Judging Romantic Interest

From a study authored by Skyler S. Place, Peter M. Todd, Lars Penke, and Jens B. Asendorpf from (respectively) Indiana University, University of Edinburgh, and Humboldt University of Berlin.

"The videos of mate-choice situations were gathered during a series of laboratory-based speed dating sessions run at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany. Speed dating is a paradigm designed to allow singles to meet a large number of possible mates in a short period of time."

Discussion: "The data supported our two main hypotheses: observers were able to assess the dating interest of others at above-chance levels, and the length of time required to do so was brief. For both sexes, accurately perceiving romantic interest both of and toward potential mates holds evolutionary benefits through the efficient allocation of mating effort. Our results suggest that men and women possess this adaptive ability. Whether it is the result of a domain-specific adaptation or a more general ability for social perception remains to be determined."

"Furthermore, as predicted, it was on average much easier for observers to gauge men’s intentions than women’s (though there was high variance in observers’ performance levels across individual daters of both sexes). The lower overall accuracy concerning women’s intentions was not due to observers guessing or performing at chance, but to a systematic over-perception of interest on the part of the female daters — surpassing 80% erroneous interest predictions for the five hardest-to-read women."

"This dramatic rate of incorrect perception supports our hypothesis that women are harder to read, presumably because they mask their true intentions: As Grammer and colleagues argue, the biologically deep-rooted sex inequality in parental investment puts greater risks on the females of a species during mate choice. As a result, females, including women in speed-dating, are much more critical and picky when making mate choice decisions. Then, in order to evaluate potential mates longer without signaling their true intentions, women behave more covertly and ambiguously during initial interactions with the opposite sex. Men, in contrast, face lower risks and consequently should be less likely to hide their intentions. In our study, observers only see an individual interacting on one date, but perhaps if multiple dates with the same individual were presented, observers would be better able to differentiate instances of deceptive and true interest from that individual."

Read the entire study, The Ability to Judge the Romantic Interest of Others, American Psychological Association 5th Edition

Judging Romantic Interest

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