Dating Outlook

What happens when you speed date and decide that most of the potential partners you meet are date-able? According to a research student from Northwestern University (of 156 college students), you look desperate! “If you are unselective in your approach, people are going to be able to tell and are not going to like it,” said Eli J. Finkel, a co-author of the study, due to be published in the April issue of Psychological Science.

For simply platonic relationships, experts have said all you need to do to get someone to like you, is to like them. However, within romantic relationships, this newest study suggest that the “what a friendly guy” or the “what a nice girl” tone doesn’t work - it seems more desperate and even that hint of despair may be unappealing.

During this speed-dating study, potential “matches” (between 9 and 13 members of the opposite-sex) spoke for four minutes. After the meeting questions were answered about sexual attraction & likability of the prospective partners. Partners received contact information from others with a mutual “yes” answer. After this information was released, Paul Eastwick, a Northwestern graduate student (as well as the study’s lead author) said; “we know that to the extent you liked everyone, you tend not to be liked,” Selectivity worked, however. “If you go speed dating, and you like one [date] more than the other dates, that person is more likely to like you back,” he said. According to Eastwick, the study underscores “the importance of making a date feel unique or special even in the first four minutes.”

While the study shows that selectivity can work, there is no solid evidence as to what “cues” work best on helping couples “click.” Susan Sprecher, a professor of sociology and psychology at Illinois State University cited other research that found that playing hard to get with everyone didn’t always work. “But playing selectively hard to get does work,” she said. This could mean that by playing hard to get you can make your potential partner believe that it’ll be easy for him or her to “get” you while it makes everyone else struggle.

So, overall what does this mean? Two major things stand out for me:
- make your date feel special in four minutes … (we’ll have to figure out how to do this in a future blog)
- it’s okay to be picky - if you don’t like him (or her), you don’t have to feel guilty!

(It Pays to Be Picky in Love by Kathleen Doheny )

dating, speed-dating, being picky, men, women, relationships, Illinois State University, Kathleen Doheny, playing hard to get