- LOS ANGELES (Xinhuanet) -- Most people
need less than 3 minutes to decide whether to develop closer relationship
with another while dating, US psychologists said Friday in a study.
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- The researchers at the University of Pennsylvania
studied dating data from 10,526 anonymous participants of HurryDate, a
company that organizes "speed dating" sessions. In a paper to
be published in the upcoming issue of the journal Evolution and Human Behavior,
they presented rare behavioral data on how people genuinely act in dating
situations.
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- "Some people say they're looking for one kind
of person, then choose another. Other people say that don't even know what
they are looking for. But our data suggest that, however it happens, people
know it quickly when they see it," said Robert Kurzban, an assistant
professor who led the research.
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- "People generally understand their own worth
on the dating market, so they are able to judge each other's potential
compatibility within moments of meeting," he added.
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- At each HurryDate party, roughly 25 men and 25 women
interact with each other for three minutes at a time. At the end of the
session, each participant indicates which of the people he or she met would
be of interest for the future. The company also collects survey data from
participants, including age, height, education, income, drinking behavior,
smoking behavior, race and religion.
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- For this study, HurryDate collected answers to optional
questions about such things as how participants rate their own attractiveness
and sexuality.
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- "Although they had three minutes, most participants
made their decision based on the information that they probably got in
the first three seconds," Kurzban said.
-
- "Somewhat surprisingly, factors that you might
think would be really important to people, like religion, education and
income, played very little role in their choices."
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- Psychology has often viewed relationships as transactions
where people select mates based on substantial qualities a mate has to
offer, such as power and money.
-
- But the data show that, when people meet face-to-face,
things like smoking preferences and bank accounts don't seem to hurt complexities
of attraction, according to Kurzban.
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- The speed dating offered researchers a rare chance
to look systematically at the genuine behavior of people selecting mates,
the researchers said.
-
- The actual behavior of people is worth more than their
stated beliefs. In this case, because participants might suffer the consequences
of a bad date with someone who might look compatible on paper, they had
more incentive to follow their hearts and desires.
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- "Behavior, more than self-reports, give us an
important window into the underlying psychology of mating, " Kurzban
said.
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- However, the researchers cautioned that speed dating
is not necessarily typical of how people usually interact. Their findings
might or might not characterize long-term dating relationship. Enditem
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