Chapter 140 Question one twenty seven

Why is it that a man who likes dark-haired women is more likely to marry a wife who is more pleasant, healthy, beautiful, and intelligent than a man who prefers blondes? It is said that gentlemen like blondes, and many surveys and studies in western countries have confirmed this statement.Assuming a man can choose which hair color girl he prefers, is there any plausible reason for him to prefer dark hair? Here, each male's purchasing power in the informal market for marriage partners is equal to the given value assigned by the market to his particular combination of personalities.For any male, at least in the short term, this value is fixed.The basic idea of ​​economic models is that a man of a given value will eventually be paired with a woman of the same value.Therefore, nine-point men certainly hope to marry ten-point women, but ten-point women generally have better choices.It is more realistic for a nine-point man to marry a nine-point woman.

But there are many personality combinations that yield a given score of nine, whether male or female.For such people, a higher score on one personal characteristic means lower scores on all others.So, if blonde hair adds points to a woman's beauty score, then a nine-point blonde tends to score lower on other traits than a nine-point brunette.In general, except for hair color, she's probably not as healthy, not as smart, not as nice, not as pretty.Therefore, if a gentleman has a choice, it makes sense to prefer dark-haired girls. If pretty people are smarter than other people, and if blondes are always thought to be prettier, why are there jokes about stupid blondes?

A random Internet search will turn up a thousand jokes about dumb blondes, such as: The phone rings at 2 a.m. and wakes up a sleeping couple.The wife is a blonde, and she picks up the phone, listens for a moment, and says, how do I know, that's two hundred miles from here!Then hang up the phone.The husband asked, who is it?The wife said she didn't know.It's a woman who wants to know if the weather on the beach is good. ①(In the original text, the other party asked if the coast is clear?, which is a code word, meaning that the danger has passed. Obviously, the husband had an extramarital affair with another woman, but the blonde girl didn’t hear it, but literally Meaning to do understanding. Translator's Note)

These jokes present us with an economic conundrum.As mentioned earlier, there is evidence that men perceive blondes as more attractive than dark-haired women.There is also evidence that people who are perceived as good-looking are also, on average, smarter.So why are there so many jokes about dumb blondes? How smart others think you are depends not only on your natural intelligence, but also on how much you develop it by investing in education and training.On the other hand, the amount a person invests in education depends on how much return this investment can bring him (compared with investing in other aspects).If others do find blondes more attractive, then being born blonde may create opportunities that don't require major investments in education.

Therefore, there are more blondes who are less intelligent, perhaps not because they are born with lower intelligence than others, but because they rationally choose to invest less in education.Or, the brunettes were jealous of the blondes sitting around making jokes about stupid blondes whenever they had time. Critics of the impersonal, informal market model of human relationships proposed by economists have every reason to object that it ignores a number of important factors.Although this model helps explain some patterns in courtship periods, it does not take into account the role that commitment, an important factor, plays in successful marriages.For the most part, commitment has little to do with material factors.

Anyone who has ever dealt with a landlord knows the importance of commitment in a bilateral relationship.Let's say you just moved to a new city and need to find an apartment.If you're in L.A. or any other big city, you can't go and see thousands of vacant rooms in person.So, you'll look at a few properties against the list and get an idea of ​​what the room will look like in terms of price range, amenities, location, and other features you value.In the process of viewing houses, you find a house that seems to be just what you want.You want to get this house done.At times like this, you know there must be better apartments elsewhere, but your time is precious, and it doesn’t look like it’s economically viable, and you have to move on with your life.

After making up your mind, the next important thing is to get the landlord to make a commitment.Nobody wants to just move in and be told by the landlord that you have to wait another month.By then you've probably bought the curtains, hung the knick-knacks on the walls, installed the phone and broadband, etc.If you are forced to leave, not only will the investment be wiped out, but you will have to find a new place to live. The longer you live, the better for the landlord, too, because he has a lot of hassle and extra costs to rent out the apartment.He has to advertise and show rooms to dozens of potential tenants, none of whom are as stable and reliable as you seem.

As a result, even if you know there are better apartments elsewhere, and even if your landlord knows there may be better tenants than you, both of you have a strong incentive to commit and pass up those opportunities.It's standard practice to sign a lease lest one of you go back and agree to a more enticing offer from the other.If you move out, you will still have to pay rent for the duration of the tenancy.If the landlord wants you to leave, with a lease, you can refuse his request. The binding force of promises brought about by signing a lease increases the psychological price that tenants are willing to pay and lowers the psychological price that landlords are willing to accept.Many valuable transactions would not be possible without the security that a contractual commitment provides.Leases preclude valuable options, but that's what the signatories want the lease to accomplish.

In courtship, you're dealing with essentially the same commitment problem.You want a partner, but not just anyone.After dating for a while, you feel like you have a general idea of ​​who the right people are out there, what are their physical characteristics, what are their ethics and moral values, what are their recreational interests, what are their social and professional skills, and so on.Among the people you have met, you are particularly interested in a certain person.You feel like you've hit a stroke of luck, and the other person feels the same way about you.You both want to move on and start investing in your relationship.You want to get married, buy a house, have children.However, unless both of you want the relationship to last for a longer period of time, the above wishes mean nothing.

But what if something goes wrong?No matter what your spouse's vision of an ideal partner is, you know that someone else is closer to that ideal than you are.What if this person suddenly appeared?Or, what if one of you gets sick?Just as landlords and tenants seal the deal through commitment, so do marriage partners benefit from pre-existing future options. A marriage contract is a way of trying to make a satisfying promise.However, we have long discovered that legal marriage contracts are not well suited to creating a commitment that satisfies both parties.Even the cruel laws of antiquity can only force people to remain in a relationship with their spouse, even if they really want to leave.But this kind of marriage relationship has long deviated from the original goal that both parties expected to achieve.

If the legal contract is strengthened by love, a more secure commitment can be realized.The most obvious fact is that many marriages are not threatened even when new potential mates appear who are kinder, wealthier, and more attractive.People who are emotionally attached to their partners do not want to pursue new opportunities, even if they are more promising from a purely objective point of view. That's not to say that emotional commitment is foolproof.If you hear that your wife is planning to have a date with the popular American actor George.Clooney (George Clooney) has dinner, or her husband is going to have dinner with the popular American actress Scarlett.Scarlett Johansson went to have a drink, who is not a little nervous?Of course, even an imperfect emotional commitment can keep most couples from being jealous most of the time. The point is that this emotional commitment, even though it precludes potentially valuable opportunities in advance, can be of great benefit.In the cold, rational cost-benefit equation, the value of emotional commitment to a spouse is that it enhances investment returns.But beware of the subtleties of this.Emotional commitment prevents people from clearly weighing their relationship with their partner on a cost-benefit basis, which is where it works best. Evidence shows that people who are often overwhelmed in their marriages are more likely to be dissatisfied in their marriages; if a therapist tries to get people to think about their relationship with their spouse in terms of cost-benefits, it can make matters worse.Perhaps thinking about personal relationships in this way does not conform to the design given to us by biological evolution. Informal social relationship markets are also affected by the logic of supply and demand that governs other market behaviors. Each person's purchasing power in the informal market of marriage depends on the personal characteristics that person is born with. Many valuable transactions would not be possible without the security that a contractual commitment provides.