proof" is such a huge factor in all of this. So much of this is about either seeking upward social mobility or, in the very least, insuring against downward social mobility. Greek life is a part of this;
4. Traditionally women went to college to get what's referred to somewhat derisively as an "MRS degree" (ie to find a husband). This sort of thing happened in the North too where colleges had "sister colleges" (eg Radcliffe for Harvard, which didn't admit women 60 years ago).
Now I bring all this up because when I see comments about the importance of money (from other commenters and elsewhere), I think that's a very shallow (and basically incorrect) analysis. So much of matching in this environment is about social status and mobility. Power and money are proxies for that. You cannot ignore the importance of shared values in all of this.
Thing is, you see this same pattern play out even somewhere like NYC, which very much isn't "plantation society". There are various proxies for social status like what school you went to (high school and college), where you work, your social connections and so on.
In London, you see people reduce other people to what postcode they live in (eg W4, N1, etc).
In LA in particular but probably elsewhere, if you're friends with an A-lister, you will be able to get into exclusive clubs, restaurants, etc even if by yourself. Just that connection alone is sufficient.
You see a lot of these same themes play out in period fiction lkke Pride and Prejudice.
Now you may think this is all very transactional. To a point it is. Compatibility does factor into it too. But you also find so many people who "settle". Another way of putting this is that they have certain goals and they find a partner who is sufficient for that.
> Non-Americans may not realize that the Ivy League too is a sporting designation, not an academic one.
The Ivy League is absolutely a sports division. But in practice, it's honestly more of a set of "arms reduction treaties", where the schools have decided to limit the expense and effort put into their football programs. They still want to maintain the image of "well-rounded student athletes." And, you know, beat their rivals. But the the student-athlete image thing is important.
It’s surprising anyone would publish or conduct this research, as it presents a problem for “blank slate theory”. If human mating is assortive, then corellations between parent and child socioeconomic status are likely to be substantively due to genetic factors rather than solely oppression. The alternative would be a theory of “genetic oppression” requiring some sort of genetic equity, but that route is a trap for progressive thought due to that movement’s historical love of eugenics.
Please note, at the end of this piece, it says: "The researchers caution that the correlations they found were fairly modest and should not be overstated or misused to promote an agenda (Horwitz points out that assortative mating research was, tragically, co-opted by the eugenics movement).
They do hope the study will spark more research across disciplines, from economics to sociology to anthropology and psychology."
In general, in many relationships, one is controlling and the other is controllable. Relationships with two tigers often don't last because they can't stop fighting and few people tolerate that kind of constant emotional discomfort. For relationships, it's probably best if both people are moderate.