Things change with age: Educational assortment in online dating

Abstract

To identify the factors that influence educational assortment in an online dating setting, we analyse 219,013 participant contacts by 41,936 members of the Australian online dating web site RSVP over a four-month period. Consistent with prior research, we find that more educated online daters are consistently likely to assort positively (homogamy) meaning that they are more likely to contact potential mates with the same level of education. However, as the more educated cohort gets older they care less about homogamy while less educated daters become more interested in homogamy which leads to an increase in similarity towards caring for the same educational level. On the other hand, older and more educated online daters are less likely to contact those with lower educational levels compared to their own while women are more likely to contact a potential mate with higher educational levels relative to their own (hypergamy). Our interaction analysis also reveals fewer differences in educational hypergamy among older online participants but a greater likelihood of online daters contacting mates with lower levels of education among younger males and older females. Further research is therefore warranted on technology's impact on human mating behaviour; in particular, the psychology employed by humans using the Internet to maximize their chances of matching their educational preferences in a mate.