February 16, 2026 • 45 mins
Modern dating can feel exhausting. On one hand, there’s the seemingly endless swiping that leads to dating app burnout; on the other, there’s what can feel like the insurmountable challenge of meeting someone in real life.
But what if finding love is less about fate — and more about strategy? Dr. Laurie sits down with behavioral scientist and dating coach Tim Molnar, author of Date Smarter: A Strategic Guide to Navigating Modern Romance, to explore what the research really says about how to meet the right person, build genuine connection, and avoid common dating mistakes.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Date Smarter: A Strategic Guide to Navigating Modern Romance
“Receptivity to Sexual Invitations from Strangers of the Opposite Gender”
How to Bounce Back from Life’s Curveballs (with Dr. Maya Shankar)
“Computations of Uncertainty Mediate Acute Stress Responses in Humans”
“Implementation Intentions and Goal Achievement: A Meta-Analysis of Effects and Processes”
“Forbes Health Survey: 78% Of All Users Report Dating App Burnout”
“Foot-in-the-Door Technique Using a Courtship Request”
“Getting Beyond Small Talk: Study Finds People Enjoy Deep Conversations with Strangers”
“Grammar Is Super Important to Online Dating Sites, So Try to Speak English Good”
(00:02:17) Date Smarter: A Strategic Guide to Navigating Modern Romance
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin admit it. At some point, you probably fantasized about
meeting somebody that you really clicked with, and in that fantasy,
things are really great. You're into them, they're into you.
You get a little jolt of joy every time you
(00:36):
see a text from their number. Over time, you start
to think, huh, I might love this person, or even
this is the human I'm going to spend the rest
of my life with. But of course there are some
steps you need to go through before it gets to
that point.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Before that happens, I'm going to have to have a
relationship at all. And before that's going to happen, I'm
going to have to go on a date. And before
that's going to happen, I am going to have to
get a date.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
This is Tim Malnar, a social scientist turned dating coach
in Boulder, Colorado. Before Tim became an expert on the
science of dating, he was pretty much the opposite I had.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
I think, up until the age of twenty eight twenty nine,
never asked someone out. My initial approach to love was
very much based on this idea that love will happen
when it happens. I just wasn't very proactive. I was
spending a lot of time pursuing self actualization and so
(01:36):
trying to make sure that I was getting into the
right grad schools. And I was playing soccer over in
Europe for a while, learning new languages, doing all of
these things that I thought would make me a more
interesting partner, and I realized that really wasn't moving the
needle forward.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
So Tim decided to look for love in an unlikely place,
the world of behavioral science.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
I was in a grad program at the time, and
I was digging into all this different academic research, these
social psychological frameworks, and I thought there must be a
way to be able to use these to help myself
in dating. And I think there's this commonly used expression
in academia that our research is often research, And so
I figured that we could use these studies to help
(02:20):
me date smarter.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
And Tim ultimately succeeded in his quest.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
I met my partner Page at a coffee shop about
six years ago.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
At this point, Tim now wants to share all that
he's learned. In fact, he has a new book called
Date Smarter, A Strategic Guide to Navigating Modern Romance. In
the book, Tim breaks down what the leading research says
about finding your life partner. He also gives some practical
tips for navigating the messy and often intimidating landscape of
modern dating. So stay tuned Happiness Lab listeners, because in
(02:52):
a second episode in our series on the Science of Love,
Tim and I will explore strategies for meeting someone in
real life, the ins and outs of online dating, and
how to know when you found the one. That's all
coming up after these quick messages from the Happiness Lab sponsors.
(03:21):
Behavioral scientist and dating coach Tim Malnar wasn't always an
expert on finding love, and that's why he decided to
take a scientific approach to the challenges of modern data.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
I wanted to figure out, is there a way that
I can reverse engineer this process, not to guarantee that
I'm going to meet this person, but at least to
reclaim agency and take actions that are going to improve
the probability of that happening.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
So what was the approach you took to reverse engineering it?
