Gender Differences in Online Dating: What Do We Know So Far? A Systematic Literature Review <s> Table 3. Motivation of Online Daters <s> Psychologists have found that actual and perceived similarity between potential romantic partners in demographics, attitudes, values, and attractiveness correlate positively with attraction and, later, relationship satisfaction. Online dating systems provide a new way for users to identify and communicate with potential partners, but the information they provide differs dramatically from what a person might glean from face-to-face interaction. An analysis of dyadic interactions of approximately 65,000 heterosexual users of an online dating system in the U.S. showed that, despite these differences, users of the system sought people like them much more often than chance would predict, just as in the offline world. The users' preferences were most strongly same-seeking for attributes related to the life course, like marital history and whether one wants children, but they also demonstrated significant homophily in self-reported physical build, physical attractiveness, and smoking habits. <s> BIB001 </s> Gender Differences in Online Dating: What Do We Know So Far? A Systematic Literature Review <s> Table 3. Motivation of Online Daters <s> This paper considers the presentation of self on an internet dating site. Thirty men and thirty women were interviewed about their online dating experiences. They were asked about how they constructed their profiles and how they viewed other individuals’ profiles. What types of presentations of self led to more successful offline romantic relationships were also investigated. Additionally, gender differences were examined. In line with previous research on presentation of self online, individuals were quite strategic in their online presentations. However, important differences between initiating a relationship on an internet dating site and other spaces (online and offline) included the type of self disclosed as well as the depth of breadth of information individuals self-disclosed about themselves before any one-on-one conversations took place. <s> BIB002 </s> Gender Differences in Online Dating: What Do We Know So Far? A Systematic Literature Review <s> Table 3. Motivation of Online Daters <s> Abstract Physical stature plays an important role in human mate choice because it may signal dominance, high status, access to resources, and underlying heritable qualities. Although past research has examined overall preferences for height, we propose these preferences are modified by evolved mechanisms that consider one’s own height and prevailing social norms. We examined this proposal using samples of 2000 personal ads and 382 undergraduates. Both sexes preferred relationships where the woman was shorter when specifying the shortest acceptable, tallest acceptable, and ideal dating partner. In the personal ads sample, this norm was more strongly enforced by women than by men: 23% of men compared to only 4% of women would accept a dating relationship where the woman was taller. Preferences for the male-taller norm were less pronounced in short men and tall women, who shifted towards preferring someone closer to their own height. This limited their potential dating pool but ensured they would select a mate within the typical range of variation for height. Surprisingly, endorsement of traditional gender role norms was only weakly related to height preferences, particularly for women. These findings highlight the utility of examining how evolutionary factors, including endorsement of social norms, may influence mate preferences. <s> BIB003 </s> Gender Differences in Online Dating: What Do We Know So Far? A Systematic Literature Review <s> Table 3. Motivation of Online Daters <s> Prior research has established that people's own physical attractiveness affects their selection of romantic partners. This article provides further support for this effect and also examines a different, yet related, question: When less attractivepeopleaccept less attractive dates, do they persuade themselves that the people they choose to date are more physically attractive than others perceive them to be? Our analysis of data from the pop- ular Web site HOTorNOT.com suggests that this is not the case: Less attractive people do not delude themselves into thinking that their dates are more physically attractive than others perceive them to be. Furthermore, the results also show that males, compared with females, are less affected by their own attractiveness when choosing whom to date. <s> BIB004 </s> Gender Differences in Online Dating: What Do We Know So Far? A Systematic Literature Review <s> Table 3. Motivation of Online Daters <s> Die Indikation partnerschaftlicher Praferenzen mithilfe der Mi- schung von Befragungs- und Prozessdaten. Das Beispiel von Einstellung und Verhalten bei der Online-Partnersuche«. Web-based process-generated data is produced by social agency of users and recorded by the respective provider without any originally scientific purpose. We support our idea of advantageous applications of process-generated data by outlining a research example that uses data generated by email contacting on an online dating website for the in- vestigation of mate preferences. This approach follows the paradigm of indi- cating or 'revealing' preferences by observing choosing acts. Advantages and disadvantages of this approach in comparison to the traditional 'stated prefer- ence'-paradigm of survey research are discussed. Both approaches suffer dif- ferent informational restrictions and induce different problems of valid infer- ence. In conclusion we offer an outlook towards research strategies of an integration of the two quantitative paradigms. <s> BIB005 </s> Gender Differences in Online Dating: What Do We Know So Far? A Systematic Literature Review <s> Table 3. Motivation of Online Daters <s> In this analysis of profiles and messaging behavior on a major online dating service, we find that, consistent with predictions of evolutionary psychology, women as compared to men state more restrictive preferences for their ideal date. Furthermore, women contact and reply to others more selectively than men. Additionally, we identify connections among messaging behavior, textual self-descriptions in dating profiles, and relationship-relevant traits