Studies

Almost 100 million people around the world use dating websites and apps. With so many singles looking for love, how do you find “the one?” The task may seem daunting, but the BBC hopes to make it more manageable with tips based on scientific research.

A recent article written by Dr. Xand van Tulleken explores the world of online dating through the lens of a scientist. Professor Khalid Khan of Queen Mary University has reviewed dozens of scientific research papers on attraction and dating. His most interesting findings and top pieces of advice include:

• Dedicate 70% of your profile to writing about yourself and 30% to writing about what you’re looking for in a partner. “Studies have shown that profiles with this balance receive the most replies because people have more confidence to drop you a line,” writes van Tulleken.
• Women are more attracted to men who demonstrate bravery, courage, and the willingness to take risks than they are to men who show altruism and kindness.
• Humor is highly attractive, but only if you go about it the right way. Although it’s easier said than done, the best way to make people think you’re funny is to show them, not tell them.
• Choose a username that starts with a higher letter in the alphabet. “People seem to subconsciously match earlier initials with academic and professional success,” van Tulleken explains.

With your profile optimized, it’s time to decide who you’ll go on a date with. Mathematician Hannah Fry suggests employing the Optimal Stopping Theory, a method that helps you choose the best option when sifting through many possibilities one after another. According to an algorithm devised by mathematicians, your chances of selecting the best date are highest if you reject the first 37% of potential partners.

“The maths of this is spectacularly complicated, but we've probably evolved to apply a similar kind of principle ourselves,” writes van Tulleken. “Have fun and learn things with roughly the first third of the potential relationships you could ever embark on. Then, when you have a fairly good idea of what's out there and what you're after, settle down with the next best person to come along.”

After a few dates with someone special, science can determine whether it’s love or just like. During an MRI, the brain of a person who’s in love will be activated in a region called the ventral tegmental area - a key part of the brain’s pleasure and reward circuit. At the same time, the scan will reveal a deactivation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which controls logical reasoning. No wonder we call people “fools in love.”

Of course, feeling the emotion doesn’t guarantee a successful relationship, as Dr. Helen Fisher is quick to note. Science can give you a headstart in finding love but the rest is up to you.

Being sensitive may make you a good partner, but it doesn’t make you a good dater. A new study found that sensitive and less emotionally intelligent people are more likely to be vulnerable to online dating scams.

The research, conducted by Dr Martin Graff of the University of South Wales, was presented at the British Psychological Society Annual Conference in Nottingham. Graff said:

"Perpetrators of dating scams simply set up false profiles on dating websites with the sole purpose of extracting money from their victims. The scammer first grooms a victim by expressing love for them before outlining their desperate circumstances. They then attempt to request money from the victim. Our study focused on why some individuals are more likely to become the victims of these scams than others."

Over 90 victims of dating scams took part in questionnaires relating to their personality, how they relate to other people, self-esteem, and emotional intelligence. Age and gender were also taken into consideration.

After analyzing the results, Graff discovered that victims had used dating sites for less than four weeks, but in that short time, they parted with amounts ranging from £50 to £63,000 (over $90,000). No small loss.

Participants in the study demonstrated consistent clusters of personality traits. One one hand, they had a tendency to be efficient, organized, and disciplined - but on the other, they were more likely to be emotionally expressive and display a preoccupied attachment style.

Without the science jargon, that means online dating scam victims are often overly dependent on the person to whom they are attached, which leads to approval-seeking behavior like giving money.

Graff warns that with the rising popularity of online dating, more and more people are likely to fall victim, and scammers may get increasingly sophisticated about their tactics. He hopes the study can help curb the trend.

"These findings will be beneficial to dating sites and law enforcement agencies in attempting to protect the vulnerable from being scammed,” he said in a statement. “Further research should include interviews with a larger sample of people who have been the dating scam victims."

It’s not all bad news for online daters. Another recent study found that psychopaths have difficulty manipulating people online. While their charming facades are compelling in person, once the visual element is removed, they find it much more difficult to charm, manipulate, intimidate, or exploit others.

“The results of this study are pretty clear,” said lead author Michael Woodworth, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia Okanagan. “Once you remove non-verbal cues such as body language from the equation, the ability to smoke out narcissists and psychopaths becomes easier.”

