Click here for Is it wrong to date a younger girl | Psychology Today Research finds that one well-known guideline may not work for everyone. Who Is Too Young or Too Old for You to Date? Research finds that one well-known guideline may not work for everyone. Key points. People often use the half-your-age-plus-7 rule" to determine the minimum socially acceptable age they can date — but this doesn't always work. In some cases, the results of the "half-your-age-plus-7 rule" doesn't reflect scientific evidence for age preferences. Men prefer a minimum age that's higher than the "half-your-age-plus-7 rule" would say is okay. What is the acceptable minimum age for a dating partner? When this question comes up in conversation, someone inevitably cites the half your age plus seven rule . This rule states that by dividing your own age by two and then adding seven you can find the socially acceptable minimum age of anyone you want to date. So if you’re a 24-year-old, you can feel free to be with anyone who is at least 19 (12 + 7) but not someone who is 18. 1 The (lesser-applied) other side of the rule defines a maximum age boundary: Take your age, subtract 7, and double it. So for a 24-year-old, the upper age limit would be 34 (17 * 2). With some quick math, the rule provides a minimum and maximum partner age based on your actual age that, if you choose to follow it, you can use to guide your dating decisions. A Chart of the Rule's Max and Min Partner Age Discrepancies Based on a Person's Actual Age. The utility of this equation? It lets you chart acceptable age discrepancies that adjust over the years. According to the rule, for example, a 30-year-old should be with a partner who is at least 22, while a 50-year-old’s dating partner must be at least 32 to not attract (presumed) social sanction. But how legitimate is this rule? Does it match our scientific understanding of age-related preferences for dating? Does it always apply? Should it ever? Let's examine it. How well does the rule reflect scientific evidence for age preferences? Researchers Buunk and colleagues (2000) asked men and women to identify the ages they would consider when evaluating someone for relationships of different levels of involvement. People reported distinct age preferences for marriage, a serious relationship, falling in love, casual sex, and sexual fantasies. Did they follow “the rule?" Based on the figures Buunk and colleagues (2000) provided (and thus the numbers are only informed approximations), I replotted their data superimposing the max and min age ranges defined by the half-your-age-plus-7 rule. Now we can see how well the rule corresponds with people’s reported acceptable ages. Men’s preferred minimum partner age: Let’s start with minimum age preferences reported by heterosexual men. In Figure 1, the solid black line represents the rule’s calculation for the minimum acceptable range. You can see that men are basically operating by the rule for minimum age preferences for marital relationships (blue bars) and serious dating relationships (yellow bars). Those age preferences consistently hover around the values denoted by the rule (the black line). If anything, in practice, men are more conservative when it comes to preferred marriage, preferring a minimum age higher than the rule would say is OK. Figure 1: Male Participants' Minimum Preferred Partner Age as Compared to the Rule. When it comes to sexual fantasies, however, men have minimum age preferences that are younger than the rule would designate appropriate. For example, this sample of 60-year-old men reports that it is acceptable to fantasize about women in their 20s, which the rule would say is unacceptable. But fantasies, of course, are not generally subject to public scrutiny and the rule is only designed to calculate what is socially acceptable in the public eye —so this discrepancy is not necessarily a failure of the rule. For rule-related involvement (relationships), 60-year-old men are stating that the minimum acceptable age is around 40, which does map much more closely to the rule’s predictions. Men’s preferred maximum partner age: The rule states that you can calculate maximum acceptable partner ages by subtracting seven from your own age and multiplying it by two. Figure 2 clearly shows that the rule’s max-age guidelines for men do not reflect real-world preferences. The rule overestimates the perceived acceptability of men becoming involved with older women. Men do not show a linear increase in maximum age preference that matches the rule’s predictions. Instead, men report maximum acceptable partner ages that hover around their own age through their 40s. After 40, maximum age preferences for most categories remain lower than their own age. Thus the rule for maximum age is fairly ineffective at capturing what men actually believe is acceptable. Figure 2: Male Participants' Maximum Preferred Partner Age as Compared to the Rule. Case Study: George Clooney. Now let's apply the rule to actual dating behavior by examining George Clooney’s dating habits.
