How Does the Way You Look Bias Your Choice of a Date?

That's a huge lie saying that physical aspect is not important when choosing a partner. This is proved by the fact that good looking people are the most targeted on the online dating sites, and these persons tend to mate with good looking partners. But how does being more attractive or less attractive influence the way you evaluate the others' attractiveness?

A team made by Leonard Lee, Columbia University marketing professor, George Loewenstein (Carnegie Mellon University), Dan Ariely (MIT), James Hong and Jim Young (HOTorNOT.com), checked this on the online dating site HOTorNOT.com, which allows members to score others' level of physical attractiveness, in a research to be published in the journal "Psychological Science."

The team compared two data sets delivered by the site: members' dating requests and the attractiveness ratings given by other members.

Supporting other studies, the results showed that people with similar levels of physical attractiveness were more likely to date each other, whereas more attractive people were increasingly concerned with the physical attractiveness of their potential mates. Moreover, the subjects appeared to prefer partners moderately more attractive than them.

Males appeared to be more driven by the look of their potential partners, but considered less their own physical attractiveness when deciding whom to approach.

No matter how attractive people themselves were, they appeared to assess objectively others' physical attractiveness, pointing to an inner universal pattern, not influenced by cultural beauty standards (e.g. symmetric faces, large eyes, full lips). Subjects' own attractiveness does not bias how they perceive others' attractiveness.

But the degree of physical attractiveness influenced the desirable traits the subject looked for in their possible dates. Highly attractive people stressed more on physical attractiveness, while "ugly ducks" looked for non-physical qualities (like sense of humor). In the end, nobody stays lonely.