"There are a lot of theories out there about how online dating is bad for us," Michael Rosenfeld, a sociologist at Stanford who has been conducting a long-running study of online dating, told The Washington Post. "And mostly they're pretty unfounded."

From its earliest days, online dating has faced harsh criticism. Some doubted its efficacy. Others accused it of being a last-ditch effort of the desperate. These days we’ve moved on from those denunciations, but online dating is still not without its detractors. In 2016 critics are more likely to say it encourages promiscuity or has contributed to the spread of STDs.

But what if they’ve been wrong all along?

Rosenfeld, who has followed the dating lives of more than 3,000 people during his career, has gleaned many insights about our new, tech-savvy approach to pairing off. Roberto A. Ferdman spoke with Rosenfeld about his research for The Washington Post. Below are a few highlights from the interview:

• On how online dating has changed the way we date: “The rise of phone apps and online dating websites gives people access to more potential partners than they could meet at work or in the neighborhood. It makes it easier for someone who is looking for something very specific in a partner to find what they are looking for.”
• On skepticism: “The worry about online dating comes from theories about how too much choice might be bad for you. The idea is that if you’re faced with too many options you will find it harder to pick one, that too much choice is demotivating.”
• On the skepticism’s validity: “I actually don’t see in my data any negative repercussions for people who meet partners online…. There’s no obvious pattern by which people who meet online are worse off. And, conversely, online dating has real benefits.”
• On marriage: “One of the things I have found out as part of my research is that people who meet online actually progress to marriage faster than people who meet offline…. I think that’s because online you do this big, calculated search for your soul mate, and find someone else who agrees and then transition to marriage much more quickly.”

Not only has Rosenfeld’s research led him to believe that criticisms of online dating are largely unfounded, he also believes that online dating has had beneficial effects.

“The need for love, romance, relationships and sex — these are pretty basic human needs,” he says. “And the ability to match people who would have otherwise not found each other is a powerful outcome of the new technology.” In other words, online dating has opened up new pathways to love and happiness for millions of people around the world - and it's hard to find fault with that.

Read the full interview at The Washington Post.

Tinder’s simple swipe functionality has long made it a target of criticism. Detractors claim the dating app is a magnet for promiscuous singles hoping for hook-ups, while defenders say meaningful relationships are also part of the package. A new study suggests the latter may be right.

Researchers at Webster Vienna Private University in Austria asked 75 users of Tinder and other dating services to complete questionnaires about their motivation for online dating. They were also asked to rate their sociability, self-esteem, and sexual permissiveness. They shared their findings in a paper entitled 'On the differences between Tinder versus online dating agencies.'

“To date there has been little scientific research exploring the characteristics and motivations of those who use online dating agencies and social dating apps,” said lead author Dr. Kathleen Hodkinson, Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology. “We were interested in understanding whether users of these two types of services differ from each other, and from those who do not use any form of online dating. What the research has essentially highlighted is that they don’t appear to.”

The study concluded that Tinder users have the same motivations as users of other sites, and that they do not significantly differ from traditional daters in their behavior or what they’re looking for. Those results are in line with a broader body of research that has found that online daters strongly resemble those who do not use online dating. “It is likely,” Hodkinson explained, “that as online dating continues to grow in popularity, its users are becoming increasingly diverse and therefore more reflective of the general population.”

Early studies of online dating drew completely different conclusions. They found a positive correlation between time spent on the internet, loneliness, and anxiety. Further studies failed to replicate that finding, and with the stigma surrounding online dating almost completely gone, Hodkinson’s study feels closer to the truth - at least the truth as we experience it in 2016.

What Hodkinson’s team did find is increased sexual permissiveness in Tinder users, which they chalked up to the younger age of the app’s userbase. They also found they men are more likely than women to use dating services to find casual sex partners, a finding that is consistent with other studies that show similar behavior patterns among males both online and offline.

The study hopes to inspire more in-depth research to further test the assumptions made, in particular taking other variables such as religious beliefs, income, and marital status into account. For now, it provides a starting point for evaluating how dating services are used today and how it may evolve in the future. For more on this dating app for which the study is about please read our review of Tinder

In today’s visual world, we put a lot of thought into how we look online. The perfect selfie is only perfect because 27 selfies have been taken before. Instagram filters are layered on until the subject looks more alien than human. And when it comes to choosing photos for your online dating profile, no shot ever seems good enough.

