Science Vs - Online Dating: Can Science Find You Love?

Episode Date: October 26, 2018

Online dating can feel like drudgery… can science help you game the system? And do those matching algorithms actually work? To find out, we talked to psychologist Asst. Prof. Paul Eastwick, social psychologist Prof. Viren Swami, mathematician Asst. Prof. Hannah Fry, and Rose Reid. Check out the transcript right here: http://bit.ly/2E73qLH Selected references: Paul’s primer on speed dating experiments, and the Machine Learning studyThe study with the archaeology students on physical attractivenessHannah’s book, which includes more detailed Optimal Stopping Theory mathsA thorough review paper on online dating Credits: This episode was produced by Odelia Rubin, with help from Wendy Zukerman along with Rose Rimler, and Meryl Horn. Our senior producer is Kaitlyn Sawrey. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, Meryl Horn and Rose Rimler. Mix and sound design by Emma Munger. Music by Emma Munger and Bobby Lord. A huge thanks to all the researchers we got in touch with for this episode - including Dr Elaine Hatfield, Dr Liesel Sharabi, Associate Prof Megan Ankerson, Assistant Prof Sarah Murray, Jennie Zhang, and the folks at okcupid. Thank you! We had recording help from Robbie MacInnes, Emma P. McAvoy Sherrie White, and David Mistich Also thanks to Frank Lopez, Erin Kelly, Matthew Nelson, Amber Davis, the Zukerman Family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus from Gimlet Media. This is the show that pits facts against flirting. On today's show, online dating. With thousands of people to meet online, what can science tell us about the secret to success? That is, how do you pick your person and how do you get picked? And one of those people trying to get picked is my buddy, Rose Reid. We sat down to talk about her love life. Anything for Wendy.

Science Vest's listeners will know you from a few. You're a friend of the show. Friend of the show. Proud friend of the show. Friend of the show. Proud friend of the show. You met Rose's parents in our True Love episode. In fact, they were college sweethearts, which could be why Rose really believes in fairy tale endings. She's a total romantic.

I like talking to my super and waving like I'm Belle from Beauty and the Beast. There goes the baker with the bread like always. Yeah, I know. I always feel like, oh, bonjour. But I feel that way with everyone. As a romantic, when Rose started dating, it was so exciting. The idea that your beast could be right around the corner.

But now, Rose is in her early 30s. She's been struggling through single life for seven years. And dating these days just often feels like a chore. Every few months, she'll go on a swiping frenzy, scrolling through apps like Tinder and Bumble, and she says it sucks up so much time. Okay, so I've done the math. You know, I spend essentially, let's say, half an hour to an hour,

four to five days a week, swiping, messaging, whatever, which is almost 20 hours a month, which is more than 100 hours a year. Ooh. Okay, of just being on my phone, which I f***ing hate. Sorry. And all that time sitting on her phone, which I f***ing hate. Sorry. And all that time sitting on her phone, in the average month, Rose doesn't end up on that many dates. Maybe I'll go on three dates.

Oof, yeah. And from those three dates, I would say I'd be lucky if one of them, the person, and I could just chat easily. Oh, wow. You're a chat easily. Not even attraction. Exactly. And Rose is not the only one struggling with this. An Oxford study analyzed how many times a first message led to a phone number. And out of two million first messages, less than 2% traded numbers.

Less than 2%. Now, obviously, these apps aren't all bad. Some people have found love on them and if you're not straight, these apps can make it a lot easier to find a date. But still, for a lot of people looking for love, these swiping dating apps can be a drag. There's got to be a better way.

And we here at Science Versus, we want to help. So get excited out there, because today we're finding my mate Rose the love of her life. If you want to date with me and see if we're compatible, you can just email the Science Versus team. Just kidding. We're doing what we always do and playing an even funner game,

the science game. Because there are some apps out there that promise to use science to match you with someone compatible. And maybe Rose should try one of those. Or maybe there are other ways to improve her luck and help her find the partner of her dreams. So today, we are going to dive into the following questions. One, can science match you to your perfect person? Two, can you game the system to increase your chances of getting picked?

