THREE minutes should be plenty of time to sell yourself. In this attention-deficit world of sound bites and 30 second commercials, the time you get to impress a potential partner in a speed dating session is positively luxurious. So when an offer to join a special speed dating event fell into my lap, I snapped it up. Here was my chance to go undercover, to secretly test the fundamental theory of mate selection: is it a matter of individual taste or biological destiny? How hard could this be?
A plan was hatched. To half the men I met I would present myself as a faithful beauty, then halfway through I鈥檇 change into an ageing floozy, with the help of a few strategic lies and some smudged make-up. If the scientists were right, by conveying the feminine virtues of fidelity and fertility I would have the best possible chance of catching my man, and my metamorphosis should help highlight this. He, though, should emphasise his wealth, status and commitment to be sure of attracting me.
My rough-and-ready plan aside, the science of 鈥済etting it together鈥� is one of the most studied areas in human behavioural biology. It鈥檚 hardly surprising. After all, choosing a mate is among the most important things we do. It ranks up there with getting a balanced diet, avoiding sudden death and rearing our offspring. But how do you make a scientific assessment of an act that is highly personal, and often serendipitous and inexplicable even to the parties involved? This is where speed dating could help. It allows psychologists and biologists to test their theories in a real 鈥� if slightly contrived 鈥� setting.
Advertisement
By treating humans like any other animal, it should be possible to predict certain things about our mating preferences. Children are dependent on their parents for far longer than the young of any other animal, so this is about much more than just producing offspring to carry our DNA. For several years the little blighters will be a huge drain on resources, demanding CDs, mobile phones and the rest. So, the theory goes, women should seek partners who are committed and have a plentiful supply of material resources.
Men鈥檚 preferences should also be shaped by the forces of reproductive biology. An obsessive interest in women鈥檚 looks may seem superficial, but if a man is going to invest time and resources in his offspring he needs to be sure that his partner has good genes and high fertility: numerous studies indicate that these all-important characteristics are correlated with features that men find attractive: facial symmetry, youthful skin and a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7. In addition, men are unusually at risk of cuckoldry because women, unlike many female animals, do not advertise when they are ovulating, short of monitoring his spouse 24 hours a day a man can never be totally sure that he is the father of her child. That鈥檚 why you would expect men to pay particular attention to whether a potential mate has a history of being sexually faithful.
So it was with a mixture of excitement and curiosity that I took my seat at a small table in the basement of one of London鈥檚 less salubrious nightclubs. But once things got going and the string of hopefuls trooped past in 3-minute slots, it soon became apparent that either there were major flaws in the theory of mate selection, or my experiment wasn鈥檛 the way to test it. 鈥淚n the real world, although people want to target their courtship efforts at good prospects, they should also go for someone they can realistically get,鈥� says Peter Todd from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. And that means assessing your own value and then looking for desirable qualities similar in value in someone of the opposite sex. So men should trade material resources and commitment for women鈥檚 fertility and fidelity, and vice versa 鈥� a pattern of choice that has been dubbed 鈥減otentials attract鈥�. The odd thing is that when you actually ask people what they want in a partner, you get quite a different picture.
鈥淧eople say they want someone just like themselves, but in practice that鈥檚 seldom who they choose to be with鈥�
Several studies highlight this conundrum, including research published last year by Peter Buston and Stephen Emlen from Cornell University (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 100, p 8805). They got 978 singletons to rate themselves as potential long-term partners in terms of wealth, status, family commitment, appearance and sexual fidelity. Then the researchers asked their volunteers to rate the importance of these qualities in their ideal partner. The results knocked evolutionary theory for six. People in the survey were not concerned with the trade-offs between their attributes and those of the opposite sex. Instead they wanted someone just like themselves in terms of status, appearance, fidelity and commitment.
So, is it possible that we have transcended our animal nature? Are our own ideas about who to spend our lives with shaped by romantic notions of compatibility and the hunt for a 鈥渟oul mate鈥� who will be our perfect match, overriding biology? Todd thinks not. He suspects the reason for these results is that Buston and Emlen asked for people鈥檚 preferences instead of looking at the choices they actually made. Convinced that the outcome would be different in a more real-life situation, Todd teamed up with colleague Barbara Fasolo now at the London School of Economics, Alison Lenton now at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Lars Penke from Humboldt University in Berlin to take a closer look at the mysterious world of speed dating.
The team wanted to investigate the apparent discrepancy between what people think they want in a partner and what they actually choose. They studied 46 women and men who had signed up for a speed dating session with FastDating in Munich, Germany. Pre-event questionnaires showed that they believed they would be attracted to partners whose levels of wealth and status, family commitment and physical attractiveness matched their own, as Buston and Emlen found. In the speed dating hot seat, however, their choices proved somewhat different.
Trading faces
The study did not look at fidelity because it is difficult to measure reliably, but the team found that women did trade their looks for men鈥檚 commitment, wealth and status. The higher they rated their own physical appearance the higher the quality of men they went for, as evolutionary theory predicts. Men, however, did not trade. Instead, they seemed to set a threshold for female desirability that was not always linked to their own self-perception. As a result, men made far more offers than women. Men seem to work on the principle that there is not much to lose by taking a chance, says Todd. Which might explain why all my dates seemed so keen; one even went so far as to suggest that we leave together immediately. Despite this gung-ho attitude, the researchers say the study confirmed their suspicions. People say they want a mate who is similar to them, but actually go for someone who fits the traditional evolutionary theory.
