Seducing Women Blog

According to a new Northwestern University study, speed daters who romantically desired most of their potential partners were rejected quickly.

In the past, social psychologists have had a difficult time observing initial romantic attraction in action, but the speed-dating methodology used in this study allowed the investigators to take a serious look at the chemistry of attraction.

To explore dynamics in the opening minutes of romantic attraction, the researchers set up seven speed-dating sessions for a total of 156 undergraduate students. Participants had four-minute speed dates with nine to 13 opposite-sex individuals. Immediately following each date, they completed a two-minute questionnaire, answering items such as “I really liked my interaction partner” and “I was sexually attracted to my interaction partner.” After returning home, they recorded on the study Web site whether they would be interested in meeting each person they had speed-dated again in the future. Mutual “yeses” were given the ability to contact one another.

The more you tend to experience romantic desire for all the potential romantic partners you meet, the study shows, the less likely it is that they will desire you in return. In contrast, when you desire a potential partner above and beyond your other options, only then is your desire likely to be reciprocated.

The need to feel special or unique could be a broad motivation that stretches across our social lives, the study concludes. “Just as this need plays an important role in intimate relationships and friendships, the present study reveals a distinctive anti-reciprocity effect if this need is not satisfied in initial encounters with potential romantic partners.”

Conventional wisdom has long taught that one of the best ways to get someone to like you is to make it clear that you like them. Now researchers have discovered that this law of reciprocity is in dire need of an asterisk in the domain of romance and attraction.