What Strangers Think of You Matters on a First Date

Most people on a date think that they are deciding whether or not to go out with this person again based on careful and highly personal taste.  A new study suggests that the reactions of friends and even complete strangers can have a strong influence on how we behave in romantic relationships.

Researchers led by Skyler Place of Indiana University’s Department of Psychological and Brain Studies say that there’s nothing illogical or shallow about being influenced by the reactions of friends and even strangers.  Human beings are social creatures, and how a prospective mate fits into the social world around us is important information that will influence how happy a relationship with that person might be.

Researchers had study subjects watch videos of speed-dating interactions and measured their reactions to the potential dating partners. For male subjects, Dr. Place and his colleagues found that if the men in the video seemed interested in the women, the male subjects’ own level of interest in the women increased.  The same was true for female subjects, but there was another trend with women, too:  If the women in the dating videos seemed uninterested in the men, the female study subjects also lost interest.

So the effect by which strangers’ opinions influence our dating preferences seems to be even stronger for women, who are influenced both negatively and positively.  For men, the effect is mostly one of enhancing interest.  Other men’s lack of interest is less likely to influence a man’s desire to date a woman.

But, the effect on men of other men’s interest in women depends in part on how attractive the other men are.  In other words, when unattractive men in the videos seemed interested in the women, it had less effect on the male study subjects than when good-looking men in the video seemed interested in the women.

The bottom line is:  How others react to your date will affect how you react.  And of course, how strangers react to you will affect what your date thinks of you.  That first impression might be even more important than we thought.

The full results of the study, which was conducted by researchers at Indiana University, the University of Edinburgh in the U.K., and Humboldt University of Berlin, will appear in the next issue of the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.