What did you look to.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
I tried to understand at each point in this process,
are there certain numbers, Are there certain heuristics that can
be helpful for guiding this So, for example, there's this
great study out of the University of Copenhagen where the
researchers had sent about three hundred and sixty undergrad into
the field, and what they found was that on average,
(04:14):
men were getting a yes when asking women out about
one out of five times. And so I use this
twenty percent success rate and that was sort of my
guiding path of like.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Okay, cool.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
So if I go out and shoot my shot and
this doesn't work, it's actually to be expected, and I
can use this rejection as data points to learn maybe
what I might do better next time. If we think
about our happiness as sort of our expectations minus reality,
if I'm expecting to not get a date four out
(04:48):
of five times, it builds in a lot more resilience
for me.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
I love this idea of using the actual statistics to
build in the resilience. But if your guy looking to
ask women out eighty percent of the time, you're going
to get rejected. I'm guessing some people hear that stat
and they're like, that's terrible, Like I don't want to
deal with that. How did you cope with the emotionality
that comes with a number that might feel intimidating like that?
Speaker 2 (05:09):
I think you're right that hearing that there is a
higher probability of a failure than success is not always
the most encouraging message. But I think the important reframe
is a lot of our anxiety comes from uncertainty, and
of course there's always going to be uncertainty in dating.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
We can never avoid that.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
And I know you'd had Maya Schanka on the podcast
number of episodes back, and she was referencing the study
where we are more stressed when we have a fifty
percent chance of receiving an electric shock as opposed to
one hundred percent chance. And knowing these statistics, we still
don't have that certainty, but there is comfort in knowing
(05:48):
that we will strike out, and so when that happens,
we can put certain pieces into place to make ourselves
more resilient. For example, we might say, here's someone who
who I'd love to go talk to. If this doesn't
work out, I'm going to go on a run after this,
I'm going to go take a warm bath. I'm going
to listen to this music that always makes me feel better.
(06:08):
And we have these things in place ahead of time,
and having that plan can reduce some of the anxiety
that comes with putting ourselves out there.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
So it seems like it works in at least two ways.
Speaker 4 (06:18):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
One is it just normalizes it. It's like it's eighty
percent probably this is not going to work. I shouldn't
freak out whant to hear it. But the second thing
I hear you say, which is really important, is if
it's really an eighty percent shot that I'm going to
get dinged, I gotta have some strategies in place for
when that inevitable role probabilistically comes up, like Oh, I'm
going to get turned down, I get a call a friend,
I have to have some happy music. You build in
the resilience as you're going to kind of do better.
(06:40):
Another thing I know you've talked about is the idea
of having these statistics can shift our focus from outcome
to effort. What do you mean there? And why can
that be so powerful?
Speaker 2 (06:49):
The idea of focusing on what's in our control really
does improve how we approach dating overall. When we feel
like we have some agency over what's transpiring, agency over
our actions, this does provide us a good bit of comfort,
and so are a lot of different ways that we
(07:10):
can think about this happening. But it might be I
spend a lot of time working from home, and what's
in my control is not necessarily when I meet my partner,
but I do have control over deciding. I can work
from a coffee shop, and when I go there, I
can choose to sit at the community table. I can
choose to either do my yoga workout at home, or
(07:33):
I can go to class on Tuesday and Thursday. And
these are little decision points in our lives where reclaiming
little bits of control can provide us a comfort that
comes along with that.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
It's like, well, I'm not, you know, immediately going to
get my life partner, but at least I'm taking action.
You're kind of always working towards something, You're putting yourself
out there. Just that effort can feel really good.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
One of the frameworks I talk about in the book
is this idea of the date number and putting some
type of numerical value alongside whatever action is serving as
some type of choke point in our dating life. And
it should be something that feels like a bit of
a stretch. And so maybe that looks like each month,
(08:17):
I'm going to try and shoot for four social events,
something that is maybe mildly uncomfortable, but really thinking about
where am I getting stuck? Do I go on a
bunch of first dates and I'm very quick to write
people off because of this grass is greener on the
next date phenomenon? And if so, can I change and
set my date number around this year? I really want
(08:39):
to go on twelve second dates and just giving people
another shot.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
So this idea of a date number is just like
figuring out a number for the hard thing that you
want to do. And it sounded like at first your
hard thing was really asking people out, knowing that your
statistic was that you're going to get turned down eighty
percent of the time. Did you come up with a
specific date number for the number of people you're going
to ask out when you first started this?
Speaker 2 (09:02):
I did, And I like to put it was is
like we want the math in the happiness lab, right.
