Say have a thing for blondes. Or maybe you only date women who went to an Ivy League college. Or maybe you only swipe right on women who claim to love football and beer.
Point is, men and women love to say they have a romantic “type.” But is there really such a thing?
The simple answer: Yes, according to a new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Physchology.
In the study, researchers analyzed data from three different surveys that looked at various characteristics of over 1,000 people in past and present relationships. All three surveys used information provided voluntarily through social media sites and interviews.
What they found: When it comes to physical qualities, an attractive person is more likely to have consistenly attractive partners (for both short-term and long-term relationships) over the course of their dating life. But for certain qualities that are more dependent on where you live or work, like religion or education, people tend to find partners of a comparable background simply because they’re more likely to encounter them on a daily basis.
So do people actually have a type? “Yes,” said Paul Eastwick, lead author on the study and associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis. But in reality, it’s a little more complicated than that because “sometimes it reflects your personal desirability and sometimes it reflects where you live.”
In other words, even if everyone has a type, some people’s ideal “types” are more based on the kind of people they’re looking for in general—redheads, say, or an overall attractiveness—and some people’s types are influenced by their surroundings—an ideal income, say, or a profession.
But whether or not you’ve established that you have a certain “type,” there are still some women you might want to avoid dating altogether. And for the girl who seems to be just out of your league? Check out these five ways to score a date with her.
Dating