such as neuroticism. <s> BIB006 </s> Gender Differences in Online Dating: What Do We Know So Far? A Systematic Literature Review <s> Table 3. Motivation of Online Daters <s> We estimate mate preferences using a novel data set from an online dating service. The data set contains detailed information on user attributes and the decision to contact a potential mate after viewing his or her profile. This decision provides the basis for our preference estimation approach. A potential problem arises if the site users strategically shade their true preferences. We provide a simple test and a bias correction method for strategic behavior. The main findings are (i) There is no evidence for strategic behavior. (ii) Men and women have a strong preference for similarity along many (but not all) attributes. (iii) In particular, the site users display strong same-race preferences. Race preferences do not differ across users with different age, income, or education levels in the case of women, and differ only slightly in the case of men. For men, but not for women, the revealed same-race preferences correspond to the same-race preference stated in the users’ profile. (iv) There are gender differences in mate preferences; in particular, women have a stronger preference than men for income over physical attributes. <s> BIB007 </s> Gender Differences in Online Dating: What Do We Know So Far? A Systematic Literature Review <s> Table 3. Motivation of Online Daters <s> Using data on user attributes and interactions from an online dating site, we estimate mate preferences, and use the Gale-Shapley algorithm to predict sta ble matches. The predicted matches are similar to the actual matches achieved by the dating site, and the actual matches are approximately efficient. Outof-sample predictions of offline matches, i.e., marriages, exhibit assortative mating patterns similar to those observed in actual marriages. Thus, mate pref erences, without resort to search frictions, can generate sorting in marriages. However, we underpredict some of the correlation patterns; search frictions may play a role in explaining the discrepancy. ( <s> BIB008 </s> Gender Differences in Online Dating: What Do We Know So Far? A Systematic Literature Review <s> Table 3. Motivation of Online Daters <s> The following study with 113 participants analyzes the evaluation bias effects that happen when people are confronted with a typical profile of a online dating service that contains a false photo, i.e. a photo that obviously does not portray the profile owner. It is known that profile photos have a great impact how the profile owner is judged. As predicted by the attractiveness halo effect, an attractive photo leads to better evaluations of the displayed person than an unattractive photo. The results of this study show that even if the evaluator knows that the photo does not actually portray the profile owner, he is nevertheless influenced by the perceived attractiveness of the displayed person. But this is only the case for men judging women. Women seem to be more resistant against this automatic evaluation bias. The findings are fully in line with other empirical findings that support an evolutionary perspective, namely that men ascribe a higher value to physical attractiveness in judging women than women do in judging men. <s> BIB009 </s> Gender Differences in Online Dating: What Do We Know So Far? A Systematic Literature Review <s> Table 3. Motivation of Online Daters <s> Data from an online dating platform are used to study the importance of education for initiating and replying to online contacts. We analyse how these patterns are influenced by educational homophily and opportunity structures. Social exchange theory and mate search theory are used to explain online mate selection behaviour. Our results show that educational homophily is the dominant mechanism in online mate choice. Similarity in education significantly increases the rate of both sending and replying to initial contacts. After controlling for the opportunity structure on the platform, the preference for similar educated others is the most important factor, particularly among women. Our results also support the exchange theoretical idea that homophily increases with educational level. If dissimilarity contacting patterns are found, women are highly reluctant to contact partners with lower educational qualifications. Men, in contrast, do not have any problems to contact lower-qualified women. Studies of educational homogamy generally show that couples where women have a higher level of education are rare. Our study demonstrates that this is mainly the result of women's reluctance to contact lower qualified men. <s> BIB010 </s> Gender Differences in Online Dating: What Do We Know So Far? A Systematic Literature Review <s> Table 3. Motivation of Online Daters <s> A growing body of evidence shows that human mating preferences, like those of other animal species, can vary geographically. For example, women living in areas with a high cost of living have been shown to seek potential mates that can provide resources (e.g., large salaries). In this study, we present data from a large (N = 2944) nationally representative (United States) sample of Internet dating profiles. The profiles allowed daters’ to report their own income and the minimum income they desired in a dating partner, and we analyzed these data at the level of zip code. Our analysis shows that women engage in more resource seeking than men. We also find a positive relationship between cost of living in the dater’s zip code and resource seeking among both men and women. Importantly, however, this relationship disappears if one’s own income is accounted for in the analysis; that is, individuals of both sexes seek mates with an income similar to their own, regardless of local resource pressures. Our data highlight the importance of considering individual characteristics when measuring the effects of environmental factors on behavior. <s> BIB011 </s> Gender Differences in Online Dating: What Do We Know So Far? A Systematic Literature Review <s> Table 3. Motivation of Online Daters <s> Online dating sites have become popular platforms for people to look for potential romantic partners. Many online dating sites provide recommendations on compatible partners based on their proprietary matching algorithms. It