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The story of this essay begins about 6 years ago. As a soldier in parachuting-training I was misfortunate and lost a draw to stay over the week-end for guarding purposes. On the second-watch of the night in an attempt to fight the bone-penetrating Israeli humid winter cold, I shared with the second guard the latest psychology research that I have read during my open-university course: scientists asked a group of people to rate people's photos by their attractiveness, what they didn't know is that the photo bank was made out of two-hundred photos of one-hundred married couples. Astonishingly, the research's outcome was that on average each married couples were ranked similarly. My comrade's simple and indifferent reaction keeps echoing in my mind till this very day: "everyone plays in his own league". In other words: Instead of seeking the best partner, we are picking and satisfied with the best partner obtainable. The years have passed and I have gained experience in partner seeking and acquired the theoretical fundamentals needed to understand his epigram. This paper will explain the pre-condition for a partners match. A procedure that it is repeated constantly as a re-assessment, even after reaching advanced relationship-levels. In order to explain how people decide on partners the basic economic consumer-theory will be utilized. The microeconomic theory that relates preferences to consumer demand curves helps understand how people practically choose between different products. The same theory will be used for partner's seeking (as cold as it may sound). The corner stone of this theory is my self-defined "self-value" . The self-value is basically what every individual believes he is worth on the singles-market. The value is basically an equation of the components the person conceives as significant in the dating-world and his conceived grade in each and every one of them:
Y- Is the final perceived grade on the single-market - The components perceived by the individual to be significant in the single-market. The value of each component is its share from the total. a,b,c..z - The conceived individual grade of each component. As mentioned the grade is conceived and therefore the only person that can set it is the definer. Nevertheless the majority of each society would share the same components and would primarily rank themselves and others according to the same market values, due to existing demand/supply powers and society's prejudices and norms. Value scheme will differ from society to society, and will differ again between the genders of each society. Male and female would rank themselves differently mostly according to the way society sees them. Evaluating the personal market price is basically an attempt to predict how the counter party would evaluate the evaluator. Therefore the components taken into consideration are primarily social ones (every sub-group could share preferences of its own) ,but on the whole people still stick to the old paradigms, which are partly instinctive needs. I generalize the traits sought by a man at a woman as ones that will reinforce the man's ego and women seek at their potential partner's security (ensuring the survival and living standards of her and her family). Following is a suggestion to trait tendencies by men and female: Traits sought by women at men - the social statues factors build the most significant components group. Values like job, wealth, family pedigree are the most important, since they signal the counterpart that they will be able to provide the women's family expected life quality. Following are the personality traits. wisdom, humor and such are also significant for the men's self-value assuming that they will turn in handy for survival and success later on. Look's quality group is in my opinion less meaningful in determining the self-value, since without it raising the first two group's values is practically meaningless besides improving the chance for a better looking offspring, which will have a higher rate a success but by his own. In contrary to the help he gets in advance from his father in the first two groups. Supporting my opinion is the surveys done by many women magazines, asking its reader to rank what they think is the most attractive character in a man's appearance. The outcome is always: hand, smile, eyes which all testify more on a character of the person and less on its objective beauty. Women - women would be ranked and base their ranking on their ability to basically support the men's ego and falls further behind is her character traits and the characteristics that help her support the family. It may sound provocative, but few common and popular examples could help cooling the rage steam. Men's idol women are never successful female politician or business-women provided they don't look good whereas "Marline Monroes" will therefore marry masculine Arthur miller (the opposite seem to never happen). Furthermore all men know that describing a women first character as smart, intelligent, funny or basically every trait beside look would automatically mean that she is not attractive, since if she were- it would have been mentioned at first, because that is the most relevant information. Considering your own perceived ranking as your personal budget (available and disposable sum of money) AA'. You'll base your pick according to that, seeking to maximize your utility as seen on graph 1. This following graphic illustrates guy X choice map. He conceives his value now as 8 and later as 7. He knows that he could get better than Mini and Daisy and is not in the "league" of Lena. Jennifer matches his conceived value, assuming that she will conceive the graphic similarly (values are espoused to be socially shared) will maximize his probability for a match equilibrium.
(couldnt upload matrix -- sorry)
After assessing, which partners would maximize the utility. The other person would execute the same procedure, of situating the other person in according to his grasp. On the short run the described situation lead to the fact that assessment differences may lead to deviations in the way we conceive ourselves in comparison to the others. Among the many possible combinations, here are few interesting ones: Male's value Female's value Male's assessment 50 60 Female's assessment 30 70 In this case both the men and the women know that the woman is worth more than the man. It is possible that it's a situation that is wished by both partners, but in the long run the couples would either: 1. level out their ranking (man up or woman down) 2. The man or woman would secretly commit actions that would level out the psychological dissonance 3. Would actually leave the relationship to maximize its utility. Another interesting scenario is given after taken the next time period into consideration (T2).its value are given in brackets. Male's value Female's value Male's assessment 50 (70) 50 (70) Female's assessment 50 (50) 50 (50) The couple was equally ranked previously, but for some reason the man's rank appreciated in T-2. Assuming that there are no transaction-cost in getting out of the relationship in the next time period (kids, pre-nuptial agreement) the couple will reassess their values and will be using the same 3 options of the couple from the first example. Practical and politically-very-incorrect examples are the case that is seen frequently of below-average European-woman with a young African originated man. This case symbolizes the utility-maximization pursuit. The woman could never "afford" herself a young, strong and beautiful partner, who stems from the same culture. Because he will want maximize his utility by attaining more "valuable" woman. Therefore the woman "imports" a guy with different preferences, who might be ranked low in local standards due to his origin, but is still a substitute to the unattainable local equivalent. Interestingly, local low ranked men don't pursuit African women, but Asian one who are espoused to be more submissive and pomp the man's ego. The same phenomena occurs with a Swedish blond woman ranked average due to local standards, but her value jumps once moving to another country with less blond colored women.
It is obvious that there is no love-formula, nevertheless love is influenced by many factors and countless researches and everyday life have proven that partner picking is not random and in every situation certain groups are more probable to be the love-object. Being in the most optimal situation of two partners sharing the same perceived ranking doesn't necessarily imply that the couple would fall in love and much less to be happy. It does indicate however the condition for a possible long-lasting relationship based on mutual respect achieved by the fact that both partners are aware that they have maximized their utility by picking the best possible partner attainable and not available. My theory is far from being scientific and is based on my own experience and world's perception, in spite of that I hope that it could serve as a foundation for further researches and more importantly, will help people understand how important it is to 1. Aim as high as they can, since they can never know what does the other think of them. While not despairing following short term mismatches. 2. Be aware to the social ranking system and to improve the ranking according to it. 3. React according to market-powers. If you feel that your value is expected to improve soon (e.g. due to medical school graduation) don't realize your market share by committing. Wait to the best possible time to maximize your value under biological restrictions. 4. Most importantly, in a relationship seek to maintain a constructive, equal and empowering one. Every balance change causes significant relationship implication. Each partner should be responsible to keep improving his "self-value" while assisting his counterpart to catch up, if needed.
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