And three, when should you stop swiping and pick someone already? And by the way, a lot of the research here has been done on straight people. But we reached out to several scientists who told us that they'd be surprised if the findings were that different for other kinds of couples. So, when it comes to dating, there's lots of... Sitting on your phone, wasting your life swiping. But then, there's science. Science vs. Online Dating is coming up just after the break.

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I'm here, astrophysicist and co-host, ready for anything. That's right. I'm bringing in the A-team. So brace yourselves. Get ready to learn. I'm Jan 11. I'm Steve Strogatz. And this is... Quantum Magazine's podcast, The Joy of Why.

New episodes drop every other Thursday, starting February 1st. What does the AI revolution mean for jobs, for getting things done? Who are the people creating this technology, and what do they think? I'm Rana El-Khelyoubi, an AI scientist, entrepreneur, investor, and now host of the new podcast, Pioneers of AI. Think of it as your guide for all things AI, with the most human issues at the center. Join me every Wednesday for Pioneers of AI. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you tune in.

Welcome back. So we've just met Rose, who, like a lot of people, spends a ton of time online dating. No, he's cute. Absolutely not. And still hasn't met her person. No. I mean, ugh. And when you're online dating, it's not just people that you've got to choose, but also the right app.

And there are hundreds of them out there. Yeah, there's Tinder and Bumble, but also Match.com, Her, Grindr, Blender, OKCupid, Plenty of Fish, Hinge, Coffee Meets Bagel, eHarmony, Chemistry. There's even one called Huggle. Huggle! And now Facebook is getting into the dating game too.

So which should you pick? Well, these apps kind of fall into two categories. You can do what Rose does and sift through thousands of people on an app like Tinder or there's kind of a second option. You can fill out information about yourself and let the app tell you who you should go on a date with. And these are the apps that claim to have science on their side. This isn't

about looking through a thousand pictures to see who you're attracted to. We help match people on compatibility. Yes, science can help you find love. And it makes sense that an algorithm could do a better job of matching you to someone than, you know, whatever makes us swipe left or right. So should we all get off these swiping apps? To find out, we wanted to know if it was possible to match two people based on a personality quiz. So we tracked down a scientist who was very popular

with the ladies in high school. I guess I would say I was marching band popular. So if that sort of carves out the sphere that gives you a sense of, you know, like you find your niche. This is Paul Eastwick, and he's not just a former bandroom heartthrob. I'm an associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis. And Paul has spent his career trying to work out if theoretically it's possible to predict which two strangers will like each other based on their personality. And over the years, he's tested this in all sorts of ways. At the beginning, though, he started with college kids

and ultimately roped 350 students into his experiments. We had them fill out quite a battery of questionnaires. It was, you know, all sorts of the standard personality measures at the time. Things like how attractive they think they are, how spontaneous and driven and nice and ambitious they are. And it also asks them to describe their dream partner. And then Paul gets these people to go on dates to see who ends up liking who. And science can't just wait for you to finally pluck up the courage to ask someone out. So Paul found a different way.

He set up a state-of-the-art experiment called speed dating. I mean, we didn't want to host it in a dry psychology laboratory. We wanted this to be cool and fun and not nerdy and awful. Paul and his colleague wanted it to be at least marching band cool, which meant getting the art gallery on campus and filling it with tables and chairs and mood music. The guests sipped sparkling grape juice or bottled root beer and everyone went on four-minute dates.

What were you doing during the experiment like watching the behavior? Yeah yeah you know I remember sort of standing on the side for some of the initial ones just sort of marveling that this was actually happening and it was just like oh look they're talking and like of course they're talking they're like 19 year olds they have social skills but there was something about like oh my like this is actually happening. It wasn't happening for everyone though. Some couldn't get a conversation going and really struggled. I mean, it's really like, where are you from? What's your major? Where do you live on campus? And boy, if people were striking out on those things, ooh, those dates were going downhill fast, right?

