Sunday, April 7, 2013

Spousal Selection Theory


When first I dared write about Susan Patton’s Spouse Selection Theory I suggested that, if adopted by a sufficient number of undergraduates, it would doom the hookup culture.

Now, Harvard economist Edward Glaeser throws his considerable authority behind the idea:

While I don't feel I can provide advice to young women, I am comfortable, based on both personal experience and the infallible majesty of economic theory, urging young male Princetonians to view your female classmates as prospective long-term friends and spouses (the qualifications for the two roles having much in common), rather than short-term amorous encounters.

Young women could help college men toward this radical transformation by refusing to act as though they see themselves as worthy of no more than “short-term amorous encounters.”

To be fair, Glaeser is less than thrilled with the idea of marrying young.

In his words:

However, my own finely tuned algebraic simulations of an optimal spousal-search model find that while college provides an ideal time to accumulate a large stock of good friends (prospective spouses), it is typically suboptimal to wed at age 21 because of preference uncertainty and the benefits of continuing to meet alternatives.

Logically speaking, Glaeser is correct. If you marry young you will be closing off a myriad of opportunities for post-collegiate partying. And you will be missing out on the opportunity to try out the many alternative human possibilities that will surely cross your path.

On the other hand there is another opportunity cost: many of those alternative possibilities will involve you in traumatic encounters and relationship failures.

Glaeser does not seem to have estimated the fact that if men cease thinking of young women as hookups, it will become far more likely that many of them will marry young.

He also underscores another unpleasant truth, namely, that elite colleges function as matchmakers. They do not merely select students based on grades and extracurricular activities: they choose students based on skills that will make them good spouses, thus more likely to perpetuate themselves as an elite class.

Ross Douthat makes the same point in his column this morning:

The outraged reaction to her comments notwithstanding, Patton wasn’t telling Princetonians anything they didn’t already understand. Of course Ivy League schools double as dating services. Of course members of elites — yes, gender egalitarians, the males as well as the females — have strong incentives to marry one another, or at the very least find a spouse from within the wider meritocratic circle. What better way to double down on our pre-existing advantages? What better way to minimize, in our descendants, the chances of the dread phenomenon known as “regression to the mean”?

That this “assortative mating,” in which the best-educated Americans increasingly marry one another, also ends up perpetuating existing inequalities seems blindingly obvious, which is no doubt why it’s considered embarrassing and reactionary to talk about it too overtly. We all know what we’re supposed to do — our mothers don’t have to come out and say it!

By definition, elite colleges a provide a relatively small number of potential mates.

Glaeser explains:

Patton’s phrase that “you will never again have this concentration of men who are worthy of you” has been interpreted as unpleasant elitism. Her critics are certainly right that neither Princeton nor Harvard has any particular monopoly on virtue or intellect. Another interpretation is that what she said could have applied to any tightly knit campus of full-time students.     

The college experience is profoundly different from what comes before and after in life. It is when 19-year-olds have chance encounters in different settings that make it easy to befriend and evaluate others. And they have enough free time to follow relationships where they may lead. Few of us will ever again walk into a dining hall filled with 100 interesting members of the opposite sex of roughly the same age.  

Economists have demonstrated that it is easier to make a selection when there are fewer items to choose from. The rule applies to the detergent aisle at the supermarket. It also applies to spouse selection.

If a young person is faced with an overwhelmingly large number of prospective mates he or she will have more difficulty settling for one. If there are that many possibilities, there must be one who is perfect. So, why settle for a spouse who has flaws.

Also, when you graduate college and start meeting people in bars and clubs, even at work, they have not been vetted by the Princeton admissions office.

We are naturally more inclined to trust someone who has been pre-selected and designated as an appropriate spouse. When you meet someone at random you know nothing about him and will be less likely to accord him your trust.

In Glaeser’s words:

Rather, the college-selection process tries to create a vibrant social mix, while company hiring often doesn't. The admissions system even cares about selecting nice people -- believe me, I’ve been to those meetings. Dance clubs don’t.  

