Social networks such as Facebook are excellent places to announce your romantic availability, right? Large numbers of potential viewers, integration into profiles, search, and more– what’s not to like? It may not be so easy. Surprisingly, research by psychologists at Northwestern University and MIT suggests that being too available, let alone desperate for romance, can significantly impact your chances of finding love or dating. In a paper entitled “Selective Versus Unselective Romantic Desire,” Paul Eastwick, Eli Finkel, Daniel Mochon, and Dan Ariely use observations on speed-dating to uncover some interesting practical information.
The research
The experimenters conducted 7 speed dating sessions for 156 undergraduate students, each of whom went on 4 minute short “dates” with 9 to 13 individuals. When they returned home, they rated their experiences with each date from 1-9 on three questionnaires covering the following topics:
- romantic desire (“I really liked my interaction partner.”)
- chemistry (“My interaction partner and I had a real connection.”)
- perceived unselectivity (“To what percentage of the other people here today will this person say ‘yes?’”)
Participants also indicated whether or not they’d be interested in future meet-ups with each individual, marking each date as a ‘yes’ or ‘no.’
The results
Interestingly enough, the researchers observed several marked statistically significant findings. They write,
If a participant uniquely desired a particular partner, the partner tended to reciprocate that unique desire. In addition, a participant’s unique romantic desire for a partner positively predicted the partner’s experience of unique chemistry with the participant … In stark contrast to these dyadic effects and to findings from nonromantic contexts, generalized reciprocity was negative … If a participant generally tended to romantically desire others, those others tended not to desire him or her. Furthermore, a participant’s tendency to desire everyone negatively predicted partners’ reports of chemistry with that participant.
In other words, their four main findings are:
- individuals that liked their interaction partners were liked back
- individuals perceived a ‘unique chemistry’ if their interaction partners liked them
- individuals that liked everyone were less liked
- individuals perceived less ‘unique chemistry’ with partners that liked everyone
The implications
Choosing not to mark that “looking for a relationship” box might help you in the long run!
These results suggest that there are two types of romantic desire: generalized, and specific. Generalized romantic desire was a turn-off within the speed-dating experience; when individuals picked up on the notion that their dates weren’t especially picky, they rated them much less desirably than individuals they felt were more specific in their affections.
How does this apply to Facebook? Simple. By marking yourself as “looking for a relationship,” you’re announcing that you might fall into the ‘generalized romantic desire’ category; that is, you might be perceived to be more interested in finding a relationship or dating than the actual individual you might have a chance at getting together with. Ironic how announcing your availability can hurt your chances!
Of course, these results can be applied to much more than just a status checkbox within Facebook: interactions within other social networks, classified advertisements, dating sites, and even in person can all take a little bit of advice from this article with a simple bottom line: don’t be desperate.
Eastwick, P.W., Finkel, E.J., Mochon, D., Ariely, D. (2007). Selective Versus Unselective Romantic Desire: Not All Reciprocity Is Created Equal. Psychological Science, 18(4), 317-319. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01897.x
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