How to attract the attention of the best men on a dating site: life hacking from experts
'20.06.2021'
Source: CNN
According to a study published Wednesday in Science Advances, most dating site users know there is a group of people who are 25% more “desirable” for dating than average site visitors. And if you are applying for communication with a person from such a stratum, the higher you try to “reach”, the lower the chances of getting any answer.
“There is an expression“ you are not from my league ”. What does this mean scientifically? How can we determine who is in the league and who is outside of it? ”Says the study author, professor of sociology and complex systems at the University of Michigan, Elizabeth Bruch, who is quoted as saying CNN... “Intuitively, I expected to find some kind of gap in“ desirability, ”but I thought it would be 5-10%, not 25%. This figure amazed me. "
The data was sourced from nearly 187 heterosexual user accounts of a “popular free online dating service” that operates in New York, Chicago, Seattle and Boston. The researchers did not name the site due to a nondisclosure agreement.
If a man writes to a woman who is “higher” in this hierarchical ladder, the best applicant can hope, on average, for an answer in one out of five cases. Unlike real life, where rejection can be very painful, the emotional cost of dating is low, ”says Eli Finkel, a psychology professor at Northwestern University. In real life, this can be compared to the object of everyone's attention at a party, which you may be afraid to approach when you see his enthusiastic surroundings, and pay attention to someone else.
"In online dating, you can't tell how much attention is paid to a particular person, which means that many of us are trying to interest too few potential partners - those who [look] attractive in photos and profile."
Bruch studied “desirability” based on how many messages a user received and how popular the senders were. To rank dating site visitors from least desirable to more desirable, she used an algorithm that is commonly used by Google.
Other tendencies have also emerged: the average “desirability” of a woman begins to decline from the moment she turns 18. Men are most in demand at 50. Having a good education increases the chances of men to become higher in the ranking. The most interesting sites on these sites tend to be Asian women and white men.
In practice, it looks like “most people get a few messages at best, but some part of the audience gets a lot more”.
At some point, Finkel says, it all feels more like work than fun. The most popular unnamed woman in the study, a 30-year-old New Yorker, received 1504 messages in a month - that's about once every half hour.
“That would be unheard of in real life,” says Bruch. “A lot of people can just write to someone online, and they have the illusion that other people are more available to them, when in fact they are not.”
In practice, this means that the most attractive people will receive a lot more attention on an internet application than they would in a bar. Attempts to write longer and more interesting letters have failed - the response rate was slightly higher.
“It might sound a little demoralizing, but also optimistic,” Bruch said. - If you are willing to put in the effort and are comfortable with low response rates, you can certainly connect and meet people who are “out of your league”. Yes, the response rate is about 10%, but this is not zero. ”
According to a 2015 poll by the Pew Research Center, 15% of US adults used dating apps or websites, including 27% of those between the ages of 18 and 24.
But how do all these percentages of compatibility, responses to messages, and photo viewing affect your meeting in real life?
“The fact that someone is attractive or unattractive on an online dating profile is not very helpful in predicting compatibility with that person from the moment you meet face to face,” says Finkel. “I recommend people spend less time looking at profiles… and more time meeting over coffee or beer.”
