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You Can Count on Cupid
Uncovering Love by the Numbers, from the First Date, to the Seven-Year Itch, to Forever After
By Luisa Dillner Henry Holt and Company
Copyright © 2010 Luisa Dillner
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-4857-9
CHAPTER 1
Mr. or Ms. Right
Pickup Lines
I've never been any good at picking up women. A friend suggested some pickup lines that work for him but sound gross to me. He's very good-looking, so women probably don't care what he's saying. But can pickup lines work, and if so, which ones do work?
There is a science to pickup lines. A pickup line works if it shows you off to some advantage, by making you look interesting, humorous, athletic, or rich. Preferably all of the above. The risk is that the wrong line, even if delivered by a Brad Pitt lookalike, will be met with ridicule. The type of ridicule that can haunt you forever. But on the bright side, there are tips to be had, because there's been research on the best pickup lines. Questions seem to work better than statements. A study of one hundred people (ranging in age from twenty-two to forty-five years) who went on three-minute speed dates were asked to pick the best opening lines they heard. The researchers, from the University of Hertfordshire in England, were generous enough to share the results. The winning pickup line? "What is your favorite pizza topping?" Lines like this are open questions that give the other person the chance to respond in a lighthearted way, something that the worst pickup lines ("I have a PhD in computer science" and "My best friend is a helicopter pilot") fail to do.
More detailed research into pickup lines has been undertaken based on hypothetical stories. A study of 205 undergraduates by psychologists at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland asked them to rank pickup lines from made-up scenarios. Women liked the one where a man at a trendy bar says, "I'm one of the owners here, would you like to dance?" thus showing off his wealth and dancing ability, two highly desirable qualities, in one sentence. The use of these scenarios may bias the study, however. In one of them, in which a man protects a woman from two larger louts, you'd have to think any pickup line would be a winner, even "I have a PhD in computer science."
Men, bless them, like to use sexual pickup lines, as in "If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?" and "I may not be Fred Flintstone, but I bet I could make your Bed Rock," or the even less poetic "Is there a mirror in your undies? I think I can see myself in them." This, the research tells us, is their subtle way of finding a woman who wants to get laid. Women say they prefer pickup lines that show a man could have more long-term potential. Therefore any opening line that shows off wealth (which studies show is something women still find strangely appealing in a mate), a generous nature, and confidence (in a realistic way, so not "Shall I buy you an island?") is attractive. Empty compliments don't seem to work, although lines such as "Was your father a thief? He must have stolen the stars to put them in your eyes" or "If you were a tear in my eye, I wouldn't cry for fear of losing you" have a cheesy charm.
Whatever pickup line you use, make sure that you smile when you say it. Smiling increases your chances of a positive response, and some people will make up their mind about you before you've opened your mouth.
Online Mating
Is Internet dating a good way to meet someone? I haven't had a relationship with anyone since I broke up with my boyfriend three years ago. I don't want to be on my own, and online dating seems more acceptable than it used to be. How successful is it likely to be? I'm thirty-five years old.
The Internet is one of the most common ways for people to find dates. A Nielsen/NetRatings survey on meeting people ranked it third after "through friends" and "in pubs and clubs" and estimated that 3.5 million people a month use dating Web sites. Around 11 percent of us who use the Internet visit a dating site each month. And why not? You can do it from home (initially), twenty-four hours a day (if you have the stamina), it's relatively safe and anonymous (if you're careful), and no longer just for those who are desperate. It's now almost cool to find your true love online. And although some people sign up to find "friends" and have flings, a Pew Internet Study in the United States of over three thousand adults found that 15 percent knew someone in a long-term relationship that had started online and that 17 percent of people had married someone they had first met online. The survey estimated that approximately 16 million Americans have gone to a dating Web site to meet people online. Match.com says that two hundred thousand people a month find someone on its site.
A more academically robust study of 229 online daters by Dr. Jeff Gavin of Bath University in England showed that on average most significant online relationships lasted for seven months, with a quarter lasting a year. Gavin says that success rates are similar to offline methods but that the opportunity for people to remain anonymous for a while is an advantage. People feel they can express their emotions more readily online, which can accelerate intimacy. On the other hand, people can also lie more easily since they don't have to show their face or figure. Studies show that people most commonly lie about weight, age, and, oh yes, being married. Some lie more spectacularly. Karen Carlton, a divorcee in Fife, Scotland, lived for two years with a former U.S. marine she met online, before she found out he was a fabulist from Leicester, in central England.
If you have reasonable expectations, online dating is a good way to start looking for dates. Sensible precautions apply, as they do in offline life: don't give away too much information about yourself, meet in a public place (lunch at a restaurant is good, as you can get away in just over an hour if you've had enough), choose profiles with photos. Beware of men who only "wink" at you on sites (time wasters), call themselves "Top Gun," or e-mail "My life was meaningless without you; I think of you every minute of every day" within the first week, since this is not normal behavior. Increase your success rate by posting a photo and a truthful profile. Online dating agencies advise looking friendly rather than seductive or moody in photos, as approachability increases success rates. Best of all, use a dictionary when composing your profile. One of the biggest turnoffs, apparently, is a profile with poor spelling.
Speedy Dating
I'm twenty-six years old and broke up with my girlfriend eight months ago. Since then I've been single. I've considered speed dating, but I'm worried that no one will choose to see me again. Is there anything I can do to increase my chances of success?
One of the joys of speed dating is that it protects you from instant rejection. No woman will dismiss you to your face. You usually only hear if you've had any matches (if someone you want to see also wants to see you again) a couple of days after the event. And you should get at least one match at an event. Ever since Rabbi Yaacov Deyo invented speed dating in Los Angeles in 1998 to help Jewish singles get together, it has been frequently studied. Most speed daters haven't met each other before — so these are random meetings, albeit among people who select themselves by choosing to go speed dating — and by finding out how speed daters choose each other, researchers can work out what attracts people to each other. At least, that is, at a speed-dating event. As you'll see, a speed date is not so different from a regular first date — just even more superficial.
So prepare to be underwhelmed. To be successful, you'll need to be tall, young, slim, and good-looking. A recent study from Essex University in England of 3,600 men and women attending speed-dating events found that every one inch of height a man had over other men increased his chances of being picked by 5 percent. In studies of what people look for in long-term partners, they'll say "kindness, intelligence, and an attractive personality." Well, speed daters leave some of that touchy-feely stuff at home. The three- or four-minute time limit on each date means that market forces apply. Education and income have little influence, although other studies show that thin, tall people are more likely to have higher incomes. About two-thirds of speed daters in the studies have college degrees; the U.S. national average is 28 percent according to U.S. census data. A study in Evolution and Human Behavior of over 10,500 Americans who took part in HurryDate sessions also found that both sexes cared most about physical appearance and that few people were picked on the basis of their income, personality, or wealth.
Be warned that women are choosier than men. In the study of HurryDate sessions, women chose two to three men per session and saw 45 percent of their choices matched. Men chose five women and had 20 percent matched. A third of men but only 11 percent of women got no matches. Many people don't choose anyone; those who think they are less desirable may pick more people as matches to increase their chances of getting a date with someone.
How successful speed dating is at generating long-term relationships is less clear because these studies have yet to be done, but a study from Northwestern University published in Personal Relationships found that 163 undergraduate speed daters embarked on over five hundred dates afterward. Not exactly long-term follow-up, but it shows enthusiasm.
As in all markets, your success depends on the competition. If you wear shoe lifts, hold in your stomach, look young, and have a nice, friendly face, you'll get lots of interest. Your personality will only matter on the dates that, it is hoped, follow.
Romantic Timing
I'm a single forty-something male who recently joined a dating Web site. After an indifferent start I was told by a female friend that women are not interested in beginning new relationships in the winter and that spring is the best time for this. Is this true? Or are relationships more likely to begin at a different time of the year?
Spring always feels like such a hopeful season, doesn't it? So full of promise. Yet strangely it doesn't feature as a peak time of activity for dating Web sites. The most popular times for people to sign up with dating services are January, February (in the aftermath of a barren Valentine's Day), and the second week of September, says Mary Balfour, managing director of the dating agency Drawing Down the Moon. Balfour believes that the peaks reflect people's needs to reassess their relationship status shortly after Christmas (no one to kiss under the mistletoe) and at the end of summer (after ill-judged holiday romances). Match.com (20 million members worldwide) says its busiest day ever was January 6, 2008, reflecting a rush of New Year's resolutions to find a mate. But the evidence is conflicting; a survey by ComScore, Inc., found a peak in online dating sites in the United States in July.
Hard times seem to drive people to dating sites and agencies Whatever the month. An article in the Los Angeles Times claimed that both eHarmony and Match.com reported especially high traffic on days when the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted.
Balfour's view of spring being the best season to launch an online romantic assault? "It's a load of rubbish." If you've had an indifferent start to online dating, you should blame your profile or photograph rather than the season. Photographs are essential; you are twelve times more likely to get approached if someone can see what you look like. As already mentioned, try to look friendly rather than moodily handsome, and while we're at it, your profile should be flirty (not sleazy) and humorous. If you regularly update your profile, it moves you up the search-engine hierarchy, so more people will find you. There's apparently a shortage of single men in their forties, so rather than wait for lambs to gambol in the fields and daffodils to bloom, just make sure you come across as half decent and sane.
That you shouldn't wait for spring is further (if weakly) backed up by a survey of more than one thousand people by the Scripps Howard News Service. Over half of the people in this survey thought spring no more romantic than any other season, though men were slightly more dewy-eyed about it. There's an argument that December, with its lack of daylight and the magic of Christmas, is the most romantic month, which is borne out by the fact that it usually has the highest rates of conception, although there are also less romantic explanations for this assessment, involving alcohol and unprotected sex.
Social anthropologists theorize that autumn should be the peak time to try to find a mate, as life goes back to normal rhythms after the summer holidays and you look for someone to cook with and snuggle up with under the duvet. Someone to nest with.
But we don't know when the peak season is for actual success in romance; we only know about when people start trying to find someone. So if you want a relationship, you shouldn't wait for some optimum time that doesn't exist. The reality is that clocks have little to do with it. Whatever the time zone, what matters is that the timing's right for both you and the other party.
In the Stars?
I'm a twenty-eight-year-old man who is having a great relationship with a lovely woman for the first time in five years. The only problem is that she's into horoscopes — she reads them every day. She's delighted that our signs are compatible, but I wonder if she would be so keen if they weren't. There is no evidence that your sign determines who you are attracted to, is there?
The short answer is no, don't be absurd. But there's a longer one, too, because horoscopes are sufficiently irritating to provoke researchers into providing evidence to disprove them. Which is just as well because many people believe them. According to a 2004 survey of three thousand young people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four reported in London's Guardian newspaper, two-thirds of respondents believed in horoscopes, a figure that is not far behind the 78 percent of Americans who told the Pew Research Center that they believe in the Bible. A survey of 1,122 art students and 383 science students at York University in Toronto found that 92 percent knew their star sign. (What planet had the others been on? Even my seven-year-old daughter knows she's a Leo.) In the same survey, a quarter of the art students and one in five science students said they had made a conscious decision based on their horoscope in the past year. Since horoscopes are vague, as in "Be careful what you wish for; being wealthy does not necessarily bring happiness," one wonders what decisions they made. A study by the French statistician Michel Gauquelin involved sending a description of the personality characteristics in the astrological sign for one of the worst mass murderers in French history to 150 people and asked how well it fitted them; 94 percent said they recognized themselves in the description.
It is clearly annoying to think you have been chosen for your star sign, but since 500 million people share that sign, you can still take some personal credit. If someone truly believes that as a Pisces they are best off with a Scorpio, they may look out for or at least be receptive to people with that star sign. But any activity along these lines is marginal. A study by Dr. David Voas at the University of Manchester in England analyzed the birthdays of 20 million husbands and wives using data from the 2001 UK census. It found no evidence that astrological signs had any impact on the probability of marrying someone of any other sign. If there had been even a small influence, such as one in one thousand influenced by the stars, he calculated we would see ten thousand more couples than expected with certain combinations of star signs. But there weren't. Astrologers criticized his study for not looking at full birth charts (with birth dates and times), but, as Voas says, he used the same criteria as are used in astrologers' columns. Perhaps most interesting was that Voas found a random distribution of birthday combinations — so that even a belief in astrology didn't influence people in their marriage choices.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from You Can Count on Cupid by Luisa Dillner. Copyright © 2010 Luisa Dillner. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
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