Not a Formula for a Person

The title “Love: Conditions Apply” should be read literally: formulas about relationships work only under a particular arrangement of choice, information and dependence. The book’s aim is more modest than a promise to calculate love: to examine probabilities, incentives, rules and typical mistakes without passing off an average as an individual life. Statistics tell you which outcome occurs more often. The conditions of a model show what a given arrangement leads to, and whether they match reality is checked separately. An evolutionary hypothesis offers a story about where a trait came from; neither inevitability nor a moral norm can be derived from that story. Between the mysticism of the unknowable human being and a table that supposedly exhausts him lies a large working territory.

Every chapter starts with a formula that looks sensible enough to trust. Sometimes it turns out to be nearly right, sometimes it works only in a social order that has vanished, sometimes it names the right effect with the wrong cause, and sometimes an unpleasant stereotype survives the check better than one would like — with narrower limits and without convenient moral conclusions. What should remain after the check is a more precise question and a set of variables a person can actually control. The dating app is still waiting on page one. The sliders are in place, and they are not useless: distance exists, attitudes to children matter, smoking is real enough. The convenient interface becomes a problem when it is taken for a map of desire itself. A great deal in love can be measured; the question is what the chosen ruler is measuring.

Main sources

Eastwick, P. W., & Finkel, E. J. (2008). Sex differences in mate preferences revisited: Do people know what they initially desire in a romantic partner? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(2), 245–264; Eastwick, P. W., Luchies, L. B., Finkel, E. J., & Hunt, L. L. (2014). The predictive validity of ideal partner preferences: A review and meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 140(3), 623–665.

Before the meeting there is no relationship, only a search problem: there are many people around, there is little information, and one’s own preferences seem clearer than they are. Market metaphors, rankings and algorithms are especially tempting here. They do help to see the constraints — the local circle, time, attention, the price of one more attempt — but they easily start presenting the constraints of the search as properties of a person.