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NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Allison Shiffler has mastered the art of online dating. The 29-year-old's trick is simple: she loves hamburgers. Her profile challenges guys to show her the best burger joint.
A lot of men ask her out for dinner.
Shiffler has a job, is about to start grad school at an Ivy League school and has even starred in a commercial. But when it comes to first dates, she has a rule: If the guy doesn't pick up her burger tab, she isn't going out with him again.
"There's only been one time I paid for my burger. It was a cash only place and the guy didn't bring enough money," Shiffler told CNNMoney. She's found that men paying for at least two dates is the norm, even in hip New York City.
"Over 75 percent of men report they still feel guilty accepting women's money."
Shiffler's approach might seem very "traditional" in 2015, but numerous surveys and CNNMoney interviews find the vast majority of heterosexual couples are not splitting the bill 50/50 on the first date. That holds true even when men and women identify as progressive or feminist.
Over 75 percent of men report they still feel guilty accepting women's money, according to research by Janet Lever, a professor of sociology at California State University, Los Angeles. She has studied relationship trends for years and surveyed over 17,000 people.
It's increasingly common for people to say they expect whoever asks for the date to pay, but the reality is men still do most of the asking.
"Men are in this horrible position. They're still fearing: should I hold the door open or is that going to insult her?" said Lever. It's been dubbed "benevolent sexism," and it gets even more complicated when the check arrives.
#poll
Lever has found the modern dating world looks like this: About 10 percent of heterosexual daters are looking for something very traditional where the man pays for everything. Another 10 percent are looking for 50/50 from the very first date. The rest are somewhere in between.
Decoding that "in between" space can be tough. When the check arrives on the first date, half of women reach for their purse. It's sometimes referred to as the "wallet fake" because about half of women who offer to pay get upset if they actually have to spend money.
"I have probably been on 35 dates this year. I have always paid for them," said Michael, 31, a consultant who lives in New York. He sees it as a chivalrous gesture — and a way to signal in the dating app era that he's genuinely interested in a relationship, not a hookup.
If his date offers to pay, Michael has developed a line that seems to go over well. He will reach for the bill and say, "No, no. It was my suggestion. I was really happy to meet you. Thank you very much for coming."
The jockeying when the check arrives is what economists refer to as "signaling," an attempt to communicate non-verbally. Many women still view the guy paying as a sign that he's interested — and a gentleman.
Men are in this horrible position. They're still fearing: should I hold the door open or is that going to insult her?
–Janet Lever
On the flip side, many women offer to pay in order to show men they aren't looking for a sugar daddy.
"How they decide to pay on a date can be a good signal of how they think men and women's roles should work in the relationship," said David Frederick, an assistant professor of psychology at Chapman University, who conducted the survey with Lever of 17,000 single people on Elle.com and NBCNews.com.
While most heterosexual daters still expect men to pay for the first date, views are changing for second, third and fourth dates — and beyond.
We're not living in the 50/50 era, but you could call it the "70/30 era."
According to the Lever-Frederick research, 84 percent of men and about 60 percent of women report that men still pay more of the dating expenses. The way it tends to work is the guy pays for a lot of the big dinners and events and women to pick up smaller things like drinks or groceries for dinner at home.
As the courtship progresses to a relationship, most modern couples have a money talk where they then take into account how much each partner is earning and what seems a fair split on bills. It's not that different from how dating has evolved in homosexual relationships where the general practice is for whoever asks or plans an outing to pay.
Perhaps one of the shocking findings from their research is that many men say they have stopped dating a woman because she never paid for anything. That's why Lever advises women to at least offer to pay for something by the third date.
The findings held fairly constant across all ages from the 20s to the 50s, but Lever notes, "The younger the man, the more strongly he feels that women should be paying for something."
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