Glaeser concludes on an encouraging note:

The role that colleges can play in forging lifelong friendships, and even marriages, also makes a deeper point. Princeton has nothing to fear from online learning. The face-to-face experience is just too important, not only as a tool for education but for creating the social relationships that are the real stuff of life.

15 comments:

  1. "Young women could help college men towards this radical transformation by refusing to act as though they see themselves as worthy of no more than short-term amorous encounters."

    But that assumes a frame by which young people see a person's participation in sex as a measure of worth or lack thereof. And let's be honest here. You are suggesting that the length of an amorous encounter is a measure of the WOMAN's worth. Such a frame is in itself degrading to women because it implies that her worth is tied primarily or entirely to her sexuality rather than traits such as kindness, hard work, resilience, charity. I think women (and men too ) would benefit by flatly rejecting such a frame. And, while I can't prove it, my sense is that in the demographic we are considering, they mostly have.

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  2. When a woman hooks up, or, as Nancy Bauer put it, provides a sexual service to a man she barely knows, she, not I, is defining herself entirely as a function of her sexuality.

    If she insists on getting to know a man before engaging in any sexual acts she is asking to be valued by her other good character traits.

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  3. Stuart at 735 am,

    Not at all!

    First of all, It is nonsensical to assume that a hook up is a woman providing a service to a man! Such a view assumes that women are incapable of experiencing sexual pleasure. Women don't hook up because they are self hating morons. They hook up for the same reason men hook up - because it is really FUN!

    Second, I don't think that a woman who has casual sex is defining herself entirely in terms of sex. Nor is a man who engages in casual sex defining himself entirely in terms of sex. The RELATIONSHIP between the man and woman in a hook up may be limited to sex but that is very different than a woman saying, "I have no worth except sex."

    And again, I have to note that again, you appear to assume it is only the woman's worth or lack thereof that is defined by her willingness to hook up? Is this because you take it for granted that, of course, the man has something to offer besides sex, regardless of how quickly he puts out?

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  4. "You are suggesting that the length of an amorous encounter is a measure of the WOMAN's worth. Such a frame is in itself degrading to women because it implies that her worth is tied primarily or entirely to her sexuality...."

    Whether or not such a suggestion is actually being made is irrelevant. What is relevant is that, in large measure, a woman's worth is actually tied to such a thing.

    Alway has been, and -- except for "enlightened" couples who will non-breed, small breed, or abort themselves out of the mix -- always will be.

    And while we are thinking about "worth," how much negative worth does a woman incur when she comes to the marriage dragging $50,000 to $100,000 in education debt? Any man worth marrying would run from such a reverse dowry.

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  5. One does need to understand that men and women are not the same and that sex for the one is not the same as sex for the other. I realize that feminists insist on seeing them as the same, but that's just a wish.

    As for whether or not women enjoy hookups, for the most part they do not. See Susan Walsh's blog Hooking Up Smart.

    See also the new best seller from France, Sophie Fontanel's L'Envie, which is going to be translated as The Art of Sleeping alone.

    Here's an article from The London Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/9975971/The-non-sexual-life-of-Sophie-Fontanel.html

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  6. Vanderleun,

    Sure, you and guys like you may view a woman's worth in those terms but it doesn't follow that it is a good idea for a woman to buy into that frame. Her reward for doing so will be a celibate life in college followed by marriage to a man who views her worth primarily in terms of her sexuality? Somehow I don't picture lots of women at elite colleges eagerly signing up.

    Your point about debt is a good one, but the size of a potential husband's debt is important too.

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  7. I never said there are no group differences between the sexes. But I find it difficult-to-impossible to believe that women who hook up - some of whom are the most privileged and entitled women in the world at the most elite colleges- are engaging in an activity they hate just in order to service men with no reward. Plus, hooking up was popular when I went to college and I know for a fact that women do it because it is fun.

    That said, the Sophie Fontanel raises an important point. Not every woman feels the same way. Some may indeed prefer celibacy, or want sex only in committed relationships. To each her own. I didn't see anything in Fontanel's comments about celibacy in the Telegraph with which I disagree. The great thing about the feminist practice of not allowing guys to dictate one's worth based on one's penchant for casual sex is that it frees you up to choose celibacy, if that is one's inclination.

