Kreager, Derek A et al. 2014. “ ‘Where have all the good men gone?’ Gendered Interaction in Online Dating.” Journal of Marriage and Family 76: 387-410.
Online dating has become a more and more acceptable and common strategy for mate selection. It offers data through which we can observe the important insights into the earliest stages of relationship formation. This article uses 6-month data of heterosexual online daters who were active on a midsized Southwestern metropolitan dating site to test three primary hypotheses for the ways in which gender, agency and preferences altogether shape the prospects of a first date. First, both men and women tend to send messages to the most desirable partners regardless of their own desirability levels. Second, those who send messages to initiate a relationship are more likely to seize the initiator advantage. Since men are more likely to be the initiators compared with women are, for women, by relying on men to do that, they often forego the promise of online dating and are left wondering where all the good men have gone. So it remains a gendered process either online or off. Third, the homophily remains online as process. It emerges through an interactive social process rather than initial homophilous preference. The reciprocity interaction reduces the between-partner desirability gap.
交友网站正在被越来越多的人所接受，也逐渐成为人们寻找伴侣的场所。这篇文章通过美国一个中等西南部城市的一个交友网站，向我们展示了在正式亲密关系建立之前，社会性别、主体性和偏好等因素是如何互相影响的。作者主要分析了2010-2011内6个月的网友信息（8259男性，6274位女性）。首先，男性和女性都更倾向于给社会吸引力(social desirability)指数最高的异性朋友发出邀请，这个和他们自己的社会吸引力指数并不相关。其次，主动提出交友邀请的人会占据一定的优势。由于男性比女性在交友网站上更主动，那些比较被动的女性往往会错失机会。这表明社会对于女性的期待在交友网站上依然决定了她们的行为模式。最终，交友网站上也呈现出同质性。同质性是依赖于两性之间的互动过程而达到的，并不是由一开始同质性偏好所决定。重复的互动过程缩小了两性之间最初的社会吸引力指数的差距。