Studies

You'd think that self-confidence would be a positive trait in dating. It takes a certain amount of assurance to approach a stranger and ask them out. And dating experts around the world agree – confidence is one of the most attractive (not to mention useful) traits a person can have.

But there happens to be one group for whom that seemingly obvious insight is not true: college-age men. According to research led by Carnegie Mellon University’s Emily Yeh, young men who are overconfident see less success using OkCupid.

Yeh's findings, presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s annual meeting in San Diego, mirror some of OkCupid's own data. The site asks users to score themselves on a variety of factors, including intelligence and height. Many rate themselves as being smarter, taller, etc., than average, and not necessarily because they're consciously lying. Instead they fall victim to “illusory superiority,” a psychological phenomenon that describes people's natural tendency to believe they are better than average.

Then again, no one is shocked at the thought of users lying on dating sites to attract more suitors. It's basic survival. Instead, Yeh decided to take things further and study how overconfidence relates to success on OkCupid. She asked participants to rate their level of self-confidence, then compared their answers to their “success” on the site (defined as things like length of conversation and frequency of first contacts). She focused her research on two age groups: 18-22 and 45-55.

Yeh's initial findings were not surprising. Individuals with higher self-reported confidence also initiated more conversations, regardless of gender or age group. But when it came to receiving messages, the results began to vary. The older age group and younger women received more messages if they considered themselves highly confident. “The more confident you are, the more messages you get,” Yeh told New York magazine.

Younger men, on the other hand, had the opposite experience. “The more modest the male is, the more messages they receive,” Yeh said. Young men who reported less confidence in the initial survey were also less likely to develop a first message into an extended conversation.

What could explain Yeh's findings? She suggests that “it could mean, perhaps as you get older, you start to have more concrete measures of how confident you are.” As you mature, you have a greater number of real achievements under your belt and with those achievements comes both a clearer sense of what you can accomplish and a stronger belief in yourself.

Younger daters may feel confident, but not yet have much to back that confidence up. Either that means they're making missteps they wouldn't make if they were more cautious, or their false bravado is clear to potential dates who are turned off by it. Either way, the end message is clear: college guys need to give the overconfidence a rest if they want to score.

Were you wondering who the most popular members were on Match.com this past year? Or maybe you were wondering the percentage of blonde to brunette daters, or what music most matches were listening to? Whatever your question, Match.com seems to have answers in their 2015 wrap-up.

If you dwell in New York City, you might be surprised to learn that despite the hectic pace and its legendary status for casual relationships and ambitious and independent singles (thanks to tv shows like Girls and Sex and the City), New York City is the number one place where Match.com members want kids! Commitment and family in New York City is possible and a goal for a lot of daters, so lesson learned here: don’t let the stereotypes rule your life.

If on the other hand, you are looking for the jet set life and want to be with a doctor or lawyer, head to Durham, North Carolina or Washington, D.C. respectively.

It also appears that despite the tech-savvy iPhone users among us, Android users are becoming more likely to try online dating. In 2015, 29% more Android users joined Match.com vs. iPhone users.

This past year marked a big year for the LGBT community, with the Supreme Court ruling that marriage between same-sex couples was legal across the country. Plus, notable celebrity and former Olympic Champion Caitlyn Jenner came out to the world, making transgender rights a topic of discussion. In the online dating world, half a million members of the LGBT community joined Match in 2015.

Following are some additional highlights:

• Since we are in for a long year of political maneuvering in 2016, Match.com decided to see the Hilarys vs. the Donalds who signed up for online dating this past year. As it turns out, there are more Donalds who are members of Match. (We’ll see how this plays out in the elections.)
• Game of Thrones was the most-mentioned TV show on Match this year. (No big surprise – though fans of The Walking Dead will be pleased their show came in second.)
• The most-mentioned celebrities included Drake at #1, Taylor Swift, Beyonce and then the Kardashians.
• The most mentioned trendy words of 2015 were “swag” (coming in at #1), “bae” (because who doesn’t want to find their bae?), and “Netflix and chill” (to which I can relate).
• Most trending newsworthy topics discussed on Match include transgender, Donald Trump, and marijuana. 
• The most popular foods mentioned were sushi (coming in at #1), tacos and ramen. Delicious.
• Two times more brunettes joined than blondes.
• Last but not least, Match revealed its two most popular daters – Leonora from New York, NY and Gabriel from Los Angeles.

To find out more about this dating service you can read our review of Match.com. Happy dating!

How will technology change the way we date over the next 25 years? Virtual reality, DNA testing and wearable technology could all be part of the picture.

A recent report from Imperial College Business School in the United Kingdom, commissioned by eHarmony, explores how we'll date in the future. The report analyzed over 100 years’ worth of trend data and interviews with experts in multiple fields to predict how dating and relationships could change by 2040.

"By 2040 we estimate that 70 percent of couples will get together online, with technology revolutionising the way we find love and build our relationships," said Romain Bertrand, eHarmony UK manager, to The Telegraph.

Dating can feel like a spin of the roulette wheel. You could wind up a winner or go home a loser, and either way, your fate is in the fickle hands of Lady Luck. Run into a particularly bad string of dates and you might even think your odds are better in Vegas.

Online dating can't take luck out of the equation entirely, but matching algorithms attempt to add science into the mix. Much has been said about how data is used to help online daters meet their match, but what about the dating sites themselves?

Lynsey Tomkinson, senior marketing manager at eHarmony, spoke to CMO about how an audience segmentation project opened up a whole new world of possibilities for eHarmony. Tasked with increasing the effectiveness of the company's marketing programs, Tomkinson's team relied on data to find ways to better understand and interact with prospects and customers.