So I had set one at three hundred three hundred. WHOA,
this is overly conservative, and my date number was three
hundred asks.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
But in terms of the number.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Of dates that I had budgeted to go on, that
would have been sixty dates. Twenty percent. Success rate was
building in this big buffer for saying when I go
out and try and it doesn't work out, I shouldn't
be surprised, and so I think coming in with that
understanding really helped me say, like, great, okay, only two
hundred ninety nine more. This one didn't work out, Only
(09:40):
two hundred ninety eight more.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Which is so surprising because in some ways that seems
like a really big number. But one of the things we,
of course know from the research is that these finite
numbers are calming three hundreds of big number. Two hundred
ninety nine is a big number, but it's not infinite,
and that alone can reduce our anxiety a little bit,
which is kind of cool. The other thing is that
these larger date numbers are good from a psychological perspective
because they do something else that we might need in
(10:04):
the dating domain, which is that we're getting exposure to
the thing that we find really tough. One of the
things I loved about your book is that you compared
this idea of doing the hard thing in dating with
the kind of exposure therapy that we see in clinical practice.
When somebody's trying to get over a phobia, so you're
afraid of spiders, you have to expose yourself to this spider,
you're afraid of heights, you got to expose yourself to
the heights. If we're afraid of the asking out, we've
(10:26):
got to expose ourselves to the asking out. So it
becomes kind of rote and we get used to it.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
I think that's right. We can think about having a
fear of heights and starting at the second floor and
saying this feels a bit out of my comfort zone,
and then the next week going up to floor three,
floor five, and floor ten and building our way up
gradually and dating. There is a very similar parallel to
be drawn. Where it was really difficult for me to
(10:55):
approach the first person that I did, it was really
difficult to approach the last person that It is always
a hard thing, but in doing this over and over
and over again, there is a comfort that we begin
to develop, begin to reckon with this idea of this
fear of rejection, like gosh, I shot my shot and
this didn't work out and I lived to tell the tale.
(11:16):
And one other thing that I would say about the
exposure therapy piece is this was something that came out
of a therapy practice that I was in and my
therapist was trying to help me get to the bottom of,
you know, why is this idea of being single so scary?
And I would immediately spiral into these Oh it's twenty
(11:37):
years into the future and I'm sitting at this choir
concert for my sister's nine year old and everyone's coupled
and has children, and I'm the butt of the joke. Oh,
you know, Tim's just single again and brought up these
really uncomfortable feelings for me. And so she's like, you know,
just write that on a post note and put in
(11:59):
a really conspicuous place in your house. And so I
was living with roommates at the time, so I was like, well,
refrigerator is probably not the best place for like my deepest,
darkest insecurities. But I can put this on my bedside
table and still see it a good bit. And over
time I'd see this very hyper specific example of like
why I thought this was going to be such a
scary experience of saying hi to someone in the aisles
(12:21):
at Trader Joe's, And actually it was like, no, this
is kind of a bit of a jump here to say.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
If this doesn't go well, then you.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Know, I'm going to be at that choir concert twenty
years in the future all alone.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
It's so cool because the exposure really gets you to
set these realistic expectations. Again, this is something we know
from these clinical therapeutic practices, like oh, the spider's not
as bad or the height's not as bad. You're basically
teaching yourself that these practices and dating that cause anxiety,
they're actually not that bad. But the second thing this
big date number gives you is that you're also setting
these big goals into something a little bit tinier, which
(12:55):
we know from all the researcher on goal setting can
be so important, whereas you need three hundred for a
life partner, but you might just need sixty for a
first date or something like that.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Absolutely, So one of the things that a framework like
this allows you to have is when we develop a plan,
it's going to be more effective the more specific we're
able to be. So I talk about this idea of
implementation intentions in the book, where we're assigning a specific time, place,
and behavior to an action that we want to take. So,
(13:26):
for example, going back to this idea of going out
to four social events in a month, we might get
hyper specific and say, on Tuesday at seven pm, I'm
going to go to trivia night over at this specific bar,
and putting that onto our calendar does a couple things. One,
we have to opt out of a plan that has
(13:47):
already been made, which we know from the research makes
much more effective follow through. We see that and everything
from donating organs to things like automatic retirement savings and
so that is very powerful in and of itself having
on the calendar. Something else that allows us to do
is then implement other accountability mechan So I talk about
(14:11):
getting something I call a date mate, basically just your
accountability buddy. And I think anybody who's tried to have
like an early morning I'm going to go to the gym,
it's a lot easier to make that six am workout
happen if you're meeting someone there.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
I might just bail on myself. I'm probably not going
to bail on my friend.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
So with the date mat, this could be someone that
we check in with once a week and they know
you were planning to try and go out to that
trivia night this week. Did you end up making that happen.
It's not meant to cause any shame if it didn't happen.
