Women Are More Picky: The Science Behind Female Selectivity In Dating
A speed dating study below shows that women are more than 2x pickier than men.
We know that people marry later and less frequently than 50 years ago. Delving into the reasons why can sometimes give rise to men saying that women are the ones delaying it to pursue curricular and extracurricular activities or because they're too picky. Not content to be "left behind" women will fire back that men are just as picky or more.
Where does the truth lie?
Gatekeepers Of Sex And Commitment
Well, when it comes to spontaneous, casual sex, we know that women are vastly much more picky than men in terms of accepting offers. Women are generally speaking the gatekeepers of sex. In this experiment, no one accepted the man's offer but about half of the men accepted the woman's. If she'd calmed their BS-o-meter more no doubt the acceptance rate would have even been higher. A study exists claiming that women want casual sex as much as men but only if that man were Johnny Depp (or presumably whomever the delicious catch of the day is). We also know that women have sex with hotter men.
When it comes to committed relationships, men start to have some power in the matter but the sometimes-mentioned phrase in the sphere that men are the gatekeepers of commitment is vastly wrong as a blanket statement. In fact, women in their 20's are more the gatekeepers of commitment than men and many of those women are delaying committed relationships or being highly picky, confusing their sexual value with their relationship value. Once men hit their 30's and women's radiant beauty starts its gradual (though sometimes abrupt) diminishment, then men start to have more and more power but even then women are still roughly co-gatekeepers of commitment. Only top males can be thought to be gatekeepers of commitment in any sense approaching the way women are sex gatekeepers.
One final point before getting to the speed dating study. It seems that given two women that are quite similar in personality, looks, life goals, etc. that most men would be roughly equally interested (or not) in both. Flipping the script, women seem to be more idiosyncratic and even capricious in their tastes and would be much more likely to like one and not the other, and who knows why? Some will talk about a connection or what not but I think it's almost like there's a random number generator in women's heads at times and the very same guy will be unattractive at one moment and attractive at another. I've experienced the off-on (not to mention the on-off) attraction of women.
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When it comes to speed dating, a recent study shows that women are the pickier sex: "A recent study into speed dating habits concluded that if men and women go to an evening and have 22 separate dates, men are keen to see about five women again, while women would only choose to see two again, on average."
The research was done by economists Michele Belot from the University of Edinburgh and her colleague Marco Francesconi from the University of Essex, who collected data from 84 speed dating events involving 3,600 people in the UK.
But why are men less fussy? "This is something that evolutionary psychologists and biologists do recognise," says Belot. "We know that across a whole range of behaviours women tend to take fewer risks. They relate this to the fact that making mistakes are much more costly for women than for men because of childbearing. So obviously if you make a mistake in dating the wrong man and having a relationship with the wrong man, you might have nine months carrying a child, then caring for a child. While for men, the costs are lower."
Understanding how to connect with women through conversation becomes essential when women are naturally more selective about whom they invest their time in, since real connection requires women to think beyond surface-level attraction and establish deeper rapport.
Can Anything Be Done About Women's Pickiness?
Once people take the red pill and realize the truth about women's pickiness and hypergamy (NAWALT; I think about 50% of women are hypergamous enough that it causes them difficulty in finding their percentile equals attractive), the question arises: can anything be done about it? Some think it's set in stone. Others think that women can adjust their attraction triggers somewhat by dropping the entitled attitudes and looking for the positive in men. I tend to agree with a moderate version of the latter. If a woman has so shut off her mind to thinking anyone's good enough then she will be filtering out nearly all men. Simply by opening her mind and deflating her puffed-up ego, she will start to consider more men and some of those will actually make it further down the pipeline. Remember, if no men get in the pipeline to begin with then none progress down the path to her feeling attraction and love.
This gives rise to another thought, that if women in need of it can be shaken out of their ambivalence and nudged into lowering their bitch shields, they will be more likely to give more men a chance. This can come from fundamental environmental cues, such as knowing she needs a provider/protector, or it can come from cultural expectations, or a well-delivered neg (note, most men are unskilled at delivering negs and should avoid them and focus more on humor and teasing), or from self reflection.
As one woman who hates dating stated: "I hate dating. I avoid it like the plague. I've only been out on two dates in my life. I just can't 'date'...it gives me anxiety attacks. There's too much pressure and I'm picky as hell." This sentiment, explored in the question of whether dating is the worst, reveals that excessive pickiness isn't just a male complaint—many women openly acknowledge their selectivity stems from not wanting to settle or play dating games, which can paradoxically leave them isolated despite claiming to want connection.
Bringing this back to speed dating, look at how when the usual pattern of men approaching is broken, possibly breaking her internal state of feeling like the prize, women become more interested in men.
Simply making women approach men at speed dating (as opposed to the typical vice versa) equalizes the ratio of interest. A study in the US, on the other hand, suggests the difference might simply be down to the seating arrangements, because the convention is for women to sit still at the events, while men move round and approach each woman.
The researchers found that when the roles were reversed at speed dating events, and women moved round to approach the men, they found that women made more offers than they did at events when they sat still.
Further explanation of the equalizing effect from having women approach men is found in research: "As reported in the October 2009 issue of Psychological Science, the well-known gender difference vanished when men and women assumed more egalitarian roles—when women made the rounds and men sat, both sexes were equally choosy. This finding is not a complete reversal of the old rule, however; the seated men were not choosier than the traveling women, the way seated women are choosier than men in the traditional speed-dating setup."
First, before the men-and-women-are-the-same brigade howls in delight that, "see, men and women are just as picky," when you average out over approaching and being approached women are still pickier.
Second, try suggesting to women that they should approach men if they're not finding the right men already and further howls of existential ego-exploding angst will emanate forth, that they just can't because the men will just think they can get sex, or because it's the man's job, or, probably more closer to the truth, because the thought of being rejected is too much to bear. The dynamics of how men and women flirt and approach differently show that women maintain control through selective availability and gatekeeping, which paradoxically limits their own dating pool when they refuse to take initiative. Since in real life men have to approach women the vast majority of the time, the speed dating model with the men moving around is the more realistic one.
Caveats: We don't know if the people involved in the speed dating studies are of the same percentile or if one sex was of a higher average percentile or not. This would have a huge effect.
Conclusion
Overall, the speed dating results confirm that women are pickier than men but show the interesting possibility that women can tame their hypergamy and pickiness to some extent by getting out of their daily romantic-psychological routine, in this case, by being the ones to approach men.
