Research reveals the key to an attractive online dating profile

When writing a good online dating profile, the average love-seeker will list all the attractive qualities and interests that make them special. They might be paragliding or doing hot yoga on the weekends, enjoying a Riesling on the beach, watching indie bands in their basement, being a Libra with Scorpio rising, their dog, their three kids, or I also have an iguana. But there's one thing they always forget. That's what you want to know about your potential partner.

But research by Haas Associate Professor Juliana Schroeder suggests that that detail may be the most important thing to include.

“People want visibility, so they’re looking for partners who know them and support them,” she says. “But you want others to know about you too, so you end up writing a less attractive profile when trying to attract a partner.”

In a recent paper, “Sense of familiarity predicts relationship satisfaction,'' Dr. Schroeder argues that this phenomenon applies not only to romantic couples, but also to friends, neighbors, family members, work colleagues, and casual acquaintances. It is argued that this occurs in different types of interpersonal relationships.

In a series of experiments that Schroeder conducted with co-author Ayelet Fischbach of the University of Chicago Booth School, they found that in each case, people felt more knowledgeable than when they felt they knew the other person. They reported that they were more satisfied when they felt that they were being cared for. work.

“Of course people want to know their dating partners and support them,” says Schroeder, Harold Furst Chair of Business Philosophy and Values ​​at Berkeley Haas. “But that's not actually what makes you happiest in a relationship. People are happier in relationships where they feel supported. To do that, you need to be known. there is.”

Fischbach has been working for 10 years, after she and Schroeder discovered that patients want their doctors to be completely responsive and feel their pain, keeping their own feelings out of their hands. It was pointed out that this research project was started before. They call this phenomenon the empty vessel effect. “We thought this might be a more general phenomenon in which people are more attuned to what others know about them than to what they know about others,” Fishback said. To tell.

In the first series of experiments published in Journal of Experimental Social PsychologyResearchers asked participants to rate how much they believed they knew about their family, partner, or friends compared to how well they believed they knew themselves. They were asked to rate their relationship satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 7.

Interestingly, people routinely thought they knew the other person better than the other person knew them. This effect is called the illusion of asymmetric insight. “People think they're unique and special and so complex that other people just don't know who they really are,” Schroeder says. “Whereas once they know something about the other person, they're like, 'I know you. That's it.'”

Perhaps people value it more in relationships because it's so rare that we feel like someone really knows us. In fact, regardless of how you feel about the quality of the relationship overall, how well you know the other person matters less to how you feel about the relationship than how well you feel known. It wasn't.

In another study, researchers presented participants with one of two scenarios: either they forgot their name at a party, or they encountered an acquaintance whose name they forgot. As Schroeder summarizes, participants had different reactions to the two scenarios. “If you forget your name, it's not good for the relationship, but if you forget your name, it's even worse. The relationship is over,” says Schroeder.

Carrying these concepts over to dating profiles, Schroeder and Fischbach enlisted a team of research assistants to study profiles on dating sites Match.com and Coffee Meets Bagel. Based on profile descriptions, they rated that more than 50% of the writers wanted to be known by a potential partner, while only about 20% had a desire to be known by a potential partner. expressed.

They then asked dozens of online participants to write profiles of themselves that emphasized what they were known for or knew about the other person. Finally, they ask over 250 other people to rate these profiles on a scale of 1 to 7 depending on how attractive they find them and how much they potentially want to contact them. I requested that.

Consistent with the rest of the research, Schroeder and Fischbach found that raters preferred profile creators who emphasized that they wanted to get to know the other person.

These findings could be beneficial to anyone trying to make themselves look as attractive as possible on dating sites. “What they want is, 'I really care about you, and I'm going to get to know you, be there for you, listen to you, and be a great partner.' “That's what I'm saying,” Schroeder said.

In all the studies, the only relationship that people didn't care about being known was between parents and children. “In fact, we found an effect in the opposite direction,” Schroeder says. “It's not how well your child knows you that predicts relationship satisfaction, but how well your child knows you.”

That makes sense, she adds, lending credence to the idea that the phenomenon is essentially about support. “This is the one relationship where it's very clear that parents need to support their children.”

Schroeder and Fischbach's next step is to consider how people can use their knowledge of other people to shift their focus to making them feel known in an authentic way. For example, in a workplace context, feeling known may not only increase satisfaction with relationships with co-workers, but also overall job satisfaction.

“Building relationships with colleagues at work may require thinking not just about personal knowledge, but also about people's habits and ways of working,” says Shader. “Although this was beyond the scope of our study, stronger relationships at work could ultimately lead to changes in people's satisfaction with their jobs.”