Both men and women tended to pursue mates just 25 percent more desirable than themselves—suggesting they are "optimistic realists." Christopher Intagliata reports.

男性和女性往往更倾向于追求比自己优秀25％的配偶——这表明他们是“乐观的现实主义者”。

克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔报道。

撰文播音：克里斯托弗•因塔利亚塔（Christopher Intagliata）

翻译：Neo

审校：许楠

Dating apps like Bumble and Tinder can help singles couple up. But online dating is also great for scientists.

类似Bumble和Tinder的交友应用程序，可以帮助单身男女配对。同时，科学家也可以分得一杯羹。

"There's so much folk wisdom about dating and very little hard evidence." Elizabeth Bruch is a computational social scientist at the University of Michigan who recently used online dating data to answer this question: "What does it mean for someone to be out of your league, and is there a way that we can study that using the techniques of network science?"

“我们有很多关于约会的民间妙方，却鲜有确凿的证据。”密歇根大学的计算社会科学家伊丽莎白布吕克最近用在线约会数据，回答了这个问题:“一个人与你的圈子不同意味着什么？我们能用网络科学技术来研究这个问题吗?”

Bruch and her colleague Mark Newman studied who swapped messages with whom on a popular online dating platform in the month of January 2014. They categorized users by desirability using PageRank, one of the algorithms behind search technology. Essentially, if you receive a dozen messages from desirable users, you must be more desirable than someone who receives the same number of messages from average users.

2014年1月，布吕克和她的同事马克· 纽曼研究了流行的在线约会平台上，有哪些人会相互交换信息。他们使用PageRank(搜索引擎背后的一种算法)对用户进行分类。从本质上讲，如果您从中意的用户那里接收了十多条消息，那么相比接收了来自普通用户的相同数量的消息来说，您就是更加理想的匹配对象。

Then they asked: How far "out of their league" do online daters tend to go when pursuing a partner? "I think people are optimistic realists."

有人问问:网上约会的人在追求伴侣的时候会“高攀”多少?

“我认为人们是乐观的现实主义者。”

In other words, they found that both men and women tended to pursue mates just 25 percent more desirable than themselves. "So they're being optimistic, but they're also taking into account their own relative position within this overall desirability hierarchy."

All the graphs and charts are in the journal Science Advances. [Elizabeth E. Bruch and M. E. J. Newman, Aspirational pursuit of mates in online dating markets]

换言之，研究员发现男性和女性都倾向于追求比自己优秀25%的伴侣。“所以他们很乐观，但同时他们也考虑了自己在这个整体理想等级体系中的相对地位。”相关研究的所有图表都刊登在《前沿科学》（Science Advances）杂志上[Elizabeth E. Bruch and M. E. J. Newman, Aspirational pursuit of mates in online dating markets]

And the study did have a few more lessons for people on the market: "I think one of the take-home messages from this study is that women could probably afford to be more aspirational in their mate pursuit."

这项研究也为市场上的人们提供了更多的信息:“我认为其中一条必知信息是：女性在追求伴侣时的期望值可能更高。”

They also found that both men and women—but especially women—write longer messages to more desirable partners. So are those wasted words? "What was interesting is it doesn't seem to pay off for women. The only group for whom this pays off is men in Seattle."

他们还发现，所有人都会给更中意的伴侣写更长的信息，尤其是女性。那么，这些是废话吗?“有趣的是，这似乎并没有给女性带来回报。”唯一得到了相应回报的是西雅图的男性群体。

And for everyone else, the big picture is this: "We don't have to kind of stab around in the dark, or behave based on some beliefs or norms about what is appropriate. We can actually know if our strategies are working and adjust our behavior accordingly."

而对其他人来说，情况大概是这样的:“我们不必漫无目的，也不必基于所谓合适的信念或准则行事。我们其实可以确切地知道我们的策略是否有效，并相应地调整我们的行为。”

In other words, better data could mean better dating.

换句话说，高质量的个人信息意味着高质量的约会。