Have you ever wondered if unattractive couples find each other attractive? A study by researchers from Columbia, Carnegie Mellon and Duke address this question.  They utilized data from the website HOTorNOT.com to help them answer the following question:  “When less attractive people accept less attractive dates, do they persuade themselves that the people they choose to date are more physically attractive than others perceive them to be?”

The conclusion:  Less attractive people do not delude themselves into thinking that their dates are more physically attractive than others perceive them to be. “People tended . . . to judge targets’ attractiveness similarly regardless of how attractive they themselves were.”   In other words, that relatively unattractive female on a date with the ugly guy – she knows he’s ugly and vice versa.

Also, the study found that while people with similar levels of attractiveness tend to date one another, people in general do prefer to date others who are moderately more attractive than themselves BUT who are not overwhelmingly more attractive. I.E. people don’t want to be punching to high above their weight class.

A non-shocking finding: “males, compared with females, are less affected by their own attractiveness when choosing whom to date.”

Finally, the study re-confirmed that physical good looks don’t necessarily make one happier and having a more attractive date/mate doesn’t make one happier.

The title of the paper with the above results is called: “If I’m not hot, are you hot or not? Physical attractiveness evaluations and dating preferences as a function of one’s own attractiveness.” Link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18727782

Note: I could not think of a picture to go with this IFOD, so I decided a picture of NPH as Barney Stinson would be fun.