#dating science

[stuffmomnevertoldyou]

Do musicians have a dating advantage?

A scientific explanation for the particular allure of band guys.

[datehacker-blog]

Some psychologists put together a really amazing review of the psychology of online dating. It's a bit dense, so I'll try and pull out the most important findings. The authors ask two questions: is online dating different, and is it better? The answers are "yes" (well, sure) and "sort of" (thanks). Online dating's biggest difference can also be its biggest weakness - you can have a bunch of information before you even think about meeting someone. The degree of access might be the best thing about online dating (because you can get a good sense of the wealth of people "on the market") but is probably also counterproductive. Rather than evaluating possible matches one at a time, with some leisure and chance to exchange some pheromones, online dating encourages users to evaluate dozens of matches at once. Worse, they're evaluating profiles - essentially ads built by people seeking to attract potential mates. The enhanced pre-meeting communications options fostered by online dating can be great news! Or not... The good news is that a few messages exchanged in the run up to a face-to-face meeting can enhance first impressions. That makes sense, insofar as you can front load some basic questions about communication styles and establish a little bit of trust. But you've got to got to got to meet in person to establish a connection, and the literature on the question is thin but suggests that less than 6 weeks is better than more. I'd suggest aiming for less than ten days, but that's a matter of personal preference, not scientific research. Finally, the project of developing and implementing matching algorithms is deeply problematic. Predicting long-term relationship success is a freaking bear trap, scientifically speaking. The best predictors of long-term relationship success are factors relating to stress and coping mechanisms. Things like long-term career prospects, economic stability, low-stress family relationships! and even just socio-economic status matching are all fairly good at predicting whether a couple will stick together, but it'd be a neat trick to get that kind of data about two people who haven't met. So matching models are based on the lowest-hanging fruit: self-reported individual characteristics. But, while similarity can be fairly predictive of initial attraction, personality only accounts for about 6% of one's own relationship satisfaction and 1-2% of one's partner's satisfaction. So most of these models are both targeting difficult-to-reach goals (and, subsequently, over promising) and are choosing inadequate strategies for matching potential partners. On initial consideration this article has little impact on my online dating strategies. I will continue to invite anyone who seems interesting to coffee, tea, or drinks, and proceed. I will, in the words of the review's authors, "avoid an assessment mindset," because that's not even a little bit conducive to meeting rad people. I'm going to continue being evaluative (at and after initial contact) though, because this article tells me nothing about that. And, really, is it not said that the leopard cannot change his shorts?

[jemsnotes]

i am beginning to suspect that i become attracted to a lady if i think she is attracted to me so to test this theory i would like it if more ladies could be openly attracted to me, this is for science