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  8. " But I find it difficult-to-impossible to believe that women who hook up - some of whom are the most privileged and entitled women in the world at the most elite colleges- are engaging in an activity they hate just in order to service men with no reward. Plus, hooking up was popular when I went to college and I know for a fact that women do it because it is fun."

    Lots of things are fun when they happen.

    That doesn't make them a good idea.

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  9. "And while we are thinking about "worth," how much negative worth does a woman incur when she comes to the marriage dragging $50,000 to $100,000 in education debt? Any man worth marrying would run from such a reverse dowry."

    This is my new theme.

    If more women are getting college degrees, more women are being larded up with debt.

    I'm so happy that I finished law school during the dot-com boom.

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  10. "Her reward for doing so will be a celibate life in college followed by marriage to a man who views her worth primarily in terms of her sexuality? Somehow I don't picture lots of women at elite colleges eagerly signing up."

    I think his argument is that it's a hardwired feature of human nature (biology) that's not going to go away as long as there is human nature.

    I suppose it could also be a cultural chaotic strange attractor.

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  11. I'm thinking that there is some confusion over terminology. The difference, as I see it is not between hooking up and celibacy. It is between engaging in random sexual encounters with people one does not know and engaging in sexual activities within the context of a relationship.

    I have reported on the blog and I am sure than Susan Walsh has reported on it also, but all the studies suggest that women who indulge a lot of anonymous sex suffer emotionally, while women in college who have sex within the context of a relationship do very well.

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  12. No, I wasn't confused about terminology, but I do think it is a fair point that the choices for single women are not just celibacy or hooking up. A lot of women in college have sex with boyfriends in the context of a long term but not necessarily lifelong relationships. Any one of these options can work for particular women, depending on her circumstances and temperament.

    I look upon "studies" puporting to show that hook ups cause women misery with a skeptical eye. They tend to come from ideologically driven groups like the Independent Women's Forum, and they tend to be pushed by folks exactly like Susan Walsh - a woman with an admitted antipathy towards women who hook up. Far from being genuinely concerned for the well-being of such women, she can't wait to to slap them with the "slut" label. It is no coincidence that the clear majority of her commenters are men. She fairly revels in the supposed suffering of her targets. And I will say that the thesis of Hanna Rosin, that hook up culture is driven in part by campus women who like sex but have no time for boyfriends or marriage, rings true to me, based on my own observations of single women going back to my own college and grad school days.

    I also think that all the handwringing from us older folks about whether young women are happy or whether certain of their choices might lead to emotional distress comes off as incredibly condescending, and thus unlikely to be heeded in any case. Certainly, any individual woman is in a better position than a study or some random person with a blog to determine what is likely to make her happy - because she knows herself as an individual better than anyone else.

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  13. Another thing that gets lost in all these discussions are the feelings of the young men. The assumption tends to be that they are unfeeling sexual automatons who are always happy to get whatever sex they can without ever feeling anything for their short term sexual partners. I think young men themselves push this narrative out of pride and machismo. But whenever in my life I've gotten to know men - relatives, friends, amorous partners, etc. - they always turn out to be far more sensitive than popularly portrayed.

    I do think that feelings can certainly get hurt in the hook up scene. I think it is quite fair to impart to both men and women to treat each other with kindness and respect in every context, including the hook up context - and to remind women that we are not the only one's with feelings and not the only ones who may end up wanting more from a hook up.

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  14. "They tend to come from ideologically driven groups like the Independent Women's Forum, and they tend to be pushed by folks exactly like Susan Walsh - a woman with an admitted antipathy towards women who hook up. Far from being genuinely concerned for the well-being of such women, she can't wait to to slap them with the "slut" label. It is no coincidence that the clear majority of her commenters are men."

    I don't think that you've read her blog very carefully.

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  15. "I also think that all the handwringing from us older folks about whether young women are happy or whether certain of their choices might lead to emotional distress comes off as incredibly condescending, and thus unlikely to be heeded in any case. Certainly, any individual woman is in a better position than a study or some random person with a blog to determine what is likely to make her happy - because she knows herself as an individual better than anyone else"

    "That old bald cheater, time."

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