Guest Column | An empirical critique of Patton

Forget about finding your intellectual equal or marrying him before you graduate. Here’s what you really need to know that Susan Patton isn’t telling you: empirically speaking, if you graduate without a ring on your finger, you are in great company.

I happen to be exactly the kind of man Patton warns young women to stay away from: an all-round dimwit. So much so, that it took me a fortnight since I first read Patton’s article to realize why I had a problem with it. You see, Patton’s arguments linking marriage before graduation to lifelong happiness are empirically unsubstantiated. In fact, the evidence actually tells us quite the opposite story.

In essence, Patton makes three arguments: women’s marital happiness is contingent solely upon marrying men who are their “intellectual equals,” women must get married while they are still in college and women will be better off marrying in college because they have so many good candidates to choose from.

First: mating between individuals who possess similar traits and abilities — not just intelligence — has long been studied by social scientists. While there is a vast literature analyzing spousal similarity and marital satisfaction, there is no real consensus on whether there is a causal relationship between the two. In a paper published in 2004, six psychologists (Watson, Klohnen, et al.) found that an individual’s marital satisfaction was “primarily a function of the [individual’s] own traits and showed little relation to spousal similarity.” Which kind of makes sense — for the most part, the world reflects your own predispositions.

Second: there is no evidence indicating that women should marry while still at college. In fact, studies show that women might actually be significantly better off waiting 2 to 4 years after graduation to make up their mind about whom they’d like to marry. “Knot Yet,” a study about marriage trends published earlier this year by the University of Virginia, finds that divorce rates are highest, at 52 percent, for women who marry before they turn 20. Additionally, the cohort of women most likely to be in very happy marriages is comprised of those who marry between 24 and 26 years of age. In fact, two-thirds of the women in this cohort reported marriages that were very happy, a significantly higher proportion relative to all other cohorts.

Third: modern psychology suggests that there is such a thing as too much choice. Patton’s implicit criticism of unmarried female college seniors is, therefore, unfair. In her now famous experiment with jam shoppers, Columbia professor Sheena Iyengar demonstrated that customers who were offered six varieties of jam to choose from were 10 times as likely to make a purchase compared to those who picked from among 24 varieties. Hence, too much choice actually results in both decision-making paralysis and post-selection dissatisfaction. Experiments have demonstrated the same effect in dating: individuals who are offered a greater selection of potential spouses become preoccupied with idealized aspirations and the opportunity costs of commitment.

One solution that Iyengar proposes to the problem of excessive choice is expertise. Customers who are most adept at making decisions when faced with choice tend to have expertise in two key areas: they know what product attributes matter most to them, and are able to evaluate the attributes of the various alternatives on offer. Life as an undergrad is really all about gaining that expertise — about yourself, and the world around you.

So here is what I am saying. First, it is great if a “soaring intellect” turns you on, but if it doesn’t, or if there are other attributes that matter more to you, there is no reason to believe you will have a dissatisfying marriage. Second, it is kind of cool if you get hitched in college and live to celebrate your 75th wedding anniversary, but it is totally fine if this doesn’t happen and you get married later in life. Finally, while college offers a great opportunity to hang out in close proximity with a lot of smart young men, you are not insane if you graduate without marrying any of them.

Life is short. All mortals — men and women — have a shelf-life. So definitely don’t ignore men altogether, particularly if marriage, family and heterosexuality are important to you. But life is also long. So don’t be reckless about choosing the man you want to spend the rest of it with. And hey, if you go out in the world and discover that Susan Patton was right after all, that’s fine too — there’s always grad school.

Nikhil Seshan is a Wharton MBA student. His email address is nseshan@wharton.upenn.edu.

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