Unsatisfactory Respondent Population

Michael Dunn isn’t buying it. The noted psychology researcher at the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff has just released a study that he insists renders the cougar craze a “myth.” After examining the age preferences expressed in 22,400 singles ads on popular dating websites in North America, Europe, Australia and Japan, he found no sizable cohort of women seeking younger men. To the contrary, almost all of them wanted men their own age or older. Nor did he find evidence for the proliferation of cubs: the overwhelming majority of men displayed their eons-old preference for younger women. “I do believe the cougar phenomenon is a myth and, yes, a media construct,” Dunn, who specializes in human evolutionary psychology and mating behavior …

New Study Claims ‘Cougars’ Do Not Exist

A study on what is posted on the public profiles of people on dating sites is not going to be convincing.

Calling older women dating young men a ‘craze’ is a rhetorical trick. It is easy to say that the nonexistent doesn’t exist. A TV show and a movie hardly make a craze.

Some men do date women who are older. They have for a very long time. The sexual and social loosening up of the last few dates probably means a few more guys do so because they are less likely to feel shame or a loss of status.