Does Height Matter? An Examination of Height Preferences in Romantic Coupling

Date
2014
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Sage
Abstract

Amidst increasingly equality in belief and in practice between the sexes, we ask if height preferences still matter, and if so, why people say they matter. First, we collected data from Yahoo! dating personal advertisements. Second, we used answers to open-ended questions in an online survey. The Yahoo! data document that height is still important in decisions to date but that it is more important to females than to males. Results from the online survey indicate that women wanted tall men for a variety of reasons, but most of the explanations of our respondents were connected to societal expectations or gender stereotypes. Gender-based legitimation of height preferences seem to be more central than evolutionary-based legitimation, but future work may discover a more nuanced interpretation.

Description
Advisor
Degree
Type
Journal article
Keywords
Citation

Yancey, George and Emerson, Michael O.. "Does Height Matter? An Examination of Height Preferences in Romantic Coupling." Journal of Family Issues, (2014) Sage: 0192513X13519256. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0192513X13519256.

Has part(s)
Forms part of
Rights
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Link to license
Citable link to this page