Just seeing the trailers of these kind of movies always made me barf a little in my mouth…It’s either the concept that’s gross or the guy who plays the lead or both, but needless to say, I’d rather not have to mini-barf not to mention it’s not exactly good when kissing if a hot guy come along…

I think one aspect that hasn’t been mentioned is that even when attractive (high reproductive value) women pair up with physically unattractive (low genetic mating value) men the woman is not physically attracted and often actually end up using the cuckold strategy; using one man for resources and another (more attractive and sexier) for reproduction. It’s a mixed strategy that has evolved throughout time.

And while there’s a 0.001-something of ugly men that manage to pair up with beautiful women through the use of money (socially-acceptable prostitution in a way) in a way assortative mating does ensure that people get what they deserve in terms of partners (i.e: ensuring ugly end up with other ugly people, physically desirables with other physically desirables etc) and that no one end up “cheating the system” so to speak.

Of course, I know evolution does not actually have “goals”. It’s just another of thinking about it. Offer and demand: people go for the hottest bed partner they can get. And basically since no one wants to pair up with people of lower reproductive value, everyone ends up with someone of similar desirability.

Unfortunately these movies plays up the loser guy’s delusions and actually contribute to creating creeps, mutazoids that thinks they can score with the local beauty, street harassment etc…  

The reason why beautiful women get together with ugly but wealthy men is that in our society (and many many others throughout history) beauty conveys status to women while wealth does the same for men. In societies where intellect and learning were valued (the Soviet Union pre-break-up, Europe Jewish societies pre-20th century), those traits conveyed status on men.

Fair or not, the value of beauty for women is pretty universal, even if the standards are somewhat (but not entirely) flexible.

The flaw in these movies is not that the women go for physically unattractive men, but that they bother with men who are low-status. Why oh why would they do that to their offspring? They wouldn't. But hey, it sells tickets – to low-status guys.

In a pre-agricultural society, social value, genetic value, and perceived self worth would be highly correlated, which could explain why a woman might use perceived self worth, which is much harder to fake, as the primary indicator of attractiveness. Still, the reality is that in our world today where genetic value is highly disjoint from social value and in many cases self worth, we see outliers that we describe as "having game."

The movie examples you described would not be popular if there was no semblance of truth in them. Selling a fantasy that totally collides with one's worldview is not a profitable endeavor. The reason they are successful is because most people know an outlier or two who give the mediocre hope of someday experiencing their fantasies. These movies are selling the idea that that outlier guy is no different from you, he just got lucky, and if you wait around long enough, you can too. The problem with most of these movies, I'll speak specifically to "She's Out of my League" since I've seen it, is that the situations illustrated show the fantasy from the perspective of the chump, totally missing the outlier characteristic of delusional perception of one's own value.

This strategy is in agreement with what we see in terms of female attractiveness toward men as well. During ovulation, women are attracted to physical characteristics more indicative of high testosterone individuals, and are much more likely to undertake a short term relationship with such an individual. Likewise, this is the period during which women are most likely to cheat on their boyfriends.

Monogamy is a bogus construct – i believe that hunter-gatherer societies had hugely more varied and quite frankly, interesting "arrangements" than the stultified monogamous straight-jacket we're all subjected to at present. There are partners to screw and partners to father/mother your kids (oh yea – then there's MILF's too…)

win!

Throw monogamy out the window if you want, but a woman can only be impregnated by one man at a time (at lengthy intervals), so it would seem logical that, slight fluctuations aside, there are probably trends in assortative mating that can be explored. The issue of ovulation is definitely an interesting one, as it brings up the issue of who a woman wants to impregnate her and who she wants (or thinks is a safe bet) as a long term parter, but in most cases do we think that a woman wants both in the same package if it's acquirable- this one does.

Greg brought up the question above of how assortative mating works- do people highest in attractive sort out in one pile and intelligence in another? What does which find most attractive and how does that vary? Are different characteristics more important for each gender? If pushed I'd say resources and status are more important in the overall ranking for men, while attractiveness is more important in women (though again this probably varies by who is doing the ranking). It is unlikely to find a '10' in every way (Natalie Portman might be close, but she's a vegan, so I'm sure that knocks her down to a 9.5), so the question becomes what if you're a 10 in looks and character, but a 2 in intelligence, and how does that compare to someone who's a 10 in looks and intelligence, but a 2 in character- it probably depends who's doing the ranking?

"If you think you are a 9, going on 10 (or an 11 in David's case), there are unwritten rules that you should scale that back a bit. Likewise, at the other end of the scale, you shouldn't be too hard on yourself…"

This reminded me of the following paper…

'Dissing oneself versus dissing rivals: Effects of status, personality, and sex on the short-term and long-term attractiveness of self-deprecating and other-deprecating humor.' [PDF]

They come at it from a different angle, but I think it's related.

A lot of this can also be addressed by throwing the assumption of monogamy out the window. It's been shown from multiple angles that individual female attraction itself fluctuates. With that as a starting point, it's harder to come up with a model or algorithm. Assessments would have to also be weighted in relation to ovulation at the very least.