Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[NailedLegs]

It seems like the 6’6” preference in online dating is also backed up by a comprehensive 2006 study from the university of Chicago:

https://home.uchicago.edu/~hortacsu/onlinedating.pdf (see page 48 table 5.5)

I would agree with you and Bodybuilder though that the actual peak in reality would be somewhere around 6’1” - 6’2”. And that as to LL the actual benefits to pain, cost and risk ratio would stop somewhere around going from 5’8” - 5’11” or similar.

The 6’6” thing might simply be an occurrence of online dating bias.

Thank you for posting this, I will delve into this one.

"Our paper contributes to this literature using a novel data set obtained from an online dating service."

What online dating service? And did the online dating service give it to them directly, or a third party, private organization such as Statista? I won't repeat what I already said in regards to Statista for brevity. Also, what about this is "novel"? Is this previously unexplored and never heard of data, as in it's the first time showing that women want a man that's 6'6"? If so, doesn't that imply the data is not typical? Shouldn't we only care about typical outcomes AKA the average? Is this a statistical outlier? I am asking these questions because I am curious what other people here think, and also because of the vagueness. I am not a professional researcher, but I am a man interested in these topics.

"Online dating provides us with a market environment where the participants’ choice sets and actual choices are observable to the researcher.3 "

"3To be precise, we do not observe the site users’ opportunities outside the dating site. However, we observe them browsing multiple alternatives on the site and their choices, which allows us to infer their relative rankings of these potential mates."

Hmm, I'm uncertain of this method in assessing the data and it's really based on a lot of assumptions. Online dating is quite different than in person.

"Our preference estimation approach relies on the well-defined institutional environment of the dating site, where a user first views the posted “profile” of a potential mate, and then decides whether to contact that mate by e-mail. This environment allows us to use a straightforward estimation strategy based on the assumption that a user contacts a partner if and only if the potential utility from a match with that partner exceeds a threshold value (a “minimum standard” for a mate)."

So first contact is determined by who gets an email from a new person for the first time.

"Our data set contains socioeconomic and demographic information and a detailed account of the website activities of approximately 22,000 users of a major online dating service. 10,721 users were located in the Boston area, and 11,024 users were located in San Diego."

"We observe the users’ activities over a period of three and a half months in 2003"

Approximately 20,000 users in two different cities were sampled, over the course of 3 and a half months in 2003, this is good to know.

"Our data set contains detailed (although self-reported) information regarding the physical attributes of the users."

"Interestingly, there also appears to be a significant height premium for men: a one inch increase is related to a 1.4% increase in earnings."

So the data is self reported(Finances isn't physical attributes, but I assume this was just an oversight/error because how would they know how much the users were making??), but it correlates with other studies saying more height = more money. Nothing new here.

"Men and women in the lowest decile receive only about half as many e-mails as members whose rating is in the fourth decile, while the users in the top decile are contacted about twice as often. Overall, the relationship between outcomes and looks is similar for men and women. However, there is a surprising “superstar effect” for men. Men in the top five percent of ratings receive almost twice as many first contacts as the next five percent; for women, on the other hand, the analogous difference in outcomes is much smaller."

80/20 rule. 20% of men get 80% of the women. Although here, it really shows how much of a difference there is even between the top 5% men and the top 10% men!

"Height matters for both men and women, but mostly in opposite directions. Women like tall men (Figure 5.4). Men in the 6’3 - 6’4 range, for example, receive 65% more first-contact e-mails than men in the 5’7 - 5’8 range"

First mention of height thus far. So men in the ~99th percentile of height get 65% more first-contact emails than men in the ~28th percentile of height. But that is a relative number, not an absolute. 2 messages compared to 1 message would be a 100% increase...but it's still only two. So it's difficult to get a full grasp on the situation here. Still, I am not surprised at all that tall men get messaged more/are more attractive than short men. I don't think that's disputed.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_11/sr11_246.pdf

https://www.gigacalculator.com/calculators/height-percentile-calculator.php

"For women, on the other hand, the optimal BMI is about 17, which is considered under-weight and corresponds to the figure of a supermodel. A woman with such a BMI receives 90% more first-contact e-mails than a woman with a BMI of 25"

Interesting!

