The practice of online dating has skyrocketed in the last decade, with scores of apps that can help you find a lifelong partner or start a romantic fling. Recently, a published study found something interesting in particular with online dating apps.
As the title of this post suggests, online daters tend to pursue partners who are noticeably more desirable than themselves. This means that they intentionally search for potential partners who are “out of their league” with the hope of securing a date.
The Desirability Gap
Imagine, if you will, all of the daters on a website or app are listed from the top-down and separated by gender. Those at the top of the list receive the most messages and interest from others. Those at the bottom get the least. This clearly illustrates the desirability gap.
Using a free site and data gathered from five major U.S. cities, researchers found daters who received the least amount of messages still sent messages to those who received significantly more. This occurred even when the desirability gap was as high as 25%.
Researchers also found another pattern with online daters. They discovered the higher the desirability gap between potential partners, the longer the messages initially sent in an effort to compensate.
Intuitively this makes sense. Online daters who are reaching for the stars send longer messages to (hopefully) make up for this desirability gap.
The higher hopeful daters reached, the more words they wrote. Unfortunately, the researchers also found that the longer the message they sent, the less likely were they to receive a reply. For men, the research concluded that these longer messages only yielded a 20% return.
Why Pursue Such Long-Shots?
The question is then, why do daters do this? According to Professor Eli Finkel, the cost of rejection is very low in online dating. Especially compared to in-person dating. In which case, there would be greater reluctance to reach out to someone with a higher desirability level.
Finkel also points out that this is one of the problems with online dating. You can’t really determine the attention that someone is getting online. For example, if the average person sends out ten messages to people of a higher desirability level, they may only get 1-2 messages back. They may think that all men on the site are only getting 1-2 replies. As a result, they don’t reach out to enough prospects, thus getting a lower response ratio.
This means that most people only get a few messages back while a small percentage of daters are flooded with messages. Daters who get inundated with messages may actually leave online dating sites. It because it becomes more work and hassle than it’s worth. Who wants to sort through hundreds of messages to find a date?
Tips for Online Dating
- If you also tend to “reach for the stars” (those with a higher desirability level), be prepared to get very few replies.
- Try to diversify. Seek out others who more closely match your level of desirability.
- Regardless of how easy online dating makes it to connect with others, there is no substitute for meeting someone in real life. Finkel points out that attraction does not predict compatibility in real-life. The ultimate goal, of course, is to connect face-to-face in the real world.
- If online dating is a must, reaching out for singles counseling to identify and work through dating struggles is often helpful.
Online dating has become a popular way to connect with others and start a relationship“spark.” However, the research shows that human behavior makes online dating a more complicated matter than it initially appears to be.
Ultimately, no amount of online interaction is a substitute for meeting someone in person to determine if you have a genuine connection.