Want to maybe start getting some responses on that dating profile of yours? Well, for starters, tone down the cockiness.
This advice comes courtesy of a study published in The Journal of Positive Psychology. In one experiment, forty-one students created dating profiles and answered personality questions (based on the big five) with the expectation that they’d be evaluating others work and others would see their work. In reality, they all saw the same mock profile with mock scores. The fictional date (who was unnamed and either male or female) had scores indicating agreeableness, extroversion, conscientiousness, non-neuroticism, and openness. However, some profiles were highly humble (in the eighty-seventh percentile) and others were not humble (in the twenty-fourth percentile). The highly humble stranger got better scores than the non-humble one—both men and women agreed that they’d give the humble one their phone numbers and go on a date.
In another test, 133 students saw dating profiles but there were no scores this time. However, the researchers changed language between the humble and non-humble profiles. The humble profile, for example, said “I’m a pretty good student, but not a bookworm. Other people say I’m smart, but I don’t like the attention.” Compare that to “I’m a really good student and pretty smart, but definitely not a nerd or bookworm: I guess it just comes naturally.” Again, the humble profile won.
So, don’t bother trying to impress anyone with a dating profile. Aside from the fact that she’s unlikely to be impressed with the things that matter to you, like the marlin you caught, your bench record, or your place on the Starcraft 2 leaderboards, bragging about it just won’t work.
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Photo courtesy of Sergey Sus.