"Relative to incomes below $50,000, the increase in the expected number of first contacts is at least 34% and as large as 151% for incomes in excess of $250,00"

The % increase here is substantially more than the height one, wow! Approximately ~306k is considered the 99th percentile, according to the WSJ calculator below. One flaw is that it's from 2014, not 2003, and so the numbers would've been much lower back then to be considered 99th percentile. Luckily, there is the data towards the bottom showing that approximately ~3.5% of the users have an income of $200,001 or more. That's more than the average even today, and the data is self reported...so let's be honest, a lot of the men were probably lying here. But same with their height.

https://graphics.wsj.com/what-percent/

Table 5.4 is interesting, how much $ a man needs to make up for his bad looks compared to the top 90th percentile to get similar results.

Table 5.5 is similar to the above, but with height. A 5'2" man needs to make 331,500$ a year to be as desirable as a 5'11.5" man making only 62,500$. Now this is the first time I've seen any mention of 6'6". A 6'6" man gets -63, so presumably he could literally make zero dollars and still get the same amount of first-contact emails as a man that is 5'11.5" and makes 62,500$? Because a man being 6'6" is VERY, VERY rare, 99.96th percentile....~20,000 sample size, and with approximately half of the userbase being male/female...That's 4 men. There are 4 men in the ENTIRE sample size that would be 6'6"+...SELF REPORTED.

Figure 5.2 shows first contacts and their looks ratings(Read the paper if you want to see how they determined looks ratings). The top 96th percentile of men get a HUGE jump over of about 200% over the men in the 91-95th percentile! Wow!

IF YOU'VE MADE IT THIS FAR AFTER THIS WAYYY TOO LONG WRITE UP...LOL...I FINALLY HAVE THE ANSWER THAT YOU'VE BEEN WAITING FOR!

At what height does your romantic pursuits/dating life decrease? Is it 6'6" as another poster said? Is the Bumble data accurate? NO.

Figure 5.4 on page 56 shows that men receive steadily more % first contact emails from women, up until about 6'3"-6'4". On average, men in the 6'5"-6'6" range will receive less first contacts than men in the 6'3"-6'4"! The "Bumble data" claiming 6'6" is the best height when it comes to dating is false!

Important note:

-Going from 5'7"-5'8" to 5'11"-6'0" will increase your first contacts by 50%. But going from 5'11"-6'0" to 6'3"-6'4" will only increase your first contacts by ~%20.

-The "bumble data" is based off of filters set by women. The dataset from this paper is based off of actual first-contact emails being sent to another person. Essentially, the way it's being "measured" is different. This is a very important distinction to make!

Tl;dr

-6'6" is not the best height when it comes to dating, and your chances will decrease if you are 6'6"+ because you are simply too tall.

-There is a huge difference going up to 6'0" in height, every inch counts when it comes to dating, but the difference is much smaller thereafter.

-This paper alleges that 6'3"-6'4" is the "best height" when it comes to dating, although with diminishing returns.

[Omar]

Thank you for posting this, I will delve into this one.

"Our paper contributes to this literature using a novel data set obtained from an online dating service."

What online dating service? And did the online dating service give it to them directly, or a third party, private organization such as Statista? I won't repeat what I already said in regards to Statista for brevity. Also, what about this is "novel"? Is this previously unexplored and never heard of data, as in it's the first time showing that women want a man that's 6'6"? If so, doesn't that imply the data is not typical? Shouldn't we only care about typical outcomes AKA the average? Is this a statistical outlier? I am asking these questions because I am curious what other people here think, and also because of the vagueness. I am not a professional researcher, but I am a man interested in these topics.

"Online dating provides us with a market environment where the participants’ choice sets and actual choices are observable to the researcher.3 "

"3To be precise, we do not observe the site users’ opportunities outside the dating site. However, we observe them browsing multiple alternatives on the site and their choices, which allows us to infer their relative rankings of these potential mates."

Hmm, I'm uncertain of this method in assessing the data and it's really based on a lot of assumptions. Online dating is quite different than in person.

"Our preference estimation approach relies on the well-defined institutional environment of the dating site, where a user first views the posted “profile” of a potential mate, and then decides whether to contact that mate by e-mail. This environment allows us to use a straightforward estimation strategy based on the assumption that a user contacts a partner if and only if the potential utility from a match with that partner exceeds a threshold value (a “minimum standard” for a mate)."

