The science of dating and matchmaking provides many fascinating illustrations and examples for the study and development of communications, personality, relationships and behaviour.
Many aspects of effective dating and 'chat-up' communications apply to successful communications in general.
Notably the principle that people enjoy and respond being given the opportunity to talk about themselves, especially from a perspective that interests them and enables them to express themselves with some passion and enthusiasm.
An ability to listen and show genuine understanding, is also central to forming rapport early in discussions, which again applies to all communications, not just to dating and matchmaking.
Dating studies also confirm that people form impressions extremely quickly when meeting others for the first time: initial impressions are crucial, which applies to all 'first meetings', whether in dating, business, or any other situation.
Some of these principles, and other specific findings relating to forming early successful relationships in dating, are illustrated in the summary below of the study carried out in April 2006 by Professor Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire, as part of the 2006 Edinburgh International Science Festival.
These lessons are in essence transferable to all relationships and one-to-one meetings, aside from providing many useful dating pointers.
N.B. I say 'in essence' because I do not suggest that at your next business meeting you should ask the other person "What is your favourite pizza topping?" The 'essence' here is the principle of asking interesting relevant questions as a basis of creating rapport.
Preliminary results from the first large-scale speed dating experiment have shown that women make up their minds about potential partners much faster than men, and revealed the best type of chat-up lines.
The study, conducted on Sunday 9th April 2006 by Professor Richard Wiseman (University of Hertfordshire) at the Edinburgh International Science Festival, involved 100 members of the public taking part in five-hundred 'speed dates'.
During the event, participants rated the attractiveness of their dates and indicated whether they would like to meet that person again.
Initial results revealed that in about a third of the dates, participants reached decisions about their potential mates in less than thirty seconds. Perhaps surprisingly, women proved especially likely to make such snap decisions, with 45% of women's decisions being made under thirty seconds, compared to just 22% of men's decisions.
"Men are often accused of being shallow and judging women very quickly - however, this evidence suggests that women may make up their minds much quicker than men", commented Wiseman. "It suggests men have only a few seconds to impress a woman, thus emphasising the importance of their opening comments".
Overall 60% of participants met someone with whom there was a mutual interest in seeing each other again.
Women were twice as 'picky' as men, and the top rated man and woman of the evening had a 100% success rate, with all of their dates wanting to meet them again.
To uncover the best type of chat-up lines, researchers compared the conversations of participants rated as 'very desirable' by their dates with those seen as 'especially undesirable'. Those 'highly skilled in seduction' encouraged their dates to talk about themselves in an unusual, quirky, way.
The most memorable lines from the top-rated man and woman in the study illustrate the point:
The top-rated male's best line was: 'If you were on Stars In Their Eyes, who would you be?', whilst the top-rated female asked: 'What's your favourite pizza topping?'.
In contrast, failed 'Casanovas' tended to be far less creative, employing old chestnuts like 'Do you come here often?' or struggling to impress with comments such as 'I have a PhD in computing'.
To identify the best topic of conversation for those in search of their perfect partner, participants were also asked to chat about different topics during the event. When talking about movies, less than 9% of the pairs wanted to meet up again, compared to 18% when participants spoke about the top topic - travel.
A clue as to why would-be lovers might want to avoid chatting about movies comes from additional questionnaire data from the study, showing that men and women have very different tastes in movies. For example, 49% of men liked action films compared to just 18% of women, whilst 29% of women liked musicals compared to only 4% of men.
"Whenever our couples spoke about films they really increased their chance of disagreement", commented Wiseman. "In contrast, conversations about travel tend to revolve around great holidays and dream destinations, and that makes people feel good and so appear more attractive to one another".
A second study demonstrated the age-old difficulty in predicting successful dating and matchmaking partnerships, (an interesting juxtaposition to the 'wisdom of crowds' principle, should anyone be considering applying it to dating services): over four-hundred people participated in an online experiment in which they studied photographs and descriptions of four women, and one man who dated each of the women. The four-hundred respondents attempted to predict the women he would find most attractive, but even the group who considered themselves 'especially skilled at matchmaking' failed to predict his choice correctly.
(With grateful acknowledgements to Professor R Wiseman.)
Professor Richard Wiseman (University of Hertfordshire) has published over forty academic papers into unusual areas of psychology, including deception, luck and the paranormal. Wiseman frequently appears on the media and has written The Luck Factor - a best selling book exploring the lives and minds of lucky and unlucky people. More info at: www.richardwiseman.com. The study was run in collaboration with Dr James Houran, an American expert on the psychology of compatibility with Online Dating Magazine. More info at: www.onlinedatingmagazine.com.
Further items relating to dating and matchmaking relationships and behaviour will be added to this section in due course.
See also:
Ladder Theory - mostly for amusement, but interesting nevertheless
Understand (and test) your own Multiple Intelliegences and Learning/Thinking Style
Assertiveness and Self-Confidence
Transactional Analysis - possibly the most useful communications and relationships theory ever developed..
Buying Facilitation - this is extremely powerful too when adapted for relationships - use it, and people buy you
And the main businessballs website which contains many other guides to self-awareness, communications and relationships.
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The 'speed dating study' item is based on original source material which is ©Richard Wiseman, 2006.
© alan chapman 2006-08