But the idea is that when we're accountable to somebody else,
we're more likely to take those actions that improve our
probability for success.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Here.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
It's so interesting because I think when you first hear
this idea of a date matit, you might assume this
is more like a wingman, like that's the person who's
supposed to go with you to a trivia night and
kind of talk to the person for you. But what
you mean more is like the person you're checking in
with to make sure that you're following through on the
plans that you decided for yourself.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
It's funny that you bring that up about heading out
to an event with someone else. I was running a
dating workshop over the weekend and someone had raised their hand.
They're like, hey, you know, I struggled to get out
of the house, and it's easier if I go with
a friend. Is it possible if people will still like,
come say hi to me if I'm with someone else.
And one of the guys just jumps and he's like,
(15:26):
I would never feel comfortable approaching someone. And I was
looking back on my own dating life and just sort
of reflecting on this question and thinking that I'd probably
approached somewhere in the ballpark of seventy eighty people over
a multiple year time horizon, and one of those times
I had approached someone who is with someone else, Which
is not to say that it's an impossibility, but it
does make it more difficult. And certainly if it helps
(15:48):
you get out of the house, it's great to have
that person, but then just realize it.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
But then ditch them, go sit somewhere else. Yeah, exactly, Okay,
So hopefully listeners who are interested in finding their partner
are hearing this and saying, oh, date number. It fits
with the behavioral science. If someone's thinking that, what's their
first step to determining their own date number? What advice
do you have?
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Getting clear on where we're getting stuck?
Speaker 2 (16:14):
And this can be something that's difficult to do because
by definition, when we have a blind spot, it is
something that we don't see.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
So it could be.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
We might text a few people who know us well,
ask a therapist, as family members, someone who will give
us an honest opinion. Hey, why do you think I'm single?
What do you think is really holding me back right now?
It's a tough question to ask. Is vulnerable, but there
can be a lot of power in getting that feedback.
And then if they're saying you're swiping and swiping and swiping,
(16:44):
you're messaging, you're rarely meeting up, and it makes sense
that you're among the seventy eight percent of online daters
who report experiencing burnout. And then if that's the case,
then we can take tangible actions for saying like, Okay,
maybe I want to try more of an in real
life approach. What does that look like? So the first
step is yeah, like you said, really getting clear on
(17:06):
what you're doing, and then coming up with some type
of number around that goal that feels like it's going
to push you without leading to burnout.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Here.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
So, now that you've got a plan to step out
of your comfort zone, the next question is where do
you actually meet people with real relationship potential on dating
apps and bars, in the checkout line at dunkin Donuts?
And what actually makes a first date good. We'll tackle
all that and more when the Happiness Lab returns from
this quick break. Dating coach and behavioral scientist Tim Malnar
(17:53):
is on a mission to make the process of finding
love in the modern world a bit easier, and one
of his more controversial suggestions is that we're better off
looking for love in real life not online. In fact,
Tim has argued there are lots of psychological reasons that
dating apps tend to us astray.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Our brains are not designed to be able to make
sense of lots and lots of options. So we know
this from work from folks like Barry Schwartz that this
idea of paradox of choice is we get overloaded and
we're not able to make those value the line decisions.
So you can think about going out to the cheesecake
factory and you have like two hundred and twenty five
options on the menu, and you're like, I don't know,
(18:32):
should they get like the Cajun jumbalayapasta or you know,
the other whatever. And it's much easier for us when
we go to a nice restaurant we have six to
eight choices, and we're like great. When we enter the
online dating world and we have limitless options, or this
perception of limitless options, we experience a sense of overwhelm.
And I remember being on a date, probably at seven
(18:54):
or eight years back at this point, and we were
thirty minutes into dinner and things were going really well,
and I was kind of teasing, and we're like, gosh, like,
why did it take so long for us to meet up?
Speaker 3 (19:05):
This has been great? And I remember she pulled out
her app.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
And she went to the section where it had active
messages and just said nine to nine to nine plus.
So she'd received over one thousand messages from people, and
so it didn't matter like, oh, man, was that the
right thing to text? Maybe that wasn't funny enough, maybe
it wasn't unique enough. No, this is just a choice
overload problem. Voter Choice is great research on this, where
(19:32):
we see when we have a ballot that has lots
and lots of options, it's very difficult for us to
actually make choices that are aligned with the political values
that we hold. And when that gets down into six
to eight range, that's a pretty comfortable decision making range.
And so what some of the apps Hinges a good example,
(19:53):
have started to do is they'll say, if you have
more than x ongoing conversations, we're not going to allow
you to continue to swipe, because we know that's not
productive for what we're trying to do here.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
So it seems like some of the apps try to help.
