What Women Want - and Stern girls get?

The Washington Post ran a nice article on the psychology of love and relationships (as seen on Overcoming Bias). Three interesting bits, before relating how this effects the frum dating world (as not covered in the Post or OB):

1. Popular opinion is that women speed-daters are more picky than their male counterparts. But one needs bear in mind that, typically, women spend the entire evening at one table, while men rotate after each round, approaching each new lady like an applicant for an interview. However, when you reverse the roles and have the women rotate, the men are more picky.

2. Friendship versus love:

When it comes to platonic relationships, if a person tends to like everyone, that goodwill is more likely to be reciprocated. But in romantic relationships, that wasn't the case. If a single guy digs all the women in the room, Finkel explains, "the women don't like him back." The turn-on, he continues, comes when a person feels "uniquely desired."

3. When asked what they are looking for in a partner, women tend to emphasize earning potential and social stature, while men tend to focus on looks (scientifically known as "hotness".) In reality though, the choices made by speed-daters don't pan out: women tend to care just as much about physical attractiveness, and men pay just as much attention to their date's financial prospects.

Why is #3 true?

Several commentators on Overcoming Bias noted that "what I'm looking for in a partner" is a long-term relationship question. But the choices speed-daters make are drastically short term (swapping phone numbers). In the long term, men and women seek different things in a partner, but when it comes to grabbing a drink on Thursday night and seeing where it leads, both sides are looking for pretty similar things: decent looks, decent income.

And, now, for the Jews out there:

Speed-daters say they prefer one thing but choose something else because, even if they all sincerely want a long-term relationship, no such "market" exists. No woman is offering herself on a twenty year basis, take it or leave it. The only "units" one finds in the "market" are short-term: a drink, a night out, a weekend away, whatever it might be. Put dozens of these small-units together and you can build a relationship of one thousand years - but as long as partners have the ability to break up whenever they want, both sides will only allow it to continue if short term goals are met. Long term goals will never be realized.

So, maybe frummers have this right. The social norms that force four or five dates to quickly transform into marriage, coupled with the great social costs of divorce, creates a long-term "market". Men and women are in fact offering themselves up for something like a "twenty year contract". One wonders: Do Orthodoxers have a tighter correlation between what they want and what they actually choose? Does this have a positive effect on the success of frum marriages? Does this explain the complaint that, compared to other Americans, shidduch daters care too much about a girl's looks and a guy's cash?