So first contact is determined by who gets an email from a new person for the first time.

"Our data set contains socioeconomic and demographic information and a detailed account of the website activities of approximately 22,000 users of a major online dating service. 10,721 users were located in the Boston area, and 11,024 users were located in San Diego."

"We observe the users’ activities over a period of three and a half months in 2003"

Approximately 20,000 users in two different cities were sampled, over the course of 3 and a half months in 2003, this is good to know.

"Our data set contains detailed (although self-reported) information regarding the physical attributes of the users."

"Interestingly, there also appears to be a significant height premium for men: a one inch increase is related to a 1.4% increase in earnings."

So the data is self reported(Finances isn't physical attributes, but I assume this was just an oversight/error because how would they know how much the users were making??), but it correlates with other studies saying more height = more money. Nothing new here.

"Men and women in the lowest decile receive only about half as many e-mails as members whose rating is in the fourth decile, while the users in the top decile are contacted about twice as often. Overall, the relationship between outcomes and looks is similar for men and women. However, there is a surprising “superstar effect” for men. Men in the top five percent of ratings receive almost twice as many first contacts as the next five percent; for women, on the other hand, the analogous difference in outcomes is much smaller."

80/20 rule. 20% of men get 80% of the women. Although here, it really shows how much of a difference there is even between the top 5% men and the top 10% men!

"Height matters for both men and women, but mostly in opposite directions. Women like tall men (Figure 5.4). Men in the 6’3 - 6’4 range, for example, receive 65% more first-contact e-mails than men in the 5’7 - 5’8 range"

First mention of height thus far. So men in the ~99th percentile of height get 65% more first-contact emails than men in the ~28th percentile of height. But that is a relative number, not an absolute. 2 messages compared to 1 message would be a 100% increase...but it's still only two. So it's difficult to get a full grasp on the situation here. Still, I am not surprised at all that tall men get messaged more/are more attractive than short men. I don't think that's disputed.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_11/sr11_246.pdf

https://www.gigacalculator.com/calculators/height-percentile-calculator.php

"For women, on the other hand, the optimal BMI is about 17, which is considered under-weight and corresponds to the figure of a supermodel. A woman with such a BMI receives 90% more first-contact e-mails than a woman with a BMI of 25"

Interesting!

"Relative to incomes below $50,000, the increase in the expected number of first contacts is at least 34% and as large as 151% for incomes in excess of $250,00"

The % increase here is substantially more than the height one, wow! Approximately ~306k is considered the 99th percentile, according to the WSJ calculator below. One flaw is that it's from 2014, not 2003, and so the numbers would've been much lower back then to be considered 99th percentile. Luckily, there is the data towards the bottom showing that approximately ~3.5% of the users have an income of $200,001 or more. That's more than the average even today, and the data is self reported...so let's be honest, a lot of the men were probably lying here. But same with their height.

https://graphics.wsj.com/what-percent/

Table 5.4 is interesting, how much $ a man needs to make up for his bad looks compared to the top 90th percentile to get similar results.

Table 5.5 is similar to the above, but with height. A 5'2" man needs to make 331,500$ a year to be as desirable as a 5'11.5" man making only 62,500$. Now this is the first time I've seen any mention of 6'6". A 6'6" man gets -63, so presumably he could literally make zero dollars and still get the same amount of first-contact emails as a man that is 5'11.5" and makes 62,500$? Because a man being 6'6" is VERY, VERY rare, 99.96th percentile....~20,000 sample size, and with approximately half of the userbase being male/female...That's 4 men. There are 4 men in the ENTIRE sample size that would be 6'6"+...SELF REPORTED.

Figure 5.2 shows first contacts and their looks ratings(Read the paper if you want to see how they determined looks ratings). The top 96th percentile of men get a HUGE jump over of about 200% over the men in the 91-95th percentile! Wow!

IF YOU'VE MADE IT THIS FAR AFTER THIS WAYYY TOO LONG WRITE UP...LOL...I FINALLY HAVE THE ANSWER THAT YOU'VE BEEN WAITING FOR!

At what height does your romantic pursuits/dating life decrease? Is it 6'6" as another poster said? Is the Bumble data accurate? NO.

