From the original article on September 30, 2009. Author: Chateau Heartiste.
Speed dating sucks, but if you’re set on attending speed dating events make sure you know beforehand that the women will be the ones rotating from table to table. Science explains to us why this is so:
The researchers found that the speed daters who approached their partners relative to those who stayed sitting would experience a greater romantic desire and chemistry toward their partners, and were more likely to respond “Yes, I would see this person again” to their partners. In other words, the people who rotated from person to person were less selective than those sitting, regardless of which gender was doing the rotating.
When men rotated, women (the ones sitting) were more selective. But when women did the rotating, men (the ones sitting) were more selective. Nothing else changed in the experiment, so it was the act of doing the approaching (or being approached) that helped determine a person’s selectivity toward their partner.
The researchers go on to tentatively, yet giddily, conclude that “gender norms” and “subtle institutional gender bias”, such as that exhibited at professional speed dating events where the procedure is to always have the men rotate, could account for why reams of past research has shown that women are more selective at dating.
“Although Western civilization has become increasingly egalitarian over the past century, certain social institutions remain gendered, some in subtle, almost invisible, ways. The present research identified powerful consequences of a particularly subtle gender bias: the near-universal tendency to have men rotate and women sit at heterosexual speed-dating events. [...]
“Speed-dating scholars have appropriately adopted many procedures from professional speed-dating companies, so it is not surprising that this gendered norm [men rotating] has largely persisted, even for events organized and hosted by scholars. The present results, however, present a cautionary note: Even subtle gender norms can have important consequences for romantic dynamics.
Indeed, when researchers adopt a procedure without controlling for it, they risk missing a component of what they study. In this case, researchers just assumed that since men rotate in real-life, they should do so in speed-dating experiments. This may have skewed the results of past studies that used this speed-dating procedure, especially those that examined women’s “selectivity” — selectivity that may have been a result of the procedure itself, not the women.”
Maxim #81: Whenever you hear or read the words “gender”, “gendered”, “gendered norm”, “subtle gender bias”, or “increasingly egalitarian, yet there remains...” know that you are dealing with a leftwing equalist, blank-slate believing fruitcake who cannot deal with the fact that men and women are biologically different from birth.
So does the study really demonstrate that women are not as selective about dating as was previously believed by all of humanity for the past thousands of years? Eh, ya gotta read the disclaimers:
“What implications do the present findings have for the extensive literature demonstrating that women are more selective than men when choosing mates? On the one hand, this sex difference did not significantly reverse at events where women rotated, so on average there was at least an overall trend in the present data for men to experience greater romantic approach (i.e., to be less selective) than women.”
Answer: No. But thanks for playing!
I’ll explain what is going on here. One, the fruitcup researchers want desperately to cast doubt, however threadbare, on the burgeoning scientific and cultural acceptance of the important role played by biological determinism. They are emotionally invested in inflating and slanting the data to conform to their worldview. Scientists, particularly those in the soft girly sciences, are not immune from emotional bias. This is why I believe the time has come to shove it back in their faces and institute affirmative action and quotas in universities and social science departments to force them to hire academics with a realist bent. Diversity will be their strength, by force of law.
Two, while the reversed rotating speed dating study doesn’t do anything to overturn the extensive research showing that women are the more sexually selective sex, it does highlight an important concept of game that men should be aware of: namely, the principle of perceived higher value. Men who remain seated at speed dating events while the women bounce from man to man are essentially boosting their alpha male status. As any man who’s lived a day knows, when a girl approaches you either directly or indirectly (via a proximity indicator of interest) she will perceive you to have higher status than if she were the one being approached. The facts of your actual status are irrelevant. Perception is reality, so if certain body movements and positionings cause a girl to perceive you have higher status than her, she will be more open to a romantic tryst with you.
The researchers misjudged the rotating speed dating women’s universally shared desire for higher status males as lowered selectivity. The women weren’t being less selective; they were being just as selective as they always are, except now there were more higher status (i.e. seated) males for them to choose from. If anything, this study demonstrates that more men learning game will not result in women adopting stronger selection filters for men with only the tightest game. I have said before that more men running game is analogous to more women with beautiful faces — both will increase the total number of gina tingles and boners, respectively, at least until enough millennia have passed for new evolved preferences to emerge. Game, like beauty, exerts a power over the opposite sex too primal to be denied.
This principle of perceived higher value doesn’t work in the reverse: A woman’s value is almost entirely a function of her looks and the fact that she has a vagina, so there is little a woman can do, outside of makeup and good lighting, to alter a man’s perception of her beauty. Truly desperate ugly girls could slip a vision impairing drug into his drink, maybe a funhouse mirror drug that causes him to think she looks like Katy Perry.
Besides teaching men that they should refuse to get off their seat at speed dating events, this study helps confirm some other valuable body language power moves I’ve written about, like the forearm grab and the importance of keeping your back to the bar. I’d further suggest learning the “finger curl come hither”. Curl your finger and motion for her to come to you; the power dynamic will be all in your favor. As D likes to say, in an affected haughty French accent: “Zay come to ME!”
Women will often test men for their commitment to their repertoire of alpha power moves. How many times have you talked to a girl across a small distance in a loud room and she motioned for you to come closer to her? Beta bait. Alphas never bite; they respond “No, you come here.” Subtle, not so subtle? Douchey? Who cares, the shit works to light up a woman’s loins.
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