BBC documentary on "Speed Dating"
Jul. 25th, 2005 09:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
guslThe BBC had a documentary on "Speed Dating" yesterday, featuring scientific work on attraction (facial, body, personality), including Karl Grammer. The Speed Dating event itself, held in London, was filmed and provided participants with a dial to indicate how attracted they were to the person across from them. Here are some highlights:
* the skinny "nice guy" Scottish man got a big confidence boost (and attractiveness boost) just by going out on dates, and dressing better.
* negative first impressions were quite hard to recover from
* facial similarity did *not* predict attraction. In fact, the opposite happened: there seemed to be a pattern of symmetry in the masculinity-femininity of faces of attracted pairs. Very masculine-faced men were attracted to very feminine-faced women and vice-versa, and caregiver-faced men were attracted to less feminine female faces (?) and vice versa (?) (I wonder if this would be a case of settling for the attainable).
* body shape: waist-to-hip ratio was the most important predictor of male attraction, whereas the only significant predictor of female attraction was the man's height (despite all the morphing they did in the computer, creating the "perfect man").
* SeductionClub guys got more friend matches, and fewer date matches than average. Their strategy was confrontational, putting the woman down, but this just made them come across as assholes (friendly assholes?). Talk about LJBF!
* the 32-yo woman had been a bitch to all the men, thereby making herself unattractive to them. When her attitude changed, she started seeing opportunities that she would have missed.
* the scientists failed to predict any long-term relationships. But, unlike the BBC, I don't consider this a failure. The problem is that they started out with 20 men and 20 women from the general population (selected for age, it seems), so there *were* no long-term relationships to be predicted. My opinion is that you need more demographic filtering, to give people more things in common. But I love it how the BBC thrives on honest science (or semi-science) and happily reports failure.
* the skinny "nice guy" Scottish man got a big confidence boost (and attractiveness boost) just by going out on dates, and dressing better.
* negative first impressions were quite hard to recover from
* facial similarity did *not* predict attraction. In fact, the opposite happened: there seemed to be a pattern of symmetry in the masculinity-femininity of faces of attracted pairs. Very masculine-faced men were attracted to very feminine-faced women and vice-versa, and caregiver-faced men were attracted to less feminine female faces (?) and vice versa (?) (I wonder if this would be a case of settling for the attainable).
* body shape: waist-to-hip ratio was the most important predictor of male attraction, whereas the only significant predictor of female attraction was the man's height (despite all the morphing they did in the computer, creating the "perfect man").
* SeductionClub guys got more friend matches, and fewer date matches than average. Their strategy was confrontational, putting the woman down, but this just made them come across as assholes (friendly assholes?). Talk about LJBF!
* the 32-yo woman had been a bitch to all the men, thereby making herself unattractive to them. When her attitude changed, she started seeing opportunities that she would have missed.
* the scientists failed to predict any long-term relationships. But, unlike the BBC, I don't consider this a failure. The problem is that they started out with 20 men and 20 women from the general population (selected for age, it seems), so there *were* no long-term relationships to be predicted. My opinion is that you need more demographic filtering, to give people more things in common. But I love it how the BBC thrives on honest science (or semi-science) and happily reports failure.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-25 12:33 pm (UTC)In my own (limited) experience once my BMI gets to around 21 there is a sudden increase in how much attention I get from women. Currently I'm at 19. When I get there again in about six months time, it will be interesting to see if it happens again.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-25 12:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-25 04:28 pm (UTC)thanks for the highlights!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-26 08:03 am (UTC)It is an interesting fact that height is such an important factor in the US/UK (and maybe in other countries), but not, for example, in the Netherlands. Being 6'2" was huge deal dating-wise when I lived in the US, while it was never something exceptional in the Netherlands.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-26 08:06 am (UTC)So my guess is women here have a higher standard for height (pun intended).
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-26 08:15 am (UTC)On the other hand, being 1.40 won't really help either, so perhaps being too tall or short is also unattractive.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-26 08:33 am (UTC)