The ‘few simulation’ model of psychology professor helps us to dive into the mysteries of choice of size

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Are you waiting for the search for true love and which has always been elusive for the “right” person to get along with, or do you find that you go to the cutest guy or girl in the room and hope that things will work out? Do you leave options open in the hope of ‘swapping in’ at the next opportunity or are you investing in your relationship for the sake of cost-benefit analysis?

For something so fundamental to our existence, mate choice remains one of the most enduring mysteries of mankind. This has been intensive psychological research for decades, and it has led to numerous hypotheses as to why we choose who we choose.

“Choosing a partner is very complicated, especially with people,” says Dan Conroy-Beam, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology and Brain Sciences at UC Santa Barbara and author of an article in the journal. Personality and social psychological overview. “And there were a lot of people who came up with abstract ideas about how that could happen.”

One line of thinking, for example, states that we judge potential mates on the basis of an internal threshold of preferred traits and characteristics – a ‘minimum bar’ that they must meet in order to be considered a potential partner.

“And we learn where the minimum bar is based on how other people treat us,” he said. Another model describes the dating market as the European social dances of the 18th century.

“One side is approaching the other side and they are getting such temporary relationships going,” Conroy-Beam said. “And basically, you stay in a relationship until you get a better deal and everyone repeatedly puts their buddies down for better people.”

But these model models, and others like them, do not like much of the nuance associated with the selection of mates, Conroy-Beam noted.

“If you have a system that is very complicated like the market for human mating, verbal models are sometimes not such a good way to understand what’s going on,” he said. Competitive desires and social dynamics play a large part in the choice of size, he explained, adding low complexity and moving parts that cannot be captured or quantified.

So, what can keep different levels of detail and complexity of people? The next best thing: a computer simulation. In an effort to advance the understanding of mate choice, Conroy-Beam has developed a new approach – called ‘couple simulation’ – that actually tests models of mate choice on the characteristics and priorities of a sample of real couples.

“The real advantage we have here is that we just move away from these verbal models and use explicit computational models,” he said. “We simulate people’s right choices directly; we remove the limits of doing it in our own heads because we have computers that can keep track of all the complex interactions that are going on.”

Sim Dating

The process begins by measuring the characteristics and preferences of a population of a few hundred couples – real people who have made partner choices. The data is contained in simulated copies of each person – ‘avatar agents’ who have the same characteristics and desires as their peers, except in the simulated world in which they are single.

“We are breaking them out and throwing all these little agents into the market,” said Conroy-Beam, who received support for his research from the National Science Foundation’s Early Science Career program. “Then we use different algorithms to see which one works best to put it back together with the agent representing their real partner.”

The algorithms represent different models of size selection, which determines the rules according to which the agents can vary, based on the predictions of the model. In addition to the Aspiration Threshold Model (minimum bar) and the Gale-Shapley algorithm (optimizing stable pairs), the team also used the Kalick-Hamilton Model (KHM), which assumes that people choose mates according to their attractiveness, and ‘ proposed a new Conroy-Beam model called the Resource Allocation Model (RAM).

“It’s thinking about choosing a partner in terms of investing limited resources,” he said. “So you only have so much time and so much money and so much energy that you can devote to potential partners. And your question as the person looking for a partner is ‘who earns the most from these limited resources?’

Conroy-Beam’s model appears to be the most accurate and fits approximately 45% of the couples in the simulated market in the very first few simulations. What makes the resource allocation model work so well?

“There are a number of differences between RAM and the other models,” he said. “The other models treat attraction like an on / off switch, but RAM allows for attractiveness. It also contains reciprocity: the more a potential partner pursues you, the more you pursue them in return,” he said. The Gale-Shapley algorithm comes second, followed by the aspiration threshold model and then the KHM (attractiveness). Random pairings came last.

It’s still early days for couple simulation; After all, Conroy-Beam said, 45% right is still 55% wrong. For a first pass, however, the accuracy of 45% is impressive, and according to the study, the people in this group also report that they have higher quality relationships (more satisfied, more committed, more love, less jealous) than the people who are wrong were paired couples.

Conroy-Beam and his team at the Computational Mate Choice Lab at UCSB will continue to refine their models, which he calls ‘really rough sketches’, to increase accuracy. They hope to conduct a longer-term study soon to see if accurately predicted couples differ in longevity.

“We hope to do this across cultures, as well as to include couples in the near future,” he said. “We also have plans for the next few years to try to apply it to individuals to predict their future relationships.”


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More information:
Daniel Conroy-Beam. Couple simulation: a new approach to evaluating models of human choice, Personality and social psychological overview (2021). DOI: 10.1177 / 1088868320971258

Provided by the University of California – Santa Barbara

Quotation: The ‘few simulation’ model of psychology professor helps us to dive into the mysteries of mate choice (2021, 12 February), detected on 14 February 2021 from https://phys.org/news/2021-02-psychology-professor -couple-simulation- puzzles.html

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