Figure 5.4 on page 56 shows that men receive steadily more % first contact emails from women, up until about 6'3"-6'4". On average, men in the 6'5"-6'6" range will receive less first contacts than men in the 6'3"-6'4"! The "Bumble data" claiming 6'6" is the best height when it comes to dating is false!

Important note:

-Going from 5'7"-5'8" to 5'11"-6'0" will increase your first contacts by 50%. But going from 5'11"-6'0" to 6'3"-6'4" will only increase your first contacts by ~%20.

-The "bumble data" is based off of filters set by women. The dataset from this paper is based off of actual first-contact emails being sent to another person. Essentially, the way it's being "measured" is different. This is a very important distinction to make!

Tl;dr

-6'6" is not the best height when it comes to dating, and your chances will decrease if you are 6'6"+ because you are simply too tall.

-There is a huge difference going up to 6'0" in height, every inch counts when it comes to dating, but the difference is much smaller thereafter.

-This paper alleges that 6'3"-6'4" is the "best height" when it comes to dating, although with diminishing returns.

your reasoning is wrong or your study is completely stupid.  the perfect height of a man is not 6'3 - 6'4.  Unless you measure yourself in shoes and even then, I don't think you have the idea of ​​sizes.  Recently when I'm between 5'11-6 a girl told me that I was tall and that I must please a lot of girls.  she was not tall.  a fairly tall girl around 5'9 said that when it exceeds 6'3 it becomes too tall and that the ideal is around 6' to 6'3.  Besides, modeling tends to require heights of 6'1 ​​and 6'2 and there is good reason for that.  if you want to play basketball then yes 6'4 is not a luxury.  I think you should stop coming up with figures out of nowhere or bogus studies in the future.

[NailedLegs]

your reasoning is wrong or your study is completely stupid.  the perfect height of a man is not 6'3 - 6'4.  Unless you measure yourself in shoes and even then, I don't think you have the idea of ​​sizes.  Recently when I'm between 5'11-6 a girl told me that I was tall and that I must please a lot of girls.  she was not tall.  a fairly tall girl around 5'9 said that when it exceeds 6'3 it becomes too tall and that the ideal is around 6' to 6'3.  Besides, modeling tends to require heights of 6'1 ​​and 6'2 and there is good reason for that.  if you want to play basketball then yes 6'4 is not a luxury.  I think you should stop coming up with figures out of nowhere or bogus studies in the future.

I was responding to another commenter, TheDream, who posted the study. This was spurred by a previous post regarding the "bumble data". The premise was that 6'6" is the "best height" for dating.

Coming up with figures out of nowhere? I quoted those excerpts directly from the study TheDream posted. Those are not mine, but what the study at least claims. Bogus studies? The "bumble data"/Statista I believe is bogus, sure.

You are very accusatory without even reading this entire thread. Go back, read everything, before you comment again. You don't know the context of the conversation. We are trying to have an intelligent discussion, and your anecdotes, along with your reading comprehension, is pitiful.

[Omar]

I was responding to another commenter, TheDream, who posted the study. This was spurred by a previous post regarding the "bumble data". The premise was that 6'6" is the "best height" for dating.

Coming up with figures out of nowhere? I quoted those excerpts directly from the study TheDream posted. Those are not mine, but what the study at least claims. Bogus studies? The "bumble data"/Statista I believe is bogus, sure.

You are very accusatory without even reading this entire thread. Go back, read everything, before you comment again. You don't know the context of the conversation. We are trying to have an intelligent discussion, and your anecdotes, along with your reading comprehension, is pitiful.

It’s your comment that’s pitiful.  you don't accept the fact that you're wrong.  Your study is already bogus because the sources are dubious and if you wanted a more reliable study, take an interest in the newspaper.  a study posted a few days ago on this forum showed that the optimal height was between 6'-6'2 with data from 1500 real men and women.  If you are frustrated for whatever reason you don't need to talk bad to people or make yourself feel smarter.  I really think you're frustrated like the nervous kid who wants to pick on everyone.  peace

[Omar]

I was responding to another commenter, TheDream, who posted the study. This was spurred by a previous post regarding the "bumble data". The premise was that 6'6" is the "best height" for dating.

Coming up with figures out of nowhere? I quoted those excerpts directly from the study TheDream posted. Those are not mine, but what the study at least claims. Bogus studies? The "bumble data"/Statista I believe is bogus, sure.

