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As a platform for meeting people, online dating has been growing in popularity. As the dating sites were growing, there wasn't a lot of easily available data on the people who used them to draw many conclusions from a sociological standpoint, but now that the numbers of people who use these sites is in the tens of millions, that is changing. When looking at the balance between choosing traits that make for a good relationship match verses eliminating people based upon negative attributes, aka "deal breakers", it appears people predominately employ the latter strategy.
A group of sociologists from the University of Michigan led by Elizabeth Bruch obtained data from one of the large dating sites and they looked at a randomly-selected group of people from New York City to determine what factors in their decision-making process led them to select or eliminate potential mates.
Bruch and her team divided the rules into two broad categories, "deal breakers" and "deal makers," used to exclude or include people for the next level of contact. Bruch wondered: Is mate selection like a job interview process, where the person with the best combination of positive factors wins? Or is it more like a Survivor-style reality show, where contestants are picked off one by one for a single failing?
Among the deal breakers are:
- No profile photo: Men and women were 20 times less likely to look at this profile.
- Smoker: A 10-fold drop in interest.
- Age difference: Young women (20 yo) were 10X less likely to look at a profile of a man ten years older than her, older women (45 yo) were 10% more likely to consider a man ten years older than her, and men overall preferred women younger than them.
- Height difference: Women were 10X more likely to look at a profile of a guy 17 cm (6 in) taller than her while guys were 3X more likely to look a the profile of a woman 17cm shorter than him
- Body weight: Men were less likely to view a profile of a heavy-set woman while women showed no aversion to a heavy-set guy.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Tuesday September 06 2016, @07:11AM
Thankfully, I'm long out of the dating world :-) The process hasn't changed, since we got rid of arranged marriages. It always starts something like this:
1. Someone is attractive or interesting enough to get your attention. This can be in person, a pic from a dating service (there was no "web" back in the day, now get off my lawn), or whatever.
2. Filter for deal breakers. In meatspace, that's on the first date. With a dating service, you can pre-filter based on the info available to you.
The dealbreakers always come early. If someone isn't physically attractive to you, if they have a grating voice, if they're rude as hell, if they plaster on make-up like Tammy Faye Bakker, whatever it is that turns you off...
There's a huge catch, though, when using a dating service or website: it's easy to be too picky, to imagine some problem where there really is none. Static info on a page just does not properly represent a person. If you find someone who looks perfect, you may detest in person. Someone who looks unsuitable, well, you may just hit it off. Even with the best algorithms, personal chemistry remains unpredictable.
It doesn't matter, dating is just painful for introverts. The best way to find someone? Get involved in some activity, or go back to school. Choose something that you will genuinely enjoy; something that attracts reasonable numbers of your target gender. At worst, you'll have fun. You'll meet like-minded people, and probably make friends. One of those friends may turn out to be especially interesting; if so, you'll have skipped the awkward "are we even the same species" phase of initial dating.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 06 2016, @09:40AM
See also: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/fashion/modern-love-to-fall-in-love-with-anyone-do-this.html [nytimes.com]
More than 20 years ago, the psychologist Arthur Aron succeeded in making two strangers fall in love in his laboratory. Last summer, I applied his technique in my own life, which is how I found myself standing on a bridge at midnight, staring into a man’s eyes for exactly four minutes.
My interpretation on that is if there aren't any deal breakers, you can fall in love with most people. Judging from many couples*, many people still fall in love even if there are deal breakers (e.g. guy is an abusive violent asshole)... :)
So my advice is be careful to not do the "falling in love stuff" with assholes. You can bond with all sorts of people, so for your sake and the sake of those who have to put up with your spawn make sure you pick decent grades of people to bond with.
* http://web.mit.edu/4.441/1_lectures/1_lecture12/1_lecture12.html [mit.edu] ;)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday September 06 2016, @10:19AM
Preachers share your interpretation. Or they used to. The sermon went along the lines of, "Stop looking for the perfect mate, and focus on BEING a perfect mate."
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday September 06 2016, @01:59PM
Sounds good to me as long as both people are doing that. Often times that line seems directed at the wife to perform her "wifely duties" regardless of how the husband is treating her.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday September 06 2016, @02:56PM
You're right, in that women hear that lecture more often than men do. But, in my church at least, the guys were all treated to it. Not that it had much obvious effect.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 06 2016, @04:36PM
Well I certainly didn't say that. I said:
So my advice is be careful to not do the "falling in love stuff" with assholes. You can bond with all sorts of people, so for your sake and the sake of those who have to put up with your spawn make sure you pick decent grades of people to bond with.
I took a more negative view. With 7 billion on this planet I think erring on the side of quality isn't such a bad thing. If people want to keep looking for the perfect mate and never find one that's fine with me - since they won't be producing crappy kids to plague the rest of us.
For similar reasons I'm not against gay marriage. It's better to have gays marrying gays than pretending to be heteros and popping out kids for stupid reasons. Yeah gays can produce kids or adopt, but the current barriers are high enough that it increases the odds that they'd do a better job of it than the heteros who often accidentally have children...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 06 2016, @01:43PM
That example there is just Stockholm Syndrome, not love.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 06 2016, @01:52PM
You mean the evolutionary-based survival mechanism. You can call it syndrome if you like, but there is no fuckin cure.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Tuesday September 06 2016, @04:26PM
That example there is just Stockholm Syndrome, not love.
Same thing, different name.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday September 06 2016, @04:23PM
A list of "deal breakers" is how someone with a little maturity avoids getting trapped in a bad relationship like what you describe. It's quite possible to develop feelings for someone who has some serious problem, but that problem will cause the relationship to be dysfunctional or to fail, so consciously refusing to enter into a relationship or get too close to someone with one of these "deal breaker" traits is a protection mechanism. You can develop feelings for many different people, so it's best to avoid ones which have severe problems to give yourself a chance with someone who doesn't.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Tuesday September 06 2016, @05:21PM
absolutely. Love is mainly a set of practices and habits. A long as there aren't any deal breakers and you enjoy spending time together that's almost all it takes. Compatible views are a plus.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Tuesday September 06 2016, @10:43AM
Best way to find someone is to get involved in some activity? Not in my experince. I have always tended to be involved in clubs and courses (for their own sake and never expected met any girls that way). The very few there also seemed to be there only for the activity itself. In hobby clubs, the only women were other members' wives. Must admit I never tried a needlecraft club.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday September 06 2016, @12:29PM
the only women were other members' wives
Not seeing a problem here. "Back in the old single days" I got a lot of action off friends/coworkers/relatives of perfectly happily married women. It can be the old arranged marriage problem where some woman's sewing buddy might exceed all the criteria for being the worlds best sewing buddy but not quite be romantically compatible. On the other hand, sometimes your best female wingman spends all night at girls craft night convincing some girl that you'd be perfect for her...
Must admit I never tried a needlecraft club.
Mistake #2, I'd go to scrapbook and craft stores at the right time of day, look for a nice looking lady with no rings or kids tagging along and beg for help picking out a nice birthday gift for my mom. This worked pretty well. Also, my mom liked it. This might be age dependent, both of us being 20 and my having a nice car and well paying job and being generous to mom is noteworthy, but by 30 I think most women expect it from guys. Still, stores do work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 06 2016, @04:50PM
Or massage classes? Haven't tried those but might be a good skill to learn even if you don't hookup with the girls in the class itself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 06 2016, @09:37PM
> Thankfully, I'm long out of the dating world :-) The process hasn't changed,
Only on a greybeard nerd-site would a post that starts off by saying you have no experience with modern methods but you are sure nothing has changed be rated +5 insightful.