Want to know the best way to date online? Try going offline.
It sounds simple, like common sense. It’s hard to get some through a computer, right? But in a much-discussed study on the merits of online dating, researchers found that while a certain amount of computer-mediated interaction may be helpful to the process of finding a romantic partner, too much can ruin your chances.
The study, “Online Dating: A Critical Analysis From the Perspective of Psychological Science,” published online this month in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, was an overview study — meaning they didn't collect new data, but rather looked at established psychological science relevant to online dating.
The study’s lead author, Eli Finkel, an associate professor of psychology who runs the Northwestern Self-Control and Relationships Lab, says that part of the problem with online dating is a matter of evolution. Research from his lab suggests that people can’t determine whom they might be compatible with just by looking at a profile.
“The human brain is an amazingly refined tool for figuring out is this a friend or a foe, is this somebody I’d like to see again, is there some potential romantic attraction here?" he says. "It can do that in a matter of minutes face-to-face, but it didn’t evolve to browse profiles.”
And the sheer number of profiles available to us might be standing in the way of your life becoming one of those perfect Match.com commercials. Psychology suggests we’re not always happy with more options, which has implications when you’re looking at the entire Internet as your potential dating pool. “If you choose to go on a date with somebody from an array of five, versus an array of 3,000, you might end up being less satisfied than if you had chosen from a larger array, in part because you realize there are so many other options there,” Finkel warns. “There’s relatively little reason to believe that browsing profiles for an extra few hours is going to make you make any better decision than if you almost took a dart and sort of said well, I’ll just try that one.”
Before you delete your OkCupid profile in frustration, know that there’s still some merit in the online dating scene. In two of the studies Finkel and his team examined, just the right amount of computer-mediated communication — email and instant messaging — led to participants being more attracted to each other upon their subsequent in-person introduction. But after a longer period of email communication leading up to the first in-person meeting, that extra spark disappeared. “If you get an increasingly solid sense of what a person’s like just through computer-mediated communication, then you often end up disappointed or sort of surprised by what the person’s like once you meet face-to-face," Finkel explains.
He suggests corresponding just enough to get a preliminary idea of someone before meeting them offline. While the new frontier that is the online dating scene provides unprecedented access to potential singles of your preferred sex and orientation, there’s a lot we don’t understand yet about the way romantic interaction works. This includes whether there are crucial hidden factors in a person’s charisma, subtle scents or posture that make in-person interaction different from communication through a computer screen.
And he has no sympathy for the “dating at Northwestern sucks” crowd. “College is basically the best it’s going to get, in terms of the volume of potentially desirable people,” he says. “My view is, if people here aren’t happy with the dating scene here, then they should take the bull by the horns and start asking people out.”
Easier said than done, we know, but if you find yourself trolling Evanston matches this evening, take his advice: “Just get face-to-face — see if there’s a spark there.”