is important that not only the recommended dates match the user’s preference or criteria, but also the recommended users are interested in the user and likely to reciprocate when contacted. The goal of this paper is to predict whether an initial contact message from a user will be replied to by the receiver. The study is based on a large scale real-world dataset obtained from a major dating site in China with more than sixty million registered users. We formulate our reply prediction as a link prediction problem of social networks and approach it using a machine learning framework. The availability of a large amount of user profile information and the bipartite nature of the dating network present unique opportunities and challenges to the reply prediction problem. We extract user-based features from user profiles and graph-based features from the bipartite dating network, apply them in a variety of classification algorithms, and compare the utility of the features and performance of the classifiers. Our results show that the user-based and graph-based features result in similar performance, and can be used to effectively predict the reciprocal links. Only a small performance gain is achieved when both feature sets are used. Among the five classifiers we considered, random forests method outperforms the other four algorithms (naive Bayes, logistic regression, KNN, and SVM). Our methods and results can provide valuable guidelines to the design and performance of recommendation engine for online dating sites. <s> BIB012 </s> Gender Differences in Online Dating: What Do We Know So Far? A Systematic Literature Review <s> Table 3. Motivation of Online Daters <s> We measured gender differences in preferences for mate income ex-ante to interaction (“income attraction”) in a field experiment on one of China's largest online dating websites. To rule out unobserved factors correlated with income as the basis of attraction, we randomly assigned income levels to 360 artificial profiles and recorded the incomes of nearly 4000 “visits” to full versions of these profiles from search engine results, which displayed abbreviated versions. We found that men of all income levels visited our female profiles of different income levels at roughly equal rates. In contrast, women of all income levels visited our male profiles with higher incomes at higher rates. Surprisingly, these higher rates increased with the women's own incomes and even jumped discontinuously when the male profiles’ incomes went above that of the women's own. Our male profiles with the highest level of income received 10 times more visits than the lowest. This gender difference in ex-ante preferences for mate income could help explain marriage and spousal income patterns found in prior empirical studies. <s> BIB013
Preferences: The process of conscious mateselection performed via online dating website implies a series of steps towards narrowing the pool of eligible candidates from many to one  . In line with the differences in motivational patterns established above, our review suggests a relatively clear picture regarding male and female preferences for certain characteristics sought in a partner (see Table 4 ). While females appear to value but be more tolerant towards the appearance of the potential partner [ BIB012 or at least a same-age partner  . Moreover, these preferences are invariant to the age of a man. BIB012 . A more detailed investigation suggests that female age preference represents an inverted U-shape function of her own age. Starting with a strict preference for older partners, women broaden their preferred age ranges as they get older and show higher inclination towards homophily when they reach 25 years of age. However, aging women increasingly prefer younger partners BIB006 . Recent research argues for the derivative nature of age choice hypothesizing that preferences for "women's age are (partially) a function of male preferences for physical attractiveness, whereas female preferences for men's age are (partially) a function of female preferences for male socio-economic status" [59, p. 273]. In the modern society that values fitness and youth, youthful look is one of the key attributes of physical attractiveness. Coupled with the biological fact that female fertility is affected by age stronger than male fertility, this warrants the age choice of men [ BIB012 . According to our review, this also holds true for high earning women BIB013 . At the same time, men are more open and are ready to become acquainted with women with lower income BIB011 BIB012 . However, in general, both men and women prefer high-income partners over low-income partners BIB007 BIB002 , which can be explained as an attempt to avoid dating for mercenary ends. Further, a well-established positive relationship between socio-economic status and academic achievements  explains the fact that educational preferences follow the same gender patterns as socioeconomic status, and are much more critical for women BIB005 All in all, men are much less demanding with respect to their mate's education and willingly contact women with a lower academic degree BIB008 [36] BIB010 . However, men are not attracted by women's intelligence when it surpasses their own BIB008 . Online daters' preferences for height follow "maletaller" norm BIB008 BIB007 [36] BIB003 for both cases, with preferences from the female side being more pronounced BIB003 . Tall men and short women, however, are more tolerant to the disparity in height, thereby maximizing their dating pool. This is in contrast to tall women and short men who try to adhere to socially recognizable standard BIB003 . Finally, men and women also have certain preferences when it comes to the information members of the opposite sex provide. While all daters who posted more photos have a greater chance to convince potential partners in their own attractiveness BIB001 [69], posting photos is especially relevant for the dating success of women. For them, the number of received messages is positively related to the number of photos they post BIB009 [18]  [69], once again indirectly proving the importance of physical attractiveness for men. In contrast, women prefer men to post longer self-descriptions BIB012 and perceive the candidate as more credible when rich media, such as video or audio, is used BIB004 .