A recent survey, run by behavioral psychology grad students’ blog Date Psychology, reported that 28.5% of women found the Magic: The Gathering hobby attractive in a man – compared to only 7% of male respondents who thought women would find it attractive.
The research surveyed 814 participants (48% female identifying), asking women to rate 74 generally male associated hobbies, across various categories, either ‘attractive’ or ‘unattractive’ for a man to do (no other options). The men, meanwhile, were asked to predict which ones they thought women would find attractive or not.
Magic: The Gathering came in 63rd place overall – one of the 15 least attractive hobbies, with only 28.5% of women surveyed rating it attractive. It was narrowly beat out by “drinking” (rated attractive by 29% of women respondents); “debating” (30.5%); “cosplay” (32.1%); and “comic books” (33.6%). Sorry, women-loving male Magic fans, ladies love the boozers and comic book guys more.
But the more interesting results were in the huge gap between the actual proportion of women finding MTG an attractive hobby for men (28.5%), and the comparatively tiny proportion of men who thought women would be attracted to it (7.1%).
The study found similar discrepancies for a bunch of other nerdy hobbies, too: “building models”; “DnD“; and “wargaming” were all rated attractive by drastically more women than the male respondents guessed. Building models, in fact, scored highest of all the tabletop hobbies, winning the ‘attractive’ stamp from a mighty 67.9% of women. Good news for women-loving male Warhammer 40k fans!
Among the 11 hobbies with a lower percentage of ‘attractive’ ratings than MTG were “crypto” (23.1%); “cigars” (22.3%); “clubbing” (20%); “porn” (10.8%); and – worst of the worst – “manosphere” (defined by the researchers as “watching manosphere videos”), rated attractive by just 3.1% of women surveyed.
By comparison, the hobbies that scored highest were “reading” – called attractive by 98.2% of women respondents; “foreign languages” (95.6%); “playing an instrument” (95.4%); “cooking” (95.1%); “woodworking” (94.4%); and “painting” (94.1%) – more good news for our lady-fancying miniature painting boyos, perhaps.
As with all such small-scale studies, the Date Psychology project’s results must be understood as a very limited glimpse at broader facts – especially without access to the raw data to crunch the details. The authors also acknowledge their samples “skew disproportionately toward women of high social status, high level of education (45% had a Master’s degree in the previous survey), and who are predominately White (> 90% in the last survey)”.
As active members of the communities for many of these excellent hobbies, we at Wargamer found ourselves reading the results with a distinctly raised eyebrow.
The extent to which doing these hobbies makes men attractive to women is hardly the most important thing about them. And focusing research on women’s opinions of male hobbyists is a slightly old-fashioned niche to pick, telling us nothing about the existence and opinions of non-men who do those hobbies (not to mention non-men who, er, don’t find men attractive, no matter their hobbies).
This author, for one, would love to see more research into all of those people – until recently often maligned or disregarded in hobby communities – and how they relate to the other people in their hobbies.
Leaving aside the obvious limitations, though, it’s fair to suggest Date Psychology’s survey implies at least one lesson for male MTG fans and tabletop hobbyists in general: women don’t think your nerdy hobbies are nearly as gross as you assume; plenty think they’re sexy, even. So quit assuming it has to be a boys’ club, and go play some magic or build some models with the ladies in your life.
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Source: Wargamer
