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Elderly Dating Research Paper

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Elderly Dating
Maintaining social relationships and having an intimate connection with another person is important to a person’s well-being regardless of age. However, much of the information known about mate preferences have been limited to a narrow demographic of the young and middle aged adults (Alterovitz & Mendelsohn, 2009; McIntosh, Locker, Briley, Ryan, & Scott, 2011). In order to remedy this, the articles “Partner preferences across the lifespan: online dating by older adults” and “What do older adults seek in their potential romantic partners? Evidence from online personal ads” both studied partner preferences in older adults.
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Both articles seek to add more information about the dating life of older adults as that demographic increases . As health-care improves and increases human longevity, the elderly population continues to increase. As a result, research on elderly dating is increasing as there are predictions that the elderly populations would populate a decent amount of the world’s population. In fact, McIntosh, Locker, Briley, Ryan, & Scott’s study used Alterovitz & Mendelsohn’s results as research material for their own study in acknowledgment of …show more content…

Scientists wanted to identify what kind of traits the elderly seeked as they were no longer at an age where they had to worry about reproduction and the care of offspring. In the diminishing social circle of an elderly, researchers predicted that the selectiveness would be low as the dating pool would be small. The results of their studies have shown that when looking for desirable traits, certain mating habits continue across the lifespan, even when offspring are no longer a concern (Alterovitz & Mendelsohn, 2009) and older adults were eager to meet the right person, but not desperate to meet just anyone (McIntosh, Locker, Briley, Ryan, & Scott, 2011) as they were more selective than younger

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