But then sometimes apps have features that we to try
to narrow down the playing field, and then that messes
us up. I mean, one thing we talk about a
lot on the Happiness lab is we have no idea
about the kinds of things that will make us happy,
and I think that that's definitely true in the dating domain.
We just have all these predictions about the kinds of
things we want in a partner, but we're often wrong.
And one of the things I'm struck by is that
(20:26):
in your book you talked about how you and your
wife were on the same dating app at the same time,
but you didn't ever see each other because you had
filters on that filtered each other out, which I found
so striking.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
I love this story. I think it's a perfect example.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
I was two years outside of Page's age filter, and
we were talking a number of months into dating. We're like, gosh, oh,
so you were unlike jein Bumble as well. You know,
we're living a mile of part I wonder when we
had to come across each other and we were going
through all the filters that we had set, like we
wouldn't have not online anyway, And it is, like you said,
(21:02):
it's something where we have this false sense of I
have control over this. I can filter for someone who's
over six feet tall, I can filter for someone who
is this religion. I can filter for someone who has
these drug and alcohol preferences. And yet the whole time
we're filling in the blanks of the story of who
we think we're going to be meeting up with. This
person says that they're religious. Are they going to be
(21:25):
the person who's in the front pew every Sunday? Or
is this someone who maybe they celebrate Christmas nic go
once a year and like that's what being religious means
to them. And so we're creating these ideas that often
turn out not to be true, and the filters can
be highly destructive for finding out what we actually want
and recognizing some of those qualities. You know, there's not
a filter to turn on to say how kind am I?
Speaker 3 (21:47):
How loyal am I?
Speaker 2 (21:48):
What's my level of trustworthiness? And I think that they
really do steer us wrong in that department, So.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
That abs are steering us wrong. We should commit to
meeting people in real life, but where should we think
about going to meet a new partner in person?
Speaker 2 (22:04):
I would start by saying that I don't think we
should ever head out to places just for the idea
of I'm going to meet someone here who's going to
be my future romantic partner. It puts far too much
pressure on the situation, and it creates strong likelihood that
we're going to be disappointed instead. I think there's this
(22:25):
matrix of is this something that I'm genuinely going to enjoy?
If I head out to that Saturday morning trail maintenance crew,
I'm probably going to get some fresh air. I'm probably
going to meet some people who are kind and generous
and who volunteer their time. Maybe I happen to meet
someone who's a good friend. Maybe I happen to meet
someone who ends up being a future matchmaker. Maybe I
(22:47):
meet someone who ends up being my life partner. But
it is really important to focus on those types of
places that we're genuinely looking to have a good time at.
And I think there's also this idea of what's the
likelihood that I'm going to have a conversation. So if
I go to a concert, there are a lot of
people there, but there's not a super high probability that
I'm going to be having a conversation. If I go
(23:09):
to a book club by definition, there's a curated group
of people who are designed to be talking and interacting
with one another, and so being thoughtful about am I
going to have a good time here? Is there high
likelihood that they're going to be different people here? And
will I likely interact with them? Those are good filters
as it were, to be able to begin thinking about
(23:31):
where we might head out to meet people in real life.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Okay, so we're at the spot that we're going to
have a good time, we can have a conversation. There's
somebody we might be interested in talking to. What's the
next step? Do we go with a goofy pickup line?
How does it work?
Speaker 3 (23:45):
There are a number of different approaches.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
One of my favorite is called the foot in the
door approach, and it comes from the old business adage
where if we wanted to sell something, if we could
get like a literal or figurative foot in the door,
we've crossed over this threshold and now we're more likely
to close the sale. And so in the dating context,
there's research on this idea of if we first open
(24:11):
with a small favor, something like hey, I'm looking for directions,
or like can I have a light for my cigarette?
When people open with this small favor first before going
into and I'd love to grab a coffee sometime, They're
five times more likely to get a yes. And so
that can look like a lot of different things in
real life. Going back to the coffee shop example, you're
(24:33):
sitting at the community table, you need to go to
the bathroom, and you turn to the person next to
you and just say, hey, do you mind watching my
stuff while I go to the bathroom. It's a pretty
low stakes thing to say. And then we come back like, hey,
thanks so much, you working on anything fun today? But
now that I've had that initial conversation, that initial touch point,
(24:53):
it's much more likely that if I later say, like,
you just have like a really good smile and good
energy about you and be really fun to go for
a walk, would you be out for that sometime, our
probability is much higher.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
When you're talking about this, this sounds so easy, But when
I talk to the young people I work with, like
my Yale students, they would describe and act like that
is incredibly anxiety provoking. And I think that it's true.
