First impression makes a difference when it comes to relationships Study

A recent study on romantic first impressions from the University of California published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that compatibility and popularity in the dating pool have an impact on who individuals pursue as possible love partnersAlthough popularity and compatibility have been studied in established romantic relationships in one of the first studies of its kind UC Davis researchers explored whether these and other types of romantic first impressions affected later romantic outcomes Researchers found that first impressions tend to linger shaping whether people desired further contact with potential romantic partners after an initial meetingAlthough we expected popularity to be an important factor in the study we were amazed to find that a good first impression is not just a popularity contest its also about compatibility even when people are still getting to know each other said Alexander Baxter a UC Davis doctoral student in psychology and coauthor of the study In other words although it helps to be popular when it comes to getting a second date having a unique connection with a potential partner can be just as importantAssessed during speed datesThe researchers asked more than 550 speeddaters including some men who date men to rate their romantic interest in the potential partners they met The participants all from the United States or Canada included both college students and people attending a comic book convention who cumulatively attended more than 6600 speeddates during the experimentRepresentation really matters in psychology research and one of the strengths of our study is that we included a subsample of men who date men that attended an allmale speeddating event Baxter said This means that our findings generalize not only to malefemale relationships but also to malemale relationships too We hope that future studies will consider other diverse types of relationshipsAfter the speeddating event researchers surveyed the participants over the next two to three months to assess whether they dated any of the potential partners that they met and how their romantic feelings changed over timeResearchers used a statistical model to test whether later romantic outcomes were predicted by three factors that affect how romantic first impressions form selectivity popularity and compatibility In other words they looked at patterns of initial desire that were observed during the speeddates and assessed whether these factors differently predicted whether people later pursued a relationship with the potential partners that they metThe factors assessed wereSelectivity Daniel liked Rose because he liked everyonePopularity Daniel liked Rose because everyone liked her andCompatibility Daniel uniquely liked Rose above and beyond his own flirty disposition and her general popularityThe results showed that people were particularly likely to pursue a romantic relationship with those who were popular and those they were compatible with Selectivity played a relatively small role with more romantically outgoing individuals being slightly more likely than less outgoing people to pursue their speeddating matches according to the studyAlso ReadWorld Vegan Day 2022 Nutritionists bust myths about consuming plantbased foodThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever