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Classical Theories of Mate Choice and the Relational Deficit in the Study of Relationship Formation

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The Structure of Digital Partner Choice

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Abstract

The analytical emphasis on the ‘individual’ within research on online dating markets, as outlined so far, is not a phenomenon unique to this specific subject area. It is also constitutive for a great deal of traditional and current research into the sociology of mating. Although there is no single coherent research program on mating processes in the social sciences, the individualistic paradigm also prevails in empirical research on offline partner markets, above all in its quantitative variation. This section will elaborate on the central components of the approach, constitutive for research on empirical mating processes both on and offline. The way these theoretical foundations are used and integrated by modern individualist mate choice researchers will then be illustrated. This dominant approach in the field of partner market research in contemporary empirical sociology can be characterized as a combination of theories of preference, choice, and social exchange, of several different market-related considerations, and drawing on further theoretical inspirations. Collectively, it constitutes a research paradigm which will henceforth be referred to as “mating as agency in structure”, or MAS. Subsequently, MAS will be examined with regard to its potential to include structure into the different models of individual mate choice. It will be then shown that individualistic mate choice research tries to overcome the restrictions inherent to methodological individualism and rational choice. This, in sum, will indicate the need for a relational notion of ‘structure’ in research on mating processes.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    His works, being essentially “concerned with demonstrating the applicability of formal economic analysis to a new, unusual subject” have inspired few empirical studies supporting his “abstract formalisms” (Frey and Eichenberger 1996: 188). Many sociologists refer to the historical and cultural peculiarities of his times and not to his Nobel Prize-winning formal work.

  2. 2.

    This scarcity of explicit works on sociological theories of mating processes can be interpreted as tacit consent to seeing individualism as the obvious approach to the realm of mate choice and partner market, thus making it pointless to suggest different theoretical approaches (in contrast to different hypotheses derived from the same paradigmatic foundation).

  3. 3.

    More recently, in a seminar description, Bruch (2015) states that “social scientists argue that two factors shape marriage and dating patterns: men and women’s preferences for partners, and the size and composition of the pool of potential mates”. https://www.nico.northwestern.edu/seminar-events/seminar-listings/2015/nov18.html

  4. 4.

    This also holds true of investigations of subjective structures of meaning, strategies, and self-presentation – some of which are based on the theories of Goffman (1959) – which analytically emphasize the phenomenological perception of the actors involved (Lawson and Leck 2006; Bergström 2011; Zillman et al. 2011).

  5. 5.

    Very close to the MAS paradigm outlined here, Hedström’s ‘mechanism approach’ emphasizes the same macro-micro/micro-macro procedure. A minor difference seems to be that the nomological core of analytical sociology is defined by the desire-belief-opportunity model, meaning that actors intend to act within their frames of opportunity and based on their beliefs. Similar to the social space approach, analytical sociology emphasizes the relevance of relations for grasping sociological mechanisms. A core methodological difference is constituted by the emphasis on simulation techniques for modeling the logics of aggregation.

  6. 6.

    The implicit assumption of market autonomy also precipitates within some parts of mate choice, axiomatic when finding that – in online dating – the ‘same’ empirical patterns of (educational) homophily can be observed as found in offline research and that – to the astonishment of the observer – somehow users “transfer their offline preferences to the online environment” (Schulz 2010: 506, o.t.).

  7. 7.

    It should be emphasized that within the theoretical framework of the utility model, Z is unspecified at the outset and can be made explicit according to very different and multiple criteria.

  8. 8.

    The tendency to abandon the strong assumption of stable preferences comes at the price of a lack of pre-situational mechanisms, which could explain non-contingent patterns of agency in mating.

  9. 9.

    One could think of mobilizing the individualistic life-course approach here, however, this further development of rational action theories has no theoretical concept for historizing the actor himself.

  10. 10.

    For a discussion of relational epistemology see Cassirer’s work ‘Substance and function’.

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    Andreas Schmitz

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Schmitz, A. (2017). Classical Theories of Mate Choice and the Relational Deficit in the Study of Relationship Formation. In: The Structure of Digital Partner Choice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43530-5_4

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