The Economist’s Guide to Dating

Imagine you had a pleasant date and hope to see that person again. Should you call? – Let’s look at it from the economist’s perspective.

A phone call is an effort, an investment with a risk attached like all investments: you might earn the reward of a delighted reaction and indeed, a repeat encounter. Or you might experience various degrees of failure: lack of interest, a cold reception, or worst, a clear signal of refusal. Weighing the reward against the risk, you may think that on balance it’s not worth it.

This is because we tend to over-value losses compared to wins. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky showed in a Nobel Prize winning study that people perceive loss of a certain object as hurting more strongly than the joy coming from winning that same object. The loss or gain is objectively the same, but the human psyche values it differently according to the original situation. Human beings have a tendency to stick to the status quo, and deviations, whether up or down, always have a cost. This discounts gains a bit, and adds to losses. In the context of weighing the risks and benefits of calling a date, this means that most people (if not all) tend to judge them somewhat too pessimistically on balance.

Therefore, our first recommendation: unless you are sure of a refusal, take the risk of calling. The pain of refusal is usually less than imagined. Here, being confident is usually more realistic.

Let’s look at what people actually do. Two large-scale surveys have asked women and men about their calling habits and any successes after dates the dating agency ‘Just Lunch’ asked 38,912 singles, and match.com surveyed 5,000 daters. Here is what they found. Women seem to line with Kahneman and friends: 49% of them never call or expect the man to call first. 20% call two days later, while 15% call the next day. On the other hand, dating men are more courageous: 45% of them say they call the next day, 32% call two days later, and 14% call three days later.

That’s 91% of men calling after a date, wow. Most dating men seem to have overcome the deceptions of loss aversion, congratulations. A small catch with these survey answers is that they leave out those who never or very rarely date. Those who actually have a date to ponder about are potentially a more courageous lot than the non-dating. Anyway, as a bottom line, the figure is quite encouraging.

What about follow-up dates after calling? With such a high calling rate of men, it doesn’t surprise that those who don’t call within 24h rarely arrange for a follow-up date: only 1 in 8.

Therefore, our second recommendation: as a woman, don’t waste too much hope on the chaps that don’t even text within the first 24h, or 48h max. Don’t put all your eggs into one basket and keep dating other people.

What do kids do to a relationship? Will your marriage be better or worse for it?  – Recent research published by W. Bradford Wilcox and others at the University of Virginia digged out interesting findings. It turns out, that, on average, parenthood decreases marital happiness. Not overall happiness, but marital happiness. Yet, a significant minority of 35% (about the share of the winning parties in the recent elections in North Africa) remain happy in their marriage, or even see their marital happiness increase after children arrive.

What do these folks do differently? Here is a quick account of their top 6 relationship factors:

1.       A happy and active sex life. In terms impact, this is the strongest factor. “Sexually satisfied wives enjoy a 43-percentage-point premium in the odds of being very happy in their marriages, and sexually satisfied husbands enjoy a 46-percentage-point premium in marital happiness.”

2.       Thinking ‘we’ instead of ‘me’. Married parents who score above average in terms of commitment are at least 45 percentage points more likely to report being “very happy” in their marriages, and 23 percentage points less likely to be prone to divorce.   ‘Commitment’ measures the extent to which spouses see their relationship in terms of “we” versus “me,” the importance they attach to their relationship, their conviction that a better relationship with someone else does not exist, and their desire to stay in the relationship “no matter what rough times we encounter.”

3.       Random acts of kindness. Married parents who are generous with each other —both in terms of giving and receiving in a spirit of generosity—are significantly more likely to report that they are ‘very happy’ in their marriage. Generosity is defined as the virtue of giving good things to [one’s spouse] freely and abundantly, and encompasses small acts of service (e.g., making coffee for one’s spouse in the morning), the expression of affection, displays of respect, and a willingness to “forgive him/her for mistakes and failings.”

4.       A family-centered value system. Independent of religion, couples who value family life, and having and rearing children, and always did, are obviously: happier parents.