But what if your images aren’t the most important part of your profile? Zoosk surveyed more than 9,000 singles about their online dating dealbreakers with surprising results.

Seventy-two percent said spelling errors are a major turn off, while forty-eight percent said poor grammar is a buzzkill. Knowing the difference between “you’re” and “your,” “then” and “than,” and “who’s” and “whose” wasn’t just important on your seventh grade exams - it could be keeping you single.

Zoosk, who is currently ranked in the top 3 on DatingAdvice.com, found a variety of other interesting facts about spelling and grammar online as well:

1. Don’t fear the period. Previous studies have found that using a period at the end of a sentence can come off as aggressive or insincere online, but Zoosk’s users were mostly in favor. Ninety-three percent said they’d be happy to receive a message with proper punctuation, including the controversial period.
2. Exclamation points are welcome (in moderation). First messages that contain exclamation marks receive a 10% higher response rate. But beware, because they’re also a case of too-much-of-a-good-thing. Use excessive exclamation points and you’ll sound like you’re yelling or disingenuously excited.
3. Women are more concerned with grammar than men. While a significant portion of both sexes find poor grammar to be a turn off, it’s a bigger issue for women. Sixty-five percent of female Zoosk users said it’s a dealbreaker compared to 40% of men. Women were also more likely to assume that poor grammar is a sign of being uneducated, unintelligent, and lazy.
4. Correct grammar becomes increasingly less important over time. Users over the age of 45 are the most forgiving where poor grammar is concerned. Forty-three percent said it doesn’t really mean anything  in the grand scheme of things.
5. It’s not always hip to be hip. Using trendy internet acronyms doesn’t necessarily make you look cool. “YOLO” caused a 47% decrease in response rates. On the other hand, “LOL” increased response rates by 25% - presumably because the recipients were charmed by their suitors finding them funny.

On that last point, Zoosk relationship expert David Pedersen encourages a balance between slang and traditional language.

“While abbreviations such as YOLO and LOL are more popular with millennials, these phrases are becoming more common beyond that demographic and slipping into the everyday vernacular,” he said. “These pop-culture phrases could very well become accepted over time, after all, some of them are starting to be included in Oxford’s dictionary! However, there will always be those individuals that appreciate the use of proper English to abbreviations."

According to The New York Times’ story last year on the current (and dismal) state of dating culture - dubbed the “Dating Apocalypse” - most Millennials using dating apps are just looking to hook up. In this feature story, we read several personal anecdotes from New York singles who were struggling with Tinder, ghosting, and meeting people who had a general lack of interest in serious relationships, which left us feeling like the world of online dating was scary and hopeless.

Turns out, this isn’t a very accurate portrayal of today’s dating culture.

A new study from one of the largest online dating services Plenty of Fish (POF) released a report this month based on over 800 survey respondents ages 18-33 (who also happen to be Millennials). These findings reveal that an overwhelming majority – 75% of Millennials to be exact – are looking for a serious relationship. This means, most are not looking for one-night stands, but real relationships.

In addition, another recent article in The New York Times flips this notion of hook-up culture on its head. Instead of taking Tinder to task for promoting hook-ups in dating, the reporter interviewed couples who had met on Tinder and later married, and even some couples who were expecting their first child after meeting over the notorious app. The conclusion is that Tinder is much more than a hook-up app, and yields successful matches for many members despite its reputation.

Tinder has been associated with hook-ups and the downfall of dating culture, but single people gravitate to it to meet people outside of their own social circles. It is the app with the largest user base, the app that most people have heard of, and because of its unique position, most people are willing to give it a try – simply because there are so many people using it.

The irony is, while some people are using it as a hook-up app, the majority of daters – including Millennials - are using it to seek out serious relationships. Despite the media claim that daters are stuck in a “casual dating” culture whether they like it or not, singles these days are still looking for good old-fashioned love. Dating apps are just a way of finding the right person, despite the superficial methods of swiping left or right based on a few photos.

Dating app culture might just be about convenience – we are always on our phones, and it’s easier to just swipe through photos rather than spending hours reading lengthy profiles. In fact, most of the long-standing dating sites have now launched apps that are more convenient and user-friendly, with photos front and center.

So the next time you are hesitant to try a dating app because you think that people are only looking for hook-ups, remember that 75% of the people you swipe through are looking for love, just like you. For more on the dating services mentioned you can read our POF review and our Tinder review.