Reconsidering the “Best Practices” for Testing the Predictive Validity of Ideal Standards: A Critique of Eastwick, Finkel, and Simpson (2018)

A recent article by Eastwick, Finkel, and Simpson (2018) advanced recommendations on what constitutes “best practices” for testing the predictive validity of ideal partner preference-matching. We critique their article, suggesting flaws in some of the central recommendations and setting out our conclusions that substantively differ from those offered by Eastwick et al. In contrast to these authors, we argue that a) correlations between ideal standards and perceptions of partner characteristics can be informative and relevant to the Ideal Standards Model (ISM); b) the evidence shows that the direct-matching measure for measuring ideal-perception consistency is a valid measure; c) employing the correction for normative desirability of the pattern matrix approach has pitfalls that researchers should take into account; and, d) some important methodological and statistical issues qualify their interpretations of the research findings. We conclude that research testing the ISM has provided a solid springboard for advances in this domain.