Education as an Attraction Factor in the Partner of the Opposite Sex (Summarized Paper)

Abstract

Common sense and evolutional psychology suggest that a person's educational status affects their attractiveness for people of the opposite sex. It is believed that women tend to choose better educated partners while to men appearance is more important than education. This hypothesis was tested in an experiment which consisted in appraising photographs of people of the opposite sex accompanied by a short description which included, among other things, the person's education. The findings show that the choice is mainly affected by the educational status of the chooser. People with a higher education and people without one tend to choose likewise partners. Gender differences have also been discovered. Men without a higher education tended to avoid women with a university degree, while educated women confidently chose educated partners. The choices of educated men and women without a higher education were less obvious. They don't exclude the possibility of having a partner whose educational status is different from theirs. The authors believe that the findings must be interpreted from the social psychological point of view.

Keywords: attraction; social perception; sex role selection; choice of partner; education, mate selection

JEL Classification: I39, J12, C91