These days, we just have more friction for these quick
conversations with people, in part because we're on our phones
all the time, and that means when we're first starting out,
we do kind of experience a little anxiety when we're
trying to do this. So any tips for regulating the
(25:25):
anxiety when you were doing these light icebreakers.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Yes, I don't want to talk about these things as
if it's easy. It was never easy for me. Speaking
from personal experience, it did get easier and understanding some
of the research. Nick Appley does a lot of great
research on this at the University Chicago, and the upshot
of a lot of his findings are people enjoy being
talked to a lot more than we think, a lot
(25:50):
more than they think, and we enjoy those conversations a
lot more as well. So for me as academic, that's
something that did give me a good degree of comfort,
but also just creating some of these opportunity of response mechanisms.
A good example, I met my partner Page at a
(26:10):
coffee shop and I really want an excuse to come
up and talk to her, And I went over and
I said, like, Hey, do you mind if I plug
in my laptop here? That didn't feel like a crazy
thing to say, It was still hard. There was still
like a level of anxiety, but understanding the social context
(26:30):
that this is a normal thing to do within a
coffee shop. I would often do this whether or not
I was interested in someone, Like, my battery is running low,
I need an outlet.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
You're buy an outlet. This is a convenient option.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
So one thing I think is just having a rough
idea of like, here's something I might say, and then
if this doesn't go the way that I hoped, what
can I do to elegantly gracefully extract myself from the situation.
You know, Hey, no worries, hope you have a great
rest of your day, And just understanding that, like I
can get myself out of this situation in a way
that leaves them feeling respected and leaves me with my
(27:05):
dignity intact as well, and then having those lists of
things that make you feel better at the already, like
get on the phone with my friend right now.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
You also are big on making sure that you can
be the one that receives conversation from someone else that
you're doing something that allows you to seem a little
bit more approachable.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
What sort of behavior does that entail? There are different
ways to do this. Some of my favorites are giving
people something easy to comment on. And so one way
we might think about doing that is putting certain stickers
on the back of a laptop and the back of
a water bottle, and someone can come up and see
your Bryce Canyon sticker and be like, oh my gosh,
(27:41):
you've been a Bryce Canyon. Another thing could be you
know something that you're wearing. Maybe you're a big Patriots
fan and you have your Patriots shirt on, or your
Patriots mug or whatever it might be. It's an easy
conversation piece for people to make a quick comment on
the game, to make a quick comment on their favorite players.
And so if we're not as comfortable approaching other people,
which I think is very very common today, we can
(28:04):
make it slightly easier for other people to approach us.
And part of that is being ready and willing to
receive that. It's like if I have noise canceling headphones,
people are much less likely to approach me than if
I'm just sitting glancing up every once in a while,
sit it at a community table. Context helps drive that
approachability piece.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
So far, we've heard Tim's suggestions for meeting people in
real life, but what if you're still attached to those
online dating apps, Are there actually effective ways to use them?
And how do you know when it's time to stop
swiping and commit. We'll get into Tim's tips for online
dating when the Happiness Lab returns from the break. Social
(28:55):
Scientists Turn Dating coach Tim Malnar is a big advocate
for meeting people in real life, but he also knows
that dating apps can help you find your person if
you use them wisely. So I asked Tim to share
his best practices, starting with what the science says about
choosing your profile picture.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
It's really helpful when we're going through setting up a
profile to put yourself in the place of someone who's
going through this on the other end, and to understand
I might not make it past the first picture if
this doesn't seem like it's something that's interesting to me.
So some of those things with respect to choosing best pictures,
candid pictures perform very well, so these receive about fifteen
(29:34):
percent more likes. We also know that beach shots aren't
performing very well, so women who have beach photos get
forty seven percent fewer likes on these men get eighty
percent fewer likes.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
That seems weird because I think my stereotype is like,
showing off your body is a good thing, but people
seem not to like that.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
That's incredible. Yeah, it's an interesting one. Another one that
for me was surprising when I was digging into this
research was that black and white photos actually perform very well.
They perform better than color photos. In general, They're about
twice as likely to get a positive swipe. Maybe less
surprising is smiling, having that like open posture, not being
(30:14):
with someone who could be perceived as a significant other.