It's like desperately looking for something that they have in common to talk about. After the speed dates were over, the people in the study then flagged to the researchers who they'd like to see again and who they wouldn't. And Paul and his colleagues then analysed the data to try to pick up patterns about who liked who. Like,

did the extroverts end up liking the introverts? Did ambitious people tend to like other ambitious people? And basically, they wanted to know, could you use a survey packed with information about someone to predict if they would get along with a complete stranger? And to crunch the numbers, they fed all their data into a machine learning algorithm. And so what did you find? We couldn't predict compatibility at all. But again, it's very hard to predict how much people are going to like each other once they first meet. And machine learning is really, I mean, that's the buzzword right now. Like, machine learning can do everything.

You know, it can beat us at, like, Go and chess. So, like, surely it can match two people, right? You would think. Even the questions about who people's ideal partners were, even that didn't predict who they ended up liking. Essentially, people's reports of what they ideally wanted were no better than a random guess. Really?

What would actually end up appealing to them. Yeah, pretty much no correlation at all. And even though this might seem a bit odd, using speed dating as a proxy for online dating, other studies have come along, one that even created a kind of fake online dating set-up, and they found the same thing, that basically you couldn't predict which strangers would like each other based on personality surveys. One of the things Paul's team could tell, though,

is if you were going to be a total dud that almost no-one liked or if you were going to be a Li Shang that everyone was going to love. You know, Li Shang, that hottie in Mulan. Let's get down to business. Anyway, the point is... We know who the desirable people are, but we still can't pinpoint exactly with whom is that person really going to click. There is a little more data here.

Some recent studies have found that people who like each other do tend to have certain things in common, like age, education and political leaning. But those categories are so broad that relying on these factors to match people could still ultimately lead you to a bunch of crappy dates. Which is all to say that it's unclear how any dating app that claims to match you to your perfect person using a scientific algorithm would work. Producer Odelia Rubin asked Paul about all this. Do we yet know of an algorithm that will help you find the perfect

person? No, there's no existing algorithm that is going to predict compatibility. At least in the scientific literature, to my knowledge, as these things, you know, have been disclosed to the scientific community, there's not yet any compatibility predictor. It doesn't help that the vast majority of these apps don't track how many people stay together after they meet and go off the app, and they don't release much data to back up their claims. When you look at your career and you've spent so long effectively trying to predict who's going to get together, when you started doing this, did you think, like, surely we're going to crack this? Yeah. You know, I suppose there's a case to be made that I should be pulling out my hair and thinking, like, oh, my gosh, like, we've gotten nowhere.

But I just oddly don't feel that way about the whole thing. Because what we find on the flip side of all of this is that there is so much chaos in the way romantic relationships come together and are formed. Paul's work has found that there's something about falling in love that the science just hasn't been able to capture. For now, he says relationships are more like earthquakes than the weather. And that means we can't really predict when they're going to happen. You can do a pretty good job of predicting what the weather will be like tomorrow or the next day. But earthquakes, we don't really have a great science

that can tell us specifically when an earthquake is going to happen. We told my friend Rose about this earthquake idea. Tectonic plates shifting. Oh, I love that. Oh my God, that makes so much sense. You are such a romantic. I knew you'd love this so much.

Yeah, I like that a lot. That thought brings me a lot of comfort. Why is that? I think it's important for me to remember the bigger message here, which is, you know, you have your own love life and you can't force a tectonic plate shifting. Conclusion. There's little evidence that some magic algorithm exists that can match you to the person of your dreams. And any dating app promising this needs to provide receipts.

