Research reveals key to an irresistible online dating profile

By writing a good online dating profile, the average love seeker will likely fill it with all the attractive qualities and interests that make them special. They go paragliding and hot yoga on the weekends, enjoy Riesling on the beach or see indie bands in basements, are a Libra with Scorpio rising, or have a dog, three kids, or an iguana. There is, however, one thing they regularly forget: what they want to know about their potential partner.

Yet this detail might be the most important thing to include, according to research by Juliana Schroeder, an associate professor at Haas.

“People want to be known, so they look for partners who will know them and support them,” she says. “But because other people also want to be known, they end up writing unattractive profiles when trying to attract partners.”

In his recent article “Feeling of Knowledge Predicts Relationship Satisfaction,” Schroeder argues that the phenomenon occurs not just in romantic couples, but in all kinds of interpersonal relationships, including friends, neighbors, family members, and others. family, work colleagues and casual acquaintances.

In each case, people were more satisfied when they felt like they were known rather than when they felt like they knew the other person, according to a series of experiments Schroeder conducted with co-author Ayelet Fishbach of the Booth School of the University of Chicago. Business.

“Of course, people say they want to know their partner and support them,” says Schroeder, the Harold Furst Chair in Management Philosophy and Values ​​at Berkeley Haas. “But that’s not really what makes them happiest in their relationships. People feel happiest in relationships where they feel supported – and for that, they need to be known.”

Fishbach noted that the research project began a decade ago after she and Schroeder discovered that patients wanted their doctors to not have their own emotions so they could fully care for them and feel their pain – a phenomenon they called the empty vessel effect. “We wondered if this was a more general phenomenon where people are more sensitive to what others know about them than to what they know about others,” Fishbach says.

In a first series of experiments published in the Journal of Experimental Social PsychologyResearchers asked participants to rate how well they thought they knew a family member, partner, or friend compared to how well they thought they were known, then rate their relationship satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 7.

Interestingly, people consistently thought they knew the other person better than the other person knew them. This effect has been called the illusion of asymmetric vision. “People think they’re unique and special and have a lot of complexity, so other people just don’t know themselves,” Schroeder says. “Whereas once they know one thing about the other person, they’re like, ‘I know you. Do.'”

Perhaps because it’s so rare to feel like someone really knows us, people value it more in their relationships. In fact, how well they knew the other person mattered less in how they felt about the relationship than how well they felt known, regardless of how they felt about the overall quality. of the relationship.

In another study, researchers presented participants with one of two scenarios in which they encountered an acquaintance at a party who had forgotten their name or whose name they had forgotten. Participants had different reactions to the two scenarios, as Schroeder summarizes: “If you forget their name, it’s not good for the relationship, but if they forget your name, it’s much worse: the relationship is finished,” says Schroeder.

Transferring these concepts to dating profiles, Schroeder and Fishbach enlisted a team of research assistants to examine profiles from the dating sites Match.com and Coffee Meets Bagel. Based on the statements in the profiles, they assessed that more than 50% of the authors wanted to be known by a potential partner, while only about 20% expressed a desire to know their potential partner.

They then asked several dozen online participants to write their own profiles, either with an emphasis on being known or getting to know the other person. Finally, they asked more than 250 other people to rate these profiles on a scale of 1 to 7, based on their attractiveness and potential desire to contact them.

Consistent with the rest of their findings, Schroeder and Fishbach found that raters preferred profile writers who emphasized a desire to get to know the other person.

These results could be instructive for someone trying to make themselves as attractive as possible on a dating site. “What they want to do is say, ‘I really care about you, I’m going to get to know you, be there for you, listen to you and be a great partner,'” Schroeder says.

Across all studies, there was only one type of relationship in which people didn’t care about being known: a parent’s relationship with their child. “In fact, we saw an effect going in the opposite direction,” says Schroeder. “What predicts relationship satisfaction is not how well they think their child knows them, but how well they know their child.”

It’s logical, she adds, supporting the idea that the phenomenon is essentially about support. “It’s the only relationship in which it’s very clear that the parent must support the child.”

The next step for Schroeder and Fishbach is to think about how people might focus on using their knowledge of others to feel truly known. In a work context, for example, it is possible that the feeling of being known improves not only relationship satisfaction with colleagues, but also overall job satisfaction.

“To develop relationships with work colleagues, you not only have to think about personal knowledge, but also about people’s habits and how they like to work,” says Schoeder. “While it is beyond the scope of our study, it is possible that stronger working relationships could ultimately make a difference in people’s satisfaction with their jobs.”