And this might seem like an obvious one. You're like, oh, well,
like I know this is my sister. Clearly they're going
to know this is my sister too. It's like we
probably wouldn't know that, you know. Going back to that
putting yourself in their shoes piece, what about selfies? How
do those do selvies do not do well, particularly mirror
based selfies. And so if you are able to have
(30:37):
a friend do a quick photo shoot. This is one
of those very high leverage moments with respect to online dating.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Talk in the book about this idea of.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
The preto principle, this eighty twenty rule where twenty percent
of our actions often get eighty percent of the results,
and then the other eighty percent of our actions are
aimed at remaining twenty percent there. So in dating, this
can look like asking a friend for a quick photo shoot.
It can also look like sending a text message out
(31:08):
to some friends and saying, Hey, I'm getting pretty serious
about dating right now. If you happen to meet anyone
or know anyone who you might set me up with,
please feel free to let me know. These are things
that don't take a lot of time but can be
very high leverage as opposed to the typical way that
a lot of people interact with online dating, which people
on average spend fifty one minutes a day on dating
(31:31):
app So that's twenty five hours in a month. But
there's not a lot of time spent actually meeting up
for dates. And so I'm very interested in those things
that we can do to spend a lot less time,
a lot less frustration, and spend more time on dates
meeting up with people hopefully having a good time getting
to know someone.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Okay, so that's the picture that we put in our profile,
but they also have some text. What does the research say.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
We'll start with proofreading. Proofreading is something that is often overlooked,
and this is something that turns off a lot of people.
But fifty percent of people will disqualify a profile if
there is even a simple TYPEO in it. So just
do one last pass over it to make sure that
you don't have any typos in it. Being able to
(32:16):
respond to something in a way that allows people to comment.
So for example, we might say, you know, ask me
about the time I super glued my hand to the
wall or had to go down the emergency slide on
an Air India flight. These are all things that can
help us make ourselves more approachable. Honesty is always something
(32:36):
that is paramount here and also being positive. I think
that we want to be able to tell people all
the things that we don't want, and we're like and
I wouldn't date someone of this political affiliation. I wouldn't
ever do this. And there are a lot of ways
that we can signal these same things, but in a
way that exudes more positivity. So we might say like
(32:57):
looking for someone open minded and that may touch on
certain political beliefs without having to say, you know, like
this is what I'm not looking for, or instead of
like no workaholics, I'm seeking someone who've values quality time
and work life balance. If you like animals, you could say,
if you don't like animals, wipe left. The other reframe
(33:17):
is like looking for a fellow animal over here. So
that's what we put in a profile. But then if
our profile works, we have this moment that can feel
really nerve wracking, which is that we have to send
the first message. What does a good first message look like?
A great first message is something that first of all,
asks an open ended question, something that someone is able
(33:37):
to respond to. When we're thinking about these messages, we
want to invest a little bit of time looking through
their profile, making a thoughtful comment on something that they
have said about themselves. And at the same time, we
don't want to obsess. You know, we're not penning the
great American novel here. This is just an opportunity to
(33:58):
reach out and to maybe start a spark that leads somewhere.
One important thing when we're thinking about online messaging is
the amount of time time we're spending back and forth
before we're actually getting to a date. It can feel
very tempting to want to understand everything about this person
(34:19):
before understanding if it's a good idea to meet up
or not, and there are certain safety considerations for sure.
At the same time, research from Hinge suggests that there's
this sweet spot between about two to five days where
people are comfortable meeting up. So on average people think
that's a good amount of time. That's not going to
(34:40):
be for everyone, but it is helpful to keep in
mind that we don't need to have these digital pen pals,
and instead we can say like, Hey, this has been
really fun. I've enjoyed our banter. I think we might
even do a better job in person. What are your
thoughts on going for a walk Friday at six pm
over on the Highline.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
And I love that particular example because that gets to
another thing you suggest, which is that when you're asking
for the in real life moment, you got to be
very specific, concrete let's meet up at the high at
seven pm and do this thing. We're going to take
a walk, rather than like, hey, let's just meet up.
That seems to work better too, huh.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
It's so much easier to know what we're signing up
for when we say the time, place, behavior invitation versus
the hey are you around this weekend? I don't know
what I'm signing up for the high Line at seven pm.