The team's investigation began with eHarmony's testimonials. In an age that's widely accepting of online dating, testimonials are no longer needed to persuade new prospects to try it for the first time. Instead, it's about persuading them to switch to eHarmony.

eHarmony also decided to dial down on its marriage-based messaging. Although the company built a strong reputation as a marriage-minded site, that motif becomes increasingly less relevant in the modern world. The company will now showcase that it's a relationship-oriented site without focusing on marriage specifically.

eHarmony launched an audience segmentation project late in 2014 to delve deeper into audience insights. The goal was to find better ways to target individuals using messages carefully tailored to their needs, interests and lifestyles. eHarmony drew on data from its 2.6 million Australian members and analyzed more than 70 million data points – the largest bespoke audience segmentation project in the company's eight-year history in Australia.

Ten unique audiences were identified based on profitability, volume and opportunity. Tomkinson's team emphasized the top three, most commercially viable segments. As a result, customer subscriptions and engagement rates leapt by double digits, while eHarmony improved the cost of its registration-to-subscription rate by 53 percent.

After the success of these data-driven experiments, the next step is to boost data analytics capability in-house. “This provides the business the case to get these systems running internally for us,” Tomkinson told CMO. eHarmony is now taking steps to build its infrastructure. Tomkinson hopes the company can produce more data-driven initiatives internally by this time next year.

“This work has set up a good foundation for us that hopefully will work well internally in the future,” she says.

For more information on this dating service please read our review of eHarmony.com.

When you swipe right on someone’s profile, you have a good idea of your physical preferences and what kind of person you are attracted to. Maybe you like a certain body type or hair color or height, but after that, it gets a little more complex. Maybe you like a particular person’s smile, or that they seem to have a wicked sense of humor or arty style in their photography.

While swiping is making it easier to go through profiles and accept or reject someone at whim, is it becoming more automatic the longer we swipe? Are we careful in our choices, or do we casually and without much thought say yes or no? Do we want someone (or something) else to do the swiping for us, someone who knows our preferences as well or even better than we do? It would save time and effort, but do we want to disengage from matching entirely?

At least one researcher is asking the question. He thinks we can be consistent enough in our picks that a computer can pick up on what we like and do the swiping for us. And why shouldn't this be an option?

Harm de Vries, a post-doctoral researcher at the Université de Montreal, thinks computers would make excellent choices on our behalf, and set about proving it with a recent study.

According to an article in PC World, De Vries scraped 10,000 photos from Tinder and gave a computer his opinion of 8,000 of them. Then he let the computer determine his likes and dislikes for the remaining 2,000, thinking this sample was reflective and large enough to be pretty accurate. Unfortunately, it managed to be right only 55% of the time. In other words, it wasn’t much better than closing your eyes and swiping arbitrarily.

De Vries decided to test a larger sample, so he pulled almost 500,000 photos from OkCupid. With a greater number of images to work with, the computer achieved a higher success rate – 68% - but still managed to correctly agree with only two out of every three choices made by DeVries.

Still, De Vries is hopeful that computers can assist in the decision-making process. He thinks even services like Twitter can benefit from computer learning, which is still pretty accurate even compared to human learning. "One of my friends who collaborated with me got to learn my preferences and he managed 76 percent accuracy, so even for humans it's pretty hard."

Choosing who we are attracted to is not an exact  science – we are all attracted to people that don’t necessarily have our “favored” characteristics, like dark hair or an athletic body, but they can still possess something that we find very compelling.

The point is – do we want to control our choices, or have a computer just do it for us?

Dating app Hinge is taking after OkCupid by collecting its user data and publishing results that might help people better connect. The latest report outlines the best pick-up lines among users of its app – and as it turns out, the way to a woman’s heart might just be through her stomach.

To conduct the survey, Hinge recruited copywriters and data analysts to compose 100 original openers, and sent them to 22 percent of Hinge users, who were then given the option of sending these openers to their matches. After studying eight million impressions, trends began to emerge. Some were expected - daters who want to connect should definitely avoid generic statements like 'Hey, what's up?' as an opening line, for example. The data was refined and categorized to give more in-depth info about who was responding—including their gender, age, and location across the U.S.

Results of the month-long experiment showed the most effective conversation starters for women include food references. For instance, a guy could ask a question like: “Chocolate, red velvet, or funfetti?” referring to cupcake preferences, or “Best discovery: Netflix or avocados?” for example. Hinge noted that “women are 40% more likely than men to respond to openers that are food-related.”

Men were most responsive when asked out directly, and particularly if those messages were assertive (the types of messages most women don’t like, which should be noted). For instance, if a woman put herself out there and confidently asked “Drinks soon?” or “Free this week?” men were 98% more likely to respond favorably.

Males were also found to have shorter attention spans: If they don’t receive a response to a message within six hours, a quarter of them will drop out of sight, compared with only five per cent of women.

As far as age groups, the 35 and older crowd prefers pop culture references. For instance, they responded best to “Katy Perry or Taylor Swift?” or “Bears, beets, or Battlestar Gallactica?” The 20-somethings preferred introductions about lifestyle with lines like: “Better adventure: Rock climbing or scuba diving?” or “Sunday priorities: Exercise, sleep or aggressive mimosas?” The 18-23 age group seemed to prefer novelty questions like: “Pain reliever personality: Advil, Tylenol or complaining?” and “You’re having your portrait painted – what’s your backdrop?”

Regional responses varied too, with folks in Los Angeles preferring entertainment-related questions (no surprise), and users in the Mid-West liking the 90’s references.

Hinge connects people through Facebook circles, and is available for both Android and iPhone. For more on Hinge, you can read our review.