fotobits - 18 November 2008 08:03 PM

People tend to bond (marry, date, etc) others who are about the same in the looks department. Not looking the same, but the same subjective attractiveness. Beautiful people tend to fall in love with other beautiful people. OK, those of us who are not so beautiful may fall in love with a beautiful person, but such feelings are rarely reciprocated.

I read about an interesting experiment where they showed how this happens. They had a group of thirty people (sex was irrelevant) and everybody got a number stuck to his/her forehead, without knowing what the number was. They were asked to go and bond with a number as high as possible. Of course, everybody dashed toward number 30. At that moment number 30 realized that he/she was very desirable and could therefore bond with a very high number: number 30 hooked up with number 29. It didn’t take long to put everybody “where they belonged.” So yes, you’re right, we do fall in love with beautiful people, but unless we ourselves are desirable enough for them to return similar feeling, we’ll end up marring, as you say, those “who are about the same in the looks department.”

And a little advice:

We spend our first twenty years of our life to know where we belong. If you feel you are not at least number 25, don’t aim too high. That way you won’t get a broken heart!

I own two chihuahuas, and I’m 5’11”.  Does that mean I’m compensating for something?  Or is it merely a testament to to my inability to recognize my limitations? (Chihuahuas have a big dog complex, they often race after dogs 10x their size to show them who’s boss)

Jules - 04 November 2008 03:11 PM

He was taken aback, and didn’t know what the heck I was talking about. He called me back a few times until he got me on the phone again, and I finally raised my voice a bit and told him I had no intention of participating in some kind of ‘role playing’ sex games with someone I’d been on one lunch date with, no matter how friendly our conversations had been before that first date. He thought this was hysterical, and explained to me what Dungeons and Dragons was, and that you ‘role play’ the character in the game. I was so embarrassed. 

Well, that explains why nobody else showed up the other night wearing their leathers…  Now I’m embarrassed.

Yeah, I used the experiment George referenced to choose my first wife when I was quite young.  I had access to the student records, picked about a dozen attractive girls, looked up their IQs, and asked the one with the highest one out on a date.  We were married less than a year later.  Little did I know that it would have been much, much better to have based my choice on the results of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Index. 

Occam