{"id":267,"date":"2009-06-02T20:54:34","date_gmt":"2009-06-02T20:54:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2009\/06\/02\/on_speed_dating\/"},"modified":"2009-06-02T20:54:34","modified_gmt":"2009-06-02T20:54:34","slug":"on_speed_dating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2009\/06\/02\/on_speed_dating\/","title":{"rendered":"On speed dating"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sex sells. We know that. I’ve seen the effect in the last few days at F1000: we published a press release<\/a> about an evaluated paper. It’s about premature ejaculation, and is receiving two to three times more views than our other releases (stop it, Brooks).<\/p>\n

\nSo it’s perhaps not surprising that Nature<\/em> gets all excitable about a study in Psychol Sci<\/em> that’s talking about speed dating<\/a> and role reversals. Ooh, hot buttons. And it sounds like a pretty stunning result:<\/p>\n

\nsimply reversing which sex rotated demolished [a] well-established sex difference\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nWhat the researchers found (and I can’t look at the source paper, much to my chagrin, because it’s still only in press) is that when you have blokes sitting at tables in a speed-dating event the well-documented ‘pickiness’ of women disappears. So they say.<\/p>\n

\ntinkering with the speed-dating format alters human behaviour, dramatically changing the outcome.<\/code><\/p>\n

\nBut hang on a minute. Let’s forget about the sort of (sad, friendless) people who might be tempted by the offer of speed-dating opportunities on university campuses in return for the right to analyse their dating behaviour, and how that might slew the data from the outset, and look at the numbers.<\/p>\n

\nWhen women sit, and men ‘rotate’ (as is, apparently, usual at these sorts of things), men said ‘yes’ 50% of the time and women said ‘yes’ 43% of the time. Well, to this biologist’s eyes that’s quite a small difference. It might be statistically significant<\/em>, but the true, biological\u2014or even psychological\u2014significance seems small. You have to remember that one of the last experiments I did in the lab was looking at changes in exon expression, where anything under a two-fold change was considered noise and ignored (at least in the first round of analysis).<\/p>\n

\nWhen they made the blokes sit down and the women do the walking, there was an ‘astonishing’ effect. Men said ‘yes’ only 43% of the time and women 45%. So, the selectivity\u2014or ‘pickiness’\u2014of women didn’t change, and, let’s be honest here, neither did the men’s. Not really. 50% down to 43%. That’s ‘astonishing’? <\/p>\n

\nAnd what’s all this guff about ’embodiment effects’ that should be explored further? Isn’t that what you might expect Father Jack<\/a> to say in his more lucid moments?<\/p>\n

\nMaybe I’m missing something, but frankly, it would be nice if psychologists would work on something that might make a difference. The only conclusion I can draw from this ‘research’ is that speed-dating agencies might be better off by making sure men sit down at these cattle shows: because that way they get 14% more repeat custom. Or something.<\/p>\n

\n<span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=Psychol.+Sci&rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=Role+reversal+undermines+speed-dating+theories&rft.issn=&rft.date=2009&rft.volume=&rft.issue=&rft.spage=&rft.epage=&rft.artnum=&rft.au=Finkel%2C+E.J.<\/ins>%26+Eastwick%2C+P.+W&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Psychology”>Finkel, E. J. & Eastwick, P. W (2009). Role reversal undermines speed-dating theories Psychol. Sci<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sex sells. We know that. I’ve seen the effect in the last few days at F1000: we published a press release about an evaluated paper. It’s about premature ejaculation, and is receiving two to three times more views than our … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}