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:
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 06 2016, @08:10PM
"This isnt about relationships. This is about using dating websites"
That statement makes no sense to me. Why do people date, anyway?
You are assuming that women are joining dating website in order to date. No doubt there are some, I've met quite a few. I've also have met plenty that are just on these sites to socialize. They think that they are dating, but really they just want to talk to a stranger, and have no intention of ever meeting. What they have is an interactive harlequin romance novel. If these women knew about dirtypenpals, they'd be there instead.
How can you tell the difference? In my experience, the ones that are looking for a relationship will actually respond to someone who is not in the "deal breaker" list that this study suggests. And after they respond, if there is any sort of back and forth banter, will be willing to at least meet for coffee/lunch. They also will disappear off the site after a month or so on the site, presumably because they found someone IRL.