So without the perfect algorithms, singles will still need to sift through seemingly endless profiles to find their perfect person. After the break, I dive into the dating game. And it doesn't go well. Do you want to go for coffee on Thursday? I'm really busy. Can we do this date maybe in a couple of weeks time? That's coming up. Welcome back. So we just told you that dating is hopeless

and you should probably just lock yourself in a clock tower and focus on building your time machine. Kidding. Kidding! OK, but we did say that based on all the science we have, any app promising to match you to your soulmate is probably bunk because it seems that finding someone who you really connect with, it just isn't that predictable. Leaving Rose to play the numbers game, swiping through seemingly

endless faces. Anyone who takes a selfie while in the driver's seat of their car is a grade A f***ing weirdo. And we don't even have time to go into why, so we're going to swipe left. So he's not, like, crazy hot, but he's cute. No, no, no, absolutely not. Can't trust him. No, no, no, no. But watching Rose say no to all these people made us realise how hard it is for most of us

to stand out in a crowd in these apps. So, can science help here? Viren Swamy is a professor of social psychology at Anglia Ruskin University in the UK, and he studies what makes people attractive to each other. And Viren told us there's one question he gets over and over again. How much does physical appearance matter? Yeah. Well, it matters a great deal.

I mean, if you think about most romantic relationships, we're looking for someone we want to be able to share intimacy with, and physical appearance and physical attractiveness plays a huge part of that. Surprise, surprise, being good-looking does matter. Study after study has shown us that we prefer beautiful people. We think they're nicer and more interesting. People say that they're more likely to hire them, to promote them, to give them better grades. And of course,

we are also more likely to swipe yes on them. So if you're not a hottie, are you screwed? Well, not exactly. There is research that hints there are ways to perk up your profile. Several studies, for example, have found that people tend to be rated as more attractive in photos when, get this, they look straight at the camera. And one study even found that just having more pictures in your profile really bumped up your chances of getting a match. Okay, next up, the texting game. Because after you match, people can waste hours texting back and forth and not getting anywhere. And part of the issue here is that there's this idea that you

should play hard to get, act cool and take your sweet time responding to texts. But here's the thing. Experiments going as far back as the 50s basically say that you shouldn't play it that cool. You've got to show someone that you like them because the science tells us... I like you if you like me. And there are lots of studies to suggest that the more you demonstrate liking for someone, they will in general like you in return.

Okay. So here's my strategy. Like you got to show you like them, but not that much. Like you got to keep like them guessing a little bit of uncertainty in the picture, but you can't just like totally go off base and act mean. Well, here's a better strategy. Why don't you demonstrate that you like that one individual? So whoever this person is, show that you like that person, but also demonstrate to that person that you are actually hard to get for everyone else in the rest of the world. The tip Viren is giving me is that I need to appear hard to get, generally speaking. But when it comes to the person I'm interested in,

they need to know I like them. Okay, so give me an example. So if I were to call you up and to say like, hey, there, do you want to go for coffee on whatever, Thursday? Then what would be a bad answer for you, according to science? A bad answer would be for me to say, I've got so many dates this week, I'm really busy. Can we do this date maybe in a couple of weeks time? Bad. Okay. Yeah. I feel pretty rejected by that. So ask me the question again. All right. So Viren, do you want to get coffee on Thursday? I'd love to. I've been asked out so many times this week and I've said no to everyone else because I don't like them, but I really, really like you. So I'd love to go for a coffee with you.

And research has also found that playing hard to get is a no-go when you're deciding how quickly to respond to text messages. A huge study of millions of messages found that when people responded quickly, there was a greater chance that the conversation would continue. In fact, the researchers wrote, quote, there was no such thing as too quick a reply, end quote. Okay, so say you do all this. You finally crack the code and you get a real life date. Well, Viren says your chances of being considered a babe, IRL, could actually go up. Well, this is an interesting thing. So I think a lot of people tend to think that attractiveness

is a static quality. That if, for example, I think of myself as a five out of 10, I'm always going to be a five out of 10. Actually, the kind of data from social psychology suggests that's not really the case, that physical appearance and perceptions of physical appearance are very dynamic. Very dynamic. And one thing that comes up again and again in studies is that having a good personality, like being friendly, can make people think you're more attractive. Viren gave us an extreme example from one of these studies, which got archaeology students in a summer program to rate each other's attractiveness when they first met, and then again at the end of the program. And one woman in particular was rated as about a

three out of nine at the start of the program. But she was also perceived as really hardworking, and she was really popular as a result, And she was well liked by everyone else. On the final day when she was raced, she ended up with a mean score of seven. Wow. So she effectively doubled how attractive she was just by being hardworking and nice. That's with archaeology students there, right? I mean, how generalizable is that to the non-scientific population? This is the thing.

