Overview
Online dating profiles can be challenging to fill out. How do you communicate who you are and who you want to be with through so little information?
While there are many sides of you to show, two quintessential types of profiles are often constructed—the brawny, physically active athlete and the brainy, introspective intellectual. Assuming you’re a bit of both, which should you highlight most?
Some people are attracted to chiseled physiques. For others, the thought of running a 10K may pale in comparison to an intellectual conversation. Then again, opposites attract. Perhaps the brainy folks prefer brawny mates, or vice versa.
And then there’s the “homophily” hypothesis, namely that “birds of a feather flock to together.” According to this theory, we tend to be attracted to those who are similar to us. Perhaps brainy people are more likely to date other brainy people, and brawny people more likely to date brawny people.
To get the bottom of these questions, we conducted a simple experiment.
The Experiment
We had 400 people on Amazon Mechanical Turk read a short bio of a hypothetical person’s dating profile, randomizing their hobbies to be either brainy or brawny. Participants were then asked to rate how much they’d want to go on a date with the person.
Participants were instructed as follows:
“Imagine you’re looking for a relationship, so you decide to use an online dating app. You come across the dating profile below. This person is the gender you are interested in, and is fairly attractive.
- Name: Jamie
- Eye Color: Brown
- Hobbies: [Running, Athletics, Fitness] / [Reading, Writing, Learning]
Participants were then asked, “How much would you want to go on a date with this person? (1 = Not at all, 7 = Very much)” on a 1-7 scale.
To test our birds-of-a-feather hypothesis, we asked participants at the end of the study “Which of the following hobbies do you regularly engage in (if any)?” Answer options included fitness, reading, writing, and art (the last item was for a separate experiment).
Results
At first glance, the battle between brains and brawns appears to be a stalemate. Looking only at brains vs. brawn overall, we found no significant difference in desire to date between our brawny bio (avg. = 5.04) and our brainy bio (avg. = 5.23), (p = 0.204). The results did not change when considering participants' age or gender.
However, we did find support for our “birds of a feather” hypothesis. It appears that brainy people prefer to date other brainy people, while brawny people prefer to date other brawny people. When comparing participants who selected “reading” or “writing” as a hobby versus participants who didn’t, we find that readers/writers desired to date our brainy bio person 0.52 points more (10.7%) than our brawny bio person; participants who did not select reading or writing as a hobby desired to date our brawny bio person 0.62 points more (12.7%) than our brainy bio person (p = 0.001).
The opposite results were found for participants who selected "fitness" as a hobby, labeled "Athletes" in the graph below. When comparing participants who selected fitness as a hobby versus those who didn’t, we find that fitness hobbyists desired to date our brawny bio person 0.31 points more (6%) than our brainy bio person, whereas those who didn’t select fitness as a hobby desired to date our brainy bio person 0.74 points more (16%) than our brawny bio person (p < 0.001).
Conclusion
So, there you have it. There is no victor in this battle of brains vs. brawn. But each side certainly seems to be rooting for their own team. In this case, birds of a feather date each other. That’s probably natural. Whether it’s desirable we’ll leave for the philosophers.
Methods Note
We used ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis to test for significant differences in desire to date between our brainy and brawny dating profile. For significant differences, the coefficient would be large, and the corresponding "p-value" would be small (p < 0.05). We also conducted OLS regression analyses with interaction terms to assess whether these differences varied by participants' hobbies, as well as age or gender.
Data and survey materials for this study are available upon request.