You are very accusatory without even reading this entire thread. Go back, read everything, before you comment again. You don't know the context of the conversation. We are trying to have an intelligent discussion, and your anecdotes, along with your reading comprehension, is pitiful.

you are making an argument on a false study.  When I walk in the street and I look at a turd, I don't stand in front of it and check if it's a big or small turd.  you claim things based on your own experience ok but why say it's the absolute truth

[Acemace86]

The plethora of research seems to support this post. The Goldilocks zone is 5’10 to 6’

[NailedLegs]

It’s your comment that’s pitiful.  you don't accept the fact that you're wrong.  Your study is already bogus because the sources are dubious and if you wanted a more reliable study, take an interest in the newspaper.  a study posted a few days ago on this forum showed that the optimal height was between 6'-6'2 with data from 1500 real men and women.  If you are frustrated for whatever reason you don't need to talk bad to people or make yourself feel smarter.  I really think you're frustrated like the nervous kid who wants to pick on everyone.  peace

Someone posted a study I hadn't seen before, so I dug into it to see what it said. I wasn't claiming it was right or wrong, I was curious what it said and took some excerpts from it. What you think is up to you. Most people are not going to read that whole study, especially not you since you can't even read this thread. So by picking out some of the interesting topics, and hopefully help answer the alleged position that "6'6" is best for dating", we can get closer to the truth...which is that 6'6" is NOT the "best height". But you completely missed that.

You're an idiot if this is what you took away from my post. You have zero reading comprehension. Once again, you didn't read the thread but instead read a few sentences and your pea-sized brain ran with it.

Do you understand that I wasn't the one claiming that "6'6" is best for dating"? I was refuting that, not agreeing with that. Is English not your native language? If so, then I would understand why you seemingly cannot read it. Do you understand that I also agree that somewhere in the 6'0-6'2"(Absolutely NO more than 6'3") range is the "optimal height"? You need to get your eyes checked because you are seeing stuff that isn't even there. I don't know if you're trolling and just pretending to be room-temp IQ, but you should really slow down and try to read what was posted in this thread from start to finish.

[TheDream]

It’s your comment that’s pitiful.  you don't accept the fact that you're wrong.  Your study is already bogus because the sources are dubious and if you wanted a more reliable study, take an interest in the newspaper.  a study posted a few days ago on this forum showed that the optimal height was between 6'-6'2 with data from 1500 real men and women.  If you are frustrated for whatever reason you don't need to talk bad to people or make yourself feel smarter.  I really think you're frustrated like the nervous kid who wants to pick on everyone.  peace

Omar relax no one is saying 6’4” or 6’6” is the perfect height we are just discussing the few studies available on online dating, which are obviously biased but talking about it helps understand why.

[short but sweet]

only paid users in bumble can use height filters, it's not a useful study, only the most braindead women will pay a dating app

depends on your where you live
in the US , users have access to one filter for free , guess which women choose ?

These heights are only for basketball players. Everything over 6.3 is too tall to have any further benefit and the difference with the average height woman will be abnormally huge. I too believe that after 6.2 a man has no benefit to become taller. Even at these heights many women would prefer a 6ft man conpared to a 6.2 one.

the problem is that these days , most zoomer white girls are in the 5'5-5'7 range , and when they put on 6' heels , the 6ft guy suddenly seems less tall.
Also,women nowadays are in a dck measuring contest about who has the tallest bf in their group.This craze is being fueled by tiktok videos villifying short men and worshipping tall ones.So taller the better.

Anyone could've made the graph, faked it, then posted it online to 'stir the pot'

Ok , tnen why stop at 6'6 , why not claim that 7' is the best height ?

if you wanted a more reliable study, take an interest in the newspaper.  a study posted a few days ago on this forum showed that the optimal height was between 6'-6'2 with data from 1500 real men and women.

That study is 20 years old , 6 feet was a good height back then since few men were that height
most zoomer white guys are insanely tall, just take a stroll through your local uni campus if you don't believe me

[epoc]

Sounds like you had a perfect outcome. Not thinking or worrying about height anymore is definitely the goal of LL in my opinion.

Dude you are mad coping. Door frames are 6'8. So you start grazing them at 6'7 if you have shoes on. The optimal height is 6'4 because you are taller than almost anyone without any real drawbacks.