I think what being nice is probably incredibly underrated because it's really difficult to know what. Said by someone who's nice. I hope so. People tend to like people who are more confident, people who are generally good people, nice eggs. It's people who are good eggs rather than nice eggs. So the moral here, be a nice egg and you might just get laid. Conclusion. If you're hot, you're more likely to get picked in these dating apps.

But if you look like the rest of us, there are things you can do to up your chances. You can text back quickly and not play it too cool. And when you do get a date, you can be nice. So, obviously, once you've listened to our episode, you are going to go on so many dates, heaps and heaps of dates. And then you'll have a new problem. So many dates, so many choices.

And science has shown us that this can totally flummox us because when we get overwhelmed by choice, we're less likely to pick anything at all. And when we do pick, we tend to be less satisfied with the choices we make. So we have one final trick up our sleeves to help, and it comes from a mathematician. I should warn you that I've had a tiny bit of a difficult afternoon, and so as a result, my dog is with me.

Hannah Fry, an associate professor at the University College London, and her dog, Molly, told us about this theory that nerds use when they need to weed through a bunch of options. It's called the optimal stopping theory. And it's ultimately asking if you have a lot of choices, when do you stop searching? And Hannah finds it very handy. I have definitely used it in terms of trying to buy a house. So you have actually thought about this theory in those moments? Yeah, totally.

Well, I mean, it's called optimal stopping theory. So if you want the optimal moment, then yeah, of course. You can use this theory for hiring someone, picking apartments, and yes, even picking your person. Okay, so the idea is this. Across the course of your dating life, there will be a number of people that you will date, Okay, so the idea is this. Across the course of your dating life, there will be a number of people that you will date and they're going to be of varying quality.

And your task, if you like, in your dating life is to cash in and settle down with the best person for you. Okay, here's how it works. You start with this idea that you want to be done with dating and settle down by a specific age. Say you start dating when you're about 15 and you want your ball and chain firmly in place by age 35. That gives you precisely 20 years of dating to play with.

Okay, so this theory is split into two phases. First comes calibration. Get a sense of the market, right? So just, you know, try a few things, meet a few people, have a lot of fun, don't take anything too seriously. And the key to this theory is knowing when this calibration period ends. If you play the field for too long, you might miss this wonderful person because you weren't taking them seriously. If it's too short, then you might be stuck with a loser for the rest of your life. And so mathematicians have actually worked out the sweet spot, the number that tells you when you should stop searching to give yourself the greatest chance of meeting the best person for you.

This special number which works out as about 37%. 37%. That means 37% of your specified dating time. In this case, it comes out to a little over seven years or until you're about 22. Then, once you hit about 22, you enter phase two of dating. Having set the bar, you are now out to find your best match. And that is, your task is to settle down with the next person who comes along, who is better than anyone you've dated before. And that second part of the statement is really crucial. It's not that you're picking the next person that comes along. You're picking the next person that comes along that is better than everyone that you've already met.

And if you do that, mathematically speaking anyway, you're giving yourself the best chance at finding the perfect partner. While no-one has done a big study tracking people over decades to see how successful this is in the real world, according to the mathematics, you could get the best partner more than a third of the time, which Hannah says isn't so bad. You have to remember that if you were just picking at random,

your chances would be way lower compared to, you know, a third, roughly. It's much better. So before you whip out your calculator and put this to work, you should know that it has a couple of minor problems in it. Hannah pointed out one issue. So what if everyone in phase one, your calibration period, is horrible? Like maybe you spent your early 20s living in the Jersey Shore house. I got some jeans on and I got the shirt, but I ain't wearing the shirt when we go out.

