Scientists study dating preferences

This research got a lot of publicity:

Men's choices did not reflect their stated preferences, the researchers concluded. Instead, men appeared to base their decisions mostly on the women's physical attractiveness.

The men also appeared to be much less choosy. Men tended to select nearly every woman above a certain minimum attractiveness threshold, Todd said.

Women's actual choices, like men's, did not reflect their stated preferences, but they made more discriminating choices, the researchers found.

The scientists said women were aware of the importance of their own attractiveness to men, and adjusted their expectations to select the more desirable guys.

All of this should have been too obvious to be news. The stated preferences of women may have little to do with their actual preferences, and women are harder to predict. My theory is that men divide women into two groups -- those who are sufficiently attractive to stimulate sexual arousal, and those who are not. Men only want to date women in the first group. Beyond that, men are subject to the much greater choosiness of women.