There was no reason for Adam Hilarie to believe anything but the obvious: He had just been on a promising first date with a pretty girl.

Hilarie had met Hailey Rose Bustos on Plenty Of Fish, which bills itself as the largest dating site in the world.

Men follow the second pattern: All men prefer women who describe themselves as intelligent, but men who describe themselves as intelligent display a stronger preference.Remember those explicit ads for the True online dating service?As a self-identified male in my young thirties, they used to follow me around constantly inside of My Space. (an advertisement served to me in My Space in 2006) I’m not sure what’s happened to True, but now its category sibling is coming after me inside Facebook!In general, widely considered positive traits, Dan Ariely, an economist who studies online dating, refers to traits where everyone prefers the same thing as examples of “vertical preferences,” as opposed to “horizontal preferences,” when people prefer those who are similar.He also finds that horizontal preferences are more important in producing the “birds of a feather” effect.