Hypergamy

is crowned in this 1860 woodcut by Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld. In social science, hypergamy (colloquially referred to as marrying up or dating up) originally referred to marrying or dating someone of higher socioeconomic class; today more commonly (especially colloquially and in evolutionary psychology) however, it refers to partnering with someone of higher general/composite mate value. The antonym hypogamy refers to the inverse, a preference for dating or marrying someone of lower mate value or socioeconomic class. The term hypergyny can also be used to describe the practice of women marrying up. Concepts such as hypergamy, hypogamy, and hypergyny could be considered special cases of mésalliance.

is crowned in this 1860 woodcut by Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld.]] In social science, hypergamy (colloquially referred to as marrying up or dating up) originally referred to marrying or dating someone of higher socioeconomic class; today more commonly (especially colloquially and in evolutionary psychology) however, it refers to partnering with someone of higher general/composite mate value. The antonym hypogamy refers to the inverse, a preference for dating or marrying someone of lower mate value or socioeconomic class. The term hypergyny can also be used to describe the practice of women marrying up. Concepts such as hypergamy, hypogamy, and hypergyny could be considered special cases of mésalliance. ==History== , depicting his view of hypergamy. ]] References to Hindu law books from the Indian subcontinent in the 19th century include the Sanskrit terms anuloma and pratiloma, respectively, for the concepts of hypergamy and hypogamy. The early Christian Church, through voices such as St. Basil the Great, sought to limit the effects of hypergamous customs, notably the large age gap that may have resulted from hypergamous mate selection. This guideline was not a part of church canon but some orthodox or Coptic churches recommend respective gaps of around 4–8 years or 1–15 years, with narrower age gaps recommended for younger couples. In some incel and manosphere circles, hypergamy has been invoked to explain the belief that women disproportionately prefer wealthy or conventionally attractive men. Before the 2014 Isla Vista attacks, the perpetrator Elliot Rodger posted a diagram depicting women abandoning most men in favor of a small number of desirable men; its final panel portrayed the rejected men as dead following a violent "revolution". David Futrelle writing in the feminist site We Hunted the Mammoth described the diagram as Rodger’s adaptation of a manosphere meme about supposed female hypergamy. Rodger expressed a similar belief in his manifesto, writing that attractive women selected "brutal" men rather than men who he considered more deserving, and he attributed women’s rejection of him to their freedom to choose sexual partners. ==Common hypergamic factors== ===Physical attractiveness=== In the context of evolutionary psychology and digital sociology, hypergamy by physical attractiveness refers to the tendency of individuals to seek partners who are perceived as more physically attractive than themselves. With the advent of big data from online dating platforms, researchers have begun to quantify these patterns, observing distinct disparities in how men and women evaluate and pursue attractiveness. Quantitative data from various dating platforms suggests a significant skew in how attractiveness is appraised. Data released by OkCupid indicated that while men tended to rate women on a traditional normal distribution (bell curve) of attractiveness, women rated approximately 80% of men as "below average" in physical appeal. Research into the intersection of race and physical attractiveness in online dating often highlights the persistence of specific demographic preferences. Studies published in journals such as Psychological Science and various sociological reviews have noted that in Western heterosexual dating markets, white men often receive a disproportionate amount of interest and higher attractiveness scores compared to other ethnic groups. Sociologists argue that these preferences are influenced by "sexual racism" or "racialized erotic capital", where Eurocentric beauty standards elevate the perceived desirability of certain groups. Data-driven analyses suggest that most attractive white men often occupy the "top tier" of the digital dating hierarchy, receiving the highest volume of positive signals from a broad spectrum of female users, which researchers interpret as a convergence of hypergamy and existing social hierarchies. ===Level of income=== In a 2016 paper that explored the income difference between couples in 1980 and 2012, researcher Yue Qian noted that the tendency for women to marry men with higher incomes than themselves still persists in the modern era. The observed gender cliff in the distribution of women's share to the household income at 50% can be explained by income hypergamy preferences by both men and women, together with gender pay gap. ===Level of education=== A study found traditional marriage practices in which men "marry down" and women "marry up" in education do not persist in countries where women have higher educational attainment. ==Evolutionary explanation of female hypergamy== From an evolutionary perspective (known as parental investment theory), the difference in what percent of males do females find physically attractive enough to have as a mate allows females to be the more selective sex, which in turn allow females to choose partners based on their ability and willingness to allocate resources toward them and any potential offspring. Especially in early courtship, financial spending functions as a costly signal, differentiating individuals who hold wealth from those willing to convert wealth into relational commitment and resource sharing. In 2008, economist Gilles Saint-Paul proposed a mathematical model that purports to demonstrate that human female hypergamy occurs because women have greater lost mating opportunity costs from monogamous mating (given their slower reproductive rate and limited window of fertility compared to men), and thus must be compensated for this cost of marriage. At the end of his introduction, Saint-Paul states his model is consistent with statistics published by Bertrand et al (2013¹) but also notes that in US Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) data gathered the same year "aggregate evidence is not so clear-cut." ==General differences by sex== Studies of mate selection in dozens of countries around the world have found men and women report prioritizing different traits when it comes to choosing a mate, with both groups favouring attractive partners in general, but that men tend to prefer women who are younger while women tend to prefer men who are richer, in higher socioeconomic standing or physically attractive. They argue that as societies shift towards becoming more gender-equal, women's mate selection preferences shift as well. Some research provides support for that theory, while other research contradicts it.

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