There's a specificity that allows us to understand what we're
getting ourselves into.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
And so a problem with meeting up in real life
is that we're all really busy. You had this lovely solution,
which you called turtlenecking your dating life.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
What is that In the dating world where people are
experiencing record high burnout rates, being able to cut down
on the effort, the overwhelm, the choice overload is really helpful,
and so being able to automate certain things makes our
life a lot easier. Steve Jobs was iconically someone who
(36:08):
we're pretty much the same outfit for good portion of
his career, and so one of the things that I
suggest is using that same black turtleneck. Analogy from Steve
Jobs is like picking out a first date outfit.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
What is your dating uniform going to be?
Speaker 2 (36:24):
For me? I had this Henley that I love with
these particular pair of pants, and I was like, I
don't need to obsess over what I'm going to wear
on this date. I know that if I go on
a date, this is what I'm pulling out of my closet.
And it made this a lot easier. One fewer thing
that I needed to obsess over.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
You've done this too, for even what the date is.
I think you want to kind of make it authentic
to the person you're talking to, but you had some
go tos, your kind of date spot turtlenecks.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
If I understand it right, there's a careful balance here
between wanting to be thoughtful and say like, hey, there's
this great Italian restaurant in your neighborhood, maybe we try
and meet up there. That shows a certain level of thoughtfulness,
and there's also this balance with our own schedules, living
busy lives and thinking about how can we date, Recognizing
(37:12):
that I don't have to go on Yelp and scour
reviews for every restaurant on the Upper east Side. I
know that there's this really great Ramen place. I know,
like this is actually on my way back from the
office anyway, so it works well with my day. So
I'm going to suggest this, and maybe we have to
iterate and maybe Ramen on the Upper east Side turns
(37:33):
in Tacos somewhere else, but at least it provides that
tangible starting point and keeping that balance, but also having
the ability to cut down.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
On some of that choice overwhelm.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
The other thing we need to cut down on is
just how obsessed we get everything. You know, you mentioned
this idea. You can invest in the first message, but
you don't need to obsess over it. You just mentioned
you don't need to do this huge Yelp search to
figure out where you're going to go. I think one
of the problems with online dating is it can become
a bit of a compulsion, especially when it comes to
just the swiping. Tell me a little bit about what
we know about how much online dating has in common
(38:08):
with other addictive behaviors that people can fall into.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Online dating, and particularly swipe based dating algorithms are made
based on a very similar algorithm to how slot machines operate,
where we don't know when we're getting that dopamine hit.
Intermittent rewards produce highly addictive tendencies. So, for example, we
keep swiping and swiping and swiping, not knowing when that
(38:35):
reward is going to come. We want to just keep
doing this behavior over and over again. There's some interesting
psychological research from a skinner. We did this with pigeons
and they're pecking at this little lever trying to understand,
you know, when are they going to get a.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
Little piece of food.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
And for those pigeons that pack, get some food, peck,
get some food, and then eventually the food stops being administered,
they'll stop pecking, whereas the other ones who get this
on an intermittent reward schedule, so they pack and sometimes
get the food, pack, sometimes get the food. That's a
highly addictive patterning and it's something that we see all
the time with online dating. And it's not a coincidence
(39:14):
that these are engineered in this way, especially when you
think about the incentives that these app companies have for engagement,
for time on the app, and all.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
Of these things.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
So what do we know about what a healthy amount
of time looks like on these apps?
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Healthy is going to be a little bit different for
each person. In general, something like fifteen minutes a day
is what a lot of experts recommend for interacting with
these One thing that I suggest is setting an alarm
when you log into the platform, because it can get
very addictive. That we were just talking about, and so
(39:49):
it's easy to blow past that fifteen minute hard stop
unless we have something reminding us like okay, time to
get off these things. In terms of regularity, Again, this
is person dependent, but often I'd say something like three
times a week fifteen minutes. It's enough to stay current,
to stay fresh. If you're worried about missing a match
or responding quickly enough to message, you can always just
(40:12):
be upfront and say like, hey, you know, I'm much
quicker over text. So if you do end up being
free for that walk on the high line, then text
me here's my number. But we want to avoid that
situation where we're constantly logging in, and generally speaking, the
amount of time on average that people are spending is
much too high for protecting our mental health.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
And so those are some of the pitfalls of apps.
But hopefully we either do that or we meet a
person in real life and we find somebody that we
really like. And so how can you tell when the
person you've found is the right one to invest in
when it's time to stop dating other people.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
It's a great question, and from a numerical standpoint, like, yes,
I had set this date number goal, I said, all right,
I'm willing to ask out up to three hundred people.
I had found some pretty good matches along the way,
things that for small reasons