This is the shirt before the shirt. Point is, your bar would be set way too low and then the next person that comes along would just have to be better. So you might end up with a mediocre person for the rest of your life. I should actually add one more thing, which is that this whole model sort of works on the assumption that the other person doesn't have a say. Yeah, I was thinking that. I was thinking that.

Slight flaw. Slight flaw. There's other things that make this theory far from perfect. But still, while chatting to Hannah, I caught myself doing some calculations. Do you know this is, without knowing this theory, this is actually what I did? Is that? Is it? It really is.

Because in a way, you know, it's sort of what I did as well, actually, to be honest with you. It's sort of what I did. I think a lot of us do this quite naturally. And Hannah says that even if you're not willing to risk it all on this theory and let maths run your life, this is something that you could try when you're getting sick and tired of the daily grind of dating. If I was single now and I was on Tinder, I would definitely use this.

You say, OK, you know what? I'm going to spend a year being single. Give yourself a time limit that you're prepared to spend some time playing the field. And then apply that sort of, you know, that 37% rule to that time window. Then that can be a way to just limit your choice slightly and be a bit more realistic about finding what makes you happy. Now you have a helpful guidepost, the optimal stopping theory. If you're getting tired and lost as you're swiping through faces on an app, give yourself a time limit and then pick somebody. So when it comes to online dating, does it stack up? One, can science match you to your perfect person?

No. Based on the evidence we have today, there is no algorithm that can match you to your Li Shang. Ah. Two, can you game the system to increase your chances of getting picked? Yes. Being hot helps, but so does having a good personality and not playing it too cool. Just let someone know you like them. And three, finally, when should

you settle down and stop swiping? According to a mathematical theory, the optimal time to pick your person is to wait for the first 37% of your dating life and pick the next person who comes along who is better than anyone you've dated before. So says maths. So how does this all shake out in the real world? We took this back to Rose and walked her through the science, all the little tricks that you can do to up your game and how ultimately there is no magic

algorithm here. And Rose, she was kind of okay with it. I think sometimes I'm so capable in my single life and I've learned to be so independent on my own that I feel like, oh, I can make this work. And if there's anything I've learned from my love life, it's like, it's not a solo dance. Can't lead. And I don't know, hearing the math, hearing the science is very comforting to me. It's a good reminder that like, you know, I have to, I have to be patient and wait for that other, you know, symbiotic force. And until then, you know, you just keep dancing, right? Yeah. Right? Yeah. That's Science vs. Online Dating.

Hey, producer at Science vs. Adelia Rubin. Hello. So how many citations in this week's episode? In this week's episode, there are 98 citations. 98? 98. Wow, we really, like, mined the dating literature. Feels light, but it's heavy.

And where can people read more? People can read more about the science in this episode in the show notes. And while you are futzing around on your podcast app, you should totally give Science Versus a review. Give us five stars, tell us you love us. Yay. Thanks, Odelia. Thanks, Wendy.

This episode was produced by Odelia Rubin with help from me, Wendy Zuckerman, along with Rose Rimler and Meryl Horn. Our senior producer is Caitlin Sorey. We're edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with help from Meryl Horn and Rose Rimler and Meryl Horn. Our senior producer is Caitlin Sorey. We're edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with help from Meryl Horn and Rose Rimler. Mix and sound design by Emma Munger. Music written by Emma Munger and Bobby Lord. A huge thanks to all the researchers we got in touch with for this episode, including Dr Elaine Hatfield, Dr Liesl Sharabi,

Associate Professor Megan Ankersen, Assistant Professor Sarah Murray, Jenny Zhang, and the folks at OKCupid. Thank you so much. We also had recording help from Robbie McGinnis, Emma P McAvoy, Sherry White and David Mistich. Plus a huge, huge, huge thank you to the Zuckerman family and Joseph Lavelle-Wilson. And Hannah Fry has a new book out now. It's called Hello World, How to Be Human in the Age of the Machine.

And it's all about the algorithms we deal with every day. Check it out. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.