Thread by @datepsych

I have finished the age gap relationship analysis. How do the Dark Triad, social dominance orientation, and hostile world beliefs predict support for age gaps?

datepsychology.com/age-gaps-hiera…

Here are some charts and statistics from this I have posted.

Age gap preferences, the ideal age gaps for men and women, and the largest lifetime age gaps:

Here are sex differences in support for age gaps and hierarchial relationships: men show higher approval.

The ideal age of a partner and the age of participants, for men and women:

Here is support for age gaps grouped by age. Older men are more supportive of age gaps.

But for women - no difference by age!

And the same pattern for approval of hierarchial relationships: oldest men are the most supportive, while no difference emerged for women.

I looked at politics. This is the distribution of responses and the percentage of men and women who have had an age gap relationship of 10+ years.

It looks like a trend, but in my analysis it wasn't statistically significant.

I did find differences by politics that were significant for the desired ideal age gap, however.

For men, the more conservative, the larger the desired age gap.

But for women, no difference by politics.

Conservative women wanted small age gaps.

Here are descriptive statistics for the personality variables: SDO, DT, and HWBS.

DT is the only significant difference for men and women (pretty consistent in the literature that men score higher).

The Dark Triad and SDO both predicted support for age gaps and hierarchial relationships, HWBS didn't. The relationships were not very large, which of course is pretty typical for a single variable in psychology.

Of the three facets of the Dark Triad - psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism, it was psychopathy that seemed to predict support:

Here I built a couple of regression models that did a pretty good job of explaining a chunk of support for hierarchical and age gap relationships.

Age (being older), being male, higher DT psychopathy and SDO, lower HWBS.

However, although these predicted approval scores, they didn't actually predict participant desire for a larger age gap in a relationship:

I also looked to see if these variables would predict having had an actual large age gap - but they didn't.

Nor did they predict having dated a boss or a professor.

What about the people who actually had large age gap relationships?

People who have had them at some point were more supportive of them:

However, some sex differences emerged even when there was higher support in the group that had past age gap relationships.

Men were highly supportive. Women were more varied in their support.

Here is support for age gap and hierarchial relationships by sex and those who previously had a 10+ year age gap.

Same pattern: men and women who had past age gap relationships were more supportive.

Here is a chart on age gap approval by the magnitude or size of the gap:

The larger the age gap, the lower the approval.

And here is support for age gaps by the age of the woman in the vignette. The younger the woman, the lower the approval:

Final chart. Support scores for the hierarchial relationships described in the survey.

Movie star with a model received the lowest approval: even lower than student/prof and boss/employee.

What can we take away from this? I am sure that there are tidbits in here that can support both sides of the age gap debate.

First, although most women report wanting a very low age gap, a lot of women also seem to have had at least one at some point.

The dark personality traits associated with approval for age gaps could support the belief that at least some people like large age gaps because of the power imbalance or something like that.

At the same time, these did not predict who actually had age gap relationships. So, it's probably not the case that it's a bunch of psychopaths forming these relationships or anything like that.

Support for age gap relationships was pretty high also, until you got to about a 15-year age gap.

And age of the woman is probably more important in driving the age gap taboo than the actual size of the gap itself.

That female age did not predict support for age gaps was an interesting finding. This has some implications for a lot of discourse on age gaps.

For example, that older women are less supportive because they know better.

Or less supportive because they are jealous or competing.

That the oldest men were most supportive of age gaps is also an interesting finding. That could also be interpreted through an intrasexual competition lens. Or just that older men have more to gain from them than younger men do.

That the movie star/model with an age gap got lower support than boss/employee and student/professor also calls into question the "power dynamic" belief surrounding hierarchial relationships. This was something I have already been skeptical about.

Age, rather than power, seems to do more heavy lifting as far as predicting approval or the taboo is concerned.

It's a funny thing about taboos, as well as psychology in general, that our feelings about something often proceed the beliefs that we form about them.

Basically, we form beliefs that explain our feelings.

I think that the age gap taboo is something that is very visceral. There are some people that find it very gross and inappropriate. And that precedes discourse on things like brain development, power dynamics, exploitation, or whatever else.