Contributed by: ElyseRomano on Sunday, March 01 2015 @ 10:26 am
Last modified on
Like the ending of Dexter, everyone has strong opinions about online dating. It's divisive, to say the least. Even people who have never tried it themselves are full of advice on how online dating is done properly. It's easy to dismiss them, but even the so-called experts barely have a clue about what's going on.
The truth is, it's hard to know exactly what works – and why – when it comes to online dating. We're all looking for a formula, but that formula may not exist. Or it might be as simple as “If it's working for you, keep doing it. If it's not, stop.” It's not the most poetic thing to live by, but at least it's accurate.
Fortunately, researchers are working their hardest to come up with something better. Online dating services produce massive amounts of data, allowing researchers to study it for patterns and answers to our biggest questions.
In a new paper[*1] in Evidence-Based Medicine, Khalid S. Khan of Barts and the London School of Medicine and Sameer Chaudhry of the University of North Texas sought to develop an “evidence-based approach to online dating.” They reviewed 86 studies in search of insight into optimizing the online dating experience, and came up with a few interesting observations:
#1: Choose a screen name that begins with a letter towards the front of the alphabet. Khan and Chaudhry found that "A variety of measures of success [in the offline world] ... are correlated with names higher up in the alphabet." It's pretty simple when you think about it: "Screen names starting with a letter near the top of the alphabet are presented first" in search listings, making it easier for names beginning with later letters to "be lost in the bottom of the pile."
#2: Keep your writing simple. Your online dating profile is not the place for flowery language. "Simple language, not overcomplicated wording, is likely to result in significantly higher ratings of intelligence because people are naturally drawn to words that are easy to remember and pronounce," Khan and Chaudhry write. The easier you make it to process the info in your profile, the more likeable you are. Likeable text also creates the impression of physical attractiveness – more time spent reading your profile, particularly the headline message, increases exposure time to your primary photo and consequently increases interest in you.
#3: Aim for a 70:30 ratio of writing about yourself and writing about what you're looking for. For all but the most ardent narcissists, writing about yourself can feel awkward and uncomfortable, but it's ok to toss humility out the window a little bit. That being said, you should also spend time describing the kind of person you're hoping to meet. A profile that's only about you will attract far fewer responses than a combination of who you are and what you are looking for,” the researchers write.