Studies

How many times have you been on a date where the person you’re meeting seems angry, frustrated, or negative? And how many times have you been on dates where you felt that way yourself?

We all feel negative from time to time, but it definitely affects your love life if you allow those feelings to take hold and shape your attitude towards dating. This month, dating site Match released a study based on a survey it conducted among one thousand of its users to determine how positive and negative thinking affect the dating experience.

Not surprisingly, especially with this election year, nearly 80% of Match members feel the country has become MORE negative over the last 4 years and more than half of Match members have broken up with someone because they were too negative or pessimistic. The majority of Match members agree, the most attractive attribute of positivity is the fact that it signals a good outlook on life (68%).

eHarmony is reporting on their website (homepage and About page) that an average of 438 eHarmony members marry every day in the United States as a result of being matched on their service. This is from a study by Harris Interactive which was done in 2012 for eHarmony. For this study, data was collected from 19,131 people in the United States who were married between 2005 and 2012. The divorce rate of these marriages was 3.86%.

Unfortunately we missed some these statistics when we first reported about this study back in 2013 and have updated our eHarmony Statistics page with the new information.

For comparison sake the previous Harris Interactive Study done in 2010 showed on average 542 eHarmony members get married every day in the United States (see Story).

Animated GIFs may help with Online Dating

The internet has fully embraced the GIF - a form of visual communication so ubiquitous it’s second only to the omnipresent emoji.

And why wouldn’t they be? It’s hard to carry on a conversation between screens, to read emotion in text, to interpret the difference between “K” and “K.” and “K!” An image, moving or not, goes a long way to making your message clear.

And then there’s online dating. Dating apps and websites come with their own special challenges. Users are not only faced with the worries of regular online communication, but also the fears and anxieties of dating. How do you find the delicate balance between flirty forwardness and respectful tact when you’re talking to a total stranger you can’t even see?

Are you disappointed with online dating? Are your messages not getting responses, or are you just not getting enough matches?

You might wonder why you aren’t getting the kind of responses to your online dating profile that you imagined when you first signed up. Instead of wondering whether or not you picked the right service or app, a new study shows you might not be getting the results you want because of your profile and how trustworthy you seem to other online daters. In other words – do they actually believe what you have to say about yourself?

A new study published by Routledge takes a closer look at what we think of as our "idealized selves," which is what we project on our dating profiles. The researchers found that online daters are less trusting of people who post photos that appear too carefully crafted, preferring matches who appear more carefree and natural in their online dating photos as well as how they describe themselves.

Swiping could leave you with the love of your life, or crippled confidence. A new survey from the University of North Texas found that singles who used Tinder are more likely to have lower self-esteem and feel unhappy about their looks than people who don’t use dating apps.

“Tinder users reported having lower levels of satisfaction with their faces and bodies and having lower levels of self-worth than the men and women who did not use Tinder,” said Jessica Strübel, PhD, who presented the research at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association.

You've been told not to judge a book by its cover, but let’s face it: online dating is one big library and you have no intention of reading most of the books. You'll barely spare a glance for the description on the dust jacket.

It doesn’t stop at online dating. You’ve judged professional contacts by their headshots on LinkedIn. You’ve judged your partner’s exes by their Instagram pics. You’ve even judged strangers who disagree with you in the comments section by their chosen profile photos.

Pictures on social networks are users’ opportunity to present themselves and to affect how others judge them, but can a picture tell you anything about who a person really is? Are our judgements accurate?