Searching for a Mate: Evidence from a Speed Dating Experiment∗

We study dating behavior using data from a Speed Dating experiment where we generate random matching of subjects and create random variation in the number of potential partners. Our design allows us to directly observe individual decisions rather than just final matches. Women put greater weight on the intelligence and the race of partner, while men respond more to physical attractiveness. Moreover, men do not value women’s intelligence or ambition when it exceeds their own. Also, we find that women exhibit a preference for men who grew up in affluent neighborhoods. Finally, male selectivity is invariant to group size, while female selectivity is strongly increasing in group size. We provide a theoretical framework for interpreting these results. ∗We are grateful to Lawrence Katz, Edward Glaeser, and three anonymous referees for valuable suggestions. We would also like to thank Matthew Gentzkow, David Laibson, Jesse Shapiro, and participants at seminars at Stanford, Harvard, and MIT for insightful comments. Kamenica acknowledges support by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and the National Institute on Aging (Grant # T32-AG00186). We are solely responsible for all mistakes.