5.       Good friends and peers who share the experience of parenthood. “Research suggests that parents who have friends or peer support groups with whom they can talk about the challenges of parenthood do markedly better than parents who go it alone.”  But the influence of family and friends can be for good or ill.  Family and friends who encourage strife or who give a bad example are no support for married parents.  On the other hand, couples who experience high levels of support from family and friends for their marriage also report a more happy marriage. This factor ranks no. 5 for women, but is not in the top five for husbands.

6.       Shared and practiced religion. Couples who attend religious services together are more happy parents. Couples who subjectively feel ‘God at the center’ of their marriage are even more happy. “Shared religious attendance is linked to an increase of more than 3 percentage points that a parent is very happy in marriage, and to a decrease of more than 3 percentage points that a parent is prone to separation or divorce.” (These percentages increase 8-fold for couples who see a divine presence in their marriage.) - It strikes me that couples with young children who attend services together also have either (i) very well behaved children or (ii) a flexible solution for childcare.  – This factor ranks no. 5 for husbands but is not among the top five for wives.

These are the top 6 relationship factors that make husbands and wives happier parents. Our next special will look at the top social factors with the same influence…stay tuned!

Happy Xmas tide until then!

Marriage – what’s in it for a man, what for a woman? The latest American time use survey suggests that men benefit more than women. Traditional arrangements live on merrily, even in double-earner couples. Women just work harder (all types of work added up) and have less leisure than their men, whether they are housewives or breadwinners. The situation is even more pronounced in developing countries.

In this context it does not surprise that women in some parts of the world have gone on marriage strike, according to a recent article in the Economist. As the fertility rate falls with marriage incidence, some countries risk going off the map. Extrapolating simply, Hong Kong’s population would disappear in 25 generations. Portugal, Austria and Singapore do not have much longer.

Time to give the ladies some leisure, lads.

We kind of suspected it: relationships are worth so much more than many things we usually strive after (career, money, property…). When you want true happiness, claims David Brooks in ‘Social Animal’, your best investments are many, trusting and deep relationships. A good marriage is apparently worth $120,000 a year just by itself. (Dr de Bergerac thinks this is an understatement.) Every friendship, multiplied by its depth, adds to the happiness income.

So there we go. Starting next week, make sure to leave your desk at 5pm sharp and call up your buddy instead of reviewing the accounts once more.

Anna Fels’ insights about attention remind me of Sonia’s story. Sonia, a shy, smart girl, was your typical wallflower. She would not push herself to the limelight, was soft-spoken, and her smallish frame did not usually call the attention at parties. Sonia was not getting much attention. However, the people who made it through to her would realize how cute she actually was, as well as smart and funny. There had never been a boyfriend.

Sonia was active in her community and had a wide network of friends. Enter Fr. Jim. Sonia and Fr. Jim struck up a platonic friendship, and he would soon become some sort of older brother. Her sounding board, her affirmer – in short, he would shower honest, affectionate, but platonic attention on her. Sonia had a ‘man in her life’ like never before, and, if she had once felt a gap in that area, it was now at least partially filled.

Gradually, people tended to oversee her less. About half a year after becoming friends with Fr. Jim, she started dating Michael.  And the last time I checked they were happily married and had two kids. - By the way, Jacqueline, Beth and Becky also started dating their husbands roughly half a year after knowing Fr. Jim – and he didn’t introduce the husbands or know them.

Thing is, Fr. Jim was a rainmaker. (Do watch that film.)

So: get yourself a friend from the other sex to shower you with honest attention. Someone with a vocation of celibacy or gay or both. Then just wait.

These days I am reading Anna Fels: Necessary Dreams, a book that analyzes how and why women’s ambition may be socially chastised.  Fels, a psychiatrist, defines that ambition aims both at mastering a skill, and at earning the corresponding public recognition, i.e. positive attention.  Apparently it is the attention bit that women are not supposed to earn, but lavishly shower on men. She quotes John Gray who strongly recommends that Venus appreciate (i.e. give positive attention to) Mars, basically all the time. - This is an issue at all because the amount of recognition in space is not infinite. We all have limited attention spans.

The key reason why attention is such a hot commodity is that it defines us: from childhood we shape our view of ourselves through the attention and remarks we are getting from others. Kind of an empirical data collection on ‘who am I’. A second cool thing about attention is the Hawthorne effect: if we receive genuine, interested attention to what we are doing, we become better at it. We grow.

Fels is onto something. Having these effects in mind can do wonders for your dating. By giving positive attention to your date, you can make them feel better about themselves, and develop the actions and inclinations you would like to see. It’s not manipulation, because the effects only work if the attention is genuine. We kind of knew the trick since ‘Mars and Venus’;  the news is that it works both ways, for Mars and for Venus.

Sidebar, it then dawned on me that the Hawthorne effect can also explain what faith does to people – another big fuzzy topic economists are tempted to get their hands on. If you pray – and think that God is watching you – you receive genuine attention from the most competent being there is. You become better at what it is you are collecting attention for and you grow. Next to other things, faith is one gigantic Hawthorne effect.

The 2010 Nobel Prize for economics went to Peter Diamond, Dale Mortensen and Christopher Pissarides (DMP) for modeling ‘search and matching’, more precisely, explaining how workers and employers find each other. And for showing why even in a market in equilibrium, where each worker would have a matching job, there is unemployment.

Looks like their findings teach us something about dating and marriage - in fact the laureates have sometimes pointed this out themselves.

Take ten hot tips from both their assumptions and conclusions:

1.       Finding Mr. / Mrs Right takes time. Always. You have to spend time, effort, hard thinking and maybe money on finding the right person. Just wishing it and being ready is not enough; matchmaking, by its nature, does not happen instantly.

2.      Shit happens. Relationships do break apart, sometimes occasioned by reasons outside the couple. A match that once was ‘productive’ for both can lose its productivity, sending both partners out on the search again.

3.      In a world where there is a match for everyone, there will still be singlehood.  This is because finding Mr/s Right takes time and Shit happens. When a good match breaks apart through external shxt, both partners will have to search for a while until they find their new match.

4.      For a couple to form, both must be better off than when single. And for a couple to remain, both must be better off than with the next best alternative. A good match usually generates a ‘surplus’ for both, i.e. good stuff, happiness – for example freed up time cause the other one chipped in with the chores. The division of those parts of the happiness that are divisible must be such that neither has the incentive to keep searching.

5.      Sometimes, people settle because they are tired of waiting. Don’t! These are unstable matches, and dissolve when something better comes along. Which is likely if you settled.

6.      The search effort pays off more if there are many competing partners. E.g. it pays off more for women if there are many men relative to women. The opposite is also true: you don’t want to be in competition for a partner. How to arrange for a beneficial gender ratio you can read here.

7.      Dating agencies bring people together more quickly and reduce the incidence of singlehood - if the agencies compete with each other.

8.      The couples that form are best for the partners that make the proposal. These are the employers in the labor market and - traditionally - men in the marriage market. This is because the proposers have the first shot at a choice and therefore set the agenda more than the responding party. In modern times, however, nothing should hold a lady back from proposing to her man. (I know two women who did that and both made excellent matches).

9.      Women have a better outcome in marriage if they find a way to sweeten their wait. If we assume that men propose and women respond, the woman’s role is best reflected by the worker in the Nobel model. In the labor market, job-seeking workers have sometimes access to unemployment benefits - which make their wait sweeter. Benefit recipients enter better paying jobs because they can afford to wait for them. If women find a way to afford a longer wait, say through socializing a lot against the loneliness, and keeping healthy against a ticking clock - they will enter better relationships.

10.               They also have a better outcome if they agree and enforce collectively what they expect. Workers that negotiate collectively through a trade union will ensure that a larger share of the “match surplus” (in the case of our interest “relationship happiness” or any benefits generated by the relationship) goes to the worker (woman).