A larger study of speed daters in the US reached a similar conclusion. Robert Kurzban and Jason Weeden from the University of Pennsylvania questioned more than 10,000 participants in sessions organised by HurryDate and also found that potentials attract. The results, due to appear in Evolution and Human Behavior next year, will make sober reading for the lovelorn speed dater, though. That鈥檚 because, while subjects were quizzed beforehand on all sorts of characteristics that might be important to prospective partners 鈥� from education and religion to attitudes to casual sex 鈥� once dating began, both men and women focused almost exclusively on physical attributes such as attractiveness. People did seem to weigh up their own market value in order to trade, and only physical qualities were recognised as valuable. Women, for example, preferred men with medium build whereas men wanted thin women.
鈥淢en think there鈥檚 nothing to lose by aiming for someone more attractive then they are鈥�
The implication seems bleak for the chances of meeting 鈥渢he one鈥� on a speed date. Only the young and beautiful will succeed, because the process encourages superficial judgements that will exclude anyone whose magic lies more than skin deep. But that鈥檚 pretty much what happens in any initial encounter, says Todd. Looks are the most obvious indicator of biological fitness, so that is where our assessment of someone new is likely to start. Todd and Geoffrey Miller from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, describe courtship as a series of tests that must be overcome by each partner to the satisfaction of the other if the relationship is to progress. With the extreme constraints of time and intimacy in speed dating, we only get as far as physical attractiveness. In other words, speed dating is all about first impressions, lots of them.
Which apparently is what speed daters want. Lenton, Fasolo and Todd asked 88 students to anticipate their levels of satisfaction, enjoyment and regret, given a choice from various numbers of online dating profiles. Although subjects said that having too many options would prove difficult, they thought they would much rather choose between 20 potential dates than four. But here too there was a discrepancy between what they wanted and their actual experience. When the students had to choose a date from among different numbers of real profiles, they reported that having more choice was less enjoyable and did not increase their satisfaction or reduce the feeling of having missed out on a better match.
Speed dating agencies have made a killing by offering people what they say they want. Perhaps choosing from 20 or 30 individuals is hard work, and maybe the time limit does force daters to put too much emphasis on looks, but punters keep coming back for more. That鈥檚 because the anticipation of getting what you want often outweighs the frustration of not succeeding. Besides, speed dating does seem to provide a modern arena in which to exercise our evolved preferences for certain sorts of mates. 鈥淭echnology has definitely influenced the way we date and mate today,鈥� says Lenton. 鈥淏ut qualities such as fertility and resources will always be important,鈥� adds Todd.
In the event, my own experiment to test these theories in a speed dating session failed miserably. I had underestimated most men鈥檚 talent for first-date waffle. I had also failed to account for the fact that they are often too polite to ask crucial questions, such as 鈥渉ave you ever cheated on a lover?鈥� As a result, my two personas floundered. But all was not lost. I did meet a couple of guys who confirmed my faith in science. Adonis, with the face of an angel and the body of a gym slave, seemed irresistible 鈥� until he revealed his willingness to cheat on his girlfriend. Then there was Solomon: wise, committed, at the peak of his profession. Here was a man you would consider spending the rest of your life with. Too bad I鈥檓 already married.
Learn to be like a love machine
HAVING trouble attracting women? Here鈥檚 what I find attractive in a man: give me lots of short words of encouragement and let me talk. And I鈥檓 not the only one. This seems to be one of the key rules to winning women over, according to researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Sandy Pentland and colleagues analysed conversations during speed dating sessions and discovered a way to predict whether couples are attracted to each other. They then turned it into software that runs on a hand-held computer. Used during speed dating sessions, it will show how you鈥檙e doing in real-time.
I tested Pentland鈥檚 high-tech speed dating aid earlier this year. Each person was given a headset with a microphone plugged into a hand-held computer. Because the system is still being tested, the conversations were recorded for later analysis and we weren鈥檛 told how we were doing in real time.
It might seem an odd addition to an already artificial experience. But there is a serious side to it. The speech analysis software could benefit people with more serious problems, not just desperate speed daters. Pentland suggests such gadgets could help people with autistic spectrum disorders by measuring in real time the emotional tone of people鈥檚 voices. Individuals with autism can struggle to distinguish angry from interested, or bored from surprised.
Pentland has analysed nearly 60 speed-dating conversations. He can now predict the verdict for 80 per cent of couples and get it right three-quarters of the time; the remainder are too close to call. Clues in the voice Crucially, the researchers don鈥檛 study the content of the conversation. Instead they measure how long each person spends talking, how much the pitch and volume of each voice varies and how often one interrupts the other. Pentland thinks of these features as a form of 鈥渧erbal body language鈥�, the vocal equivalent of crossing your arms or fiddling with your hair. 鈥淲e鈥檙e largely unconscious of it, but it matters hugely,鈥� he says.
Analysing these features produces a set of numbers which Pentland combines with different weightings to give an 鈥渁ttraction factor鈥� (see Graph). The weight assigned to each feature depends on how much it influenced the outcome of the dates the team recorded: the greater its influence, the greater its weight. So, a real-time analysis could warn you the score was low and suggest what features you might change to up it.FIG-mg24781501.jpg
One indicator of attraction was the number of interjections in a conversation that lasted less than a second, typically words or phrases such as 鈥淥K鈥�, 鈥淚 see鈥� and 鈥済o on鈥�. 鈥淪ome people had 30 in 5 minutes, others used only five,鈥� says Madan. If men used lots of these, women were more likely to report attraction at the end of the session. And from my dates the researchers found that men liked me more when I varied the pitch of my voice.
Pentland suggests individuals could learn to improve voice habits, but doesn鈥檛 think it will lead to a new wave of seducers. 鈥淧eople will have a very difficult time learning to hide it or cover it up, but people can learn to some degree how to control it,鈥� he says.
So will a man do better at dating if he uses these encouraging phrases? 鈥淲e don鈥檛 know whether these speech features are a cause or effect,鈥� says Madan. Then again it can鈥檛 hurt to try, can it?
