A new study has revealed that a majority of online daters seek out partners who are more desirable than themselves. Is he/she 'out of your league'? Download online dating apps and prove the notion wrong. The analysis performed by Santa Fe Institute revealed that hierarchies of desirability or 'leagues' emerge in anonymized data from online dating networks. The majority of people in these dating networks contact prospects who are 25 percent or more desirable than themselves. They also tend to tailor their messaging strategies, sending relatively longer messages to contacts who are further up the hierarchy.

To rate users' desirability, the researchers used a ranking algorithm based on the number of messages a person receives and the desirability of the senders. "If you are contacted by people who are themselves desirable, then you are presumably more desirable yourself. Rather than relying on guesses about what people find attractive, this approach allows us to define desirability in terms of who is receiving the most attention and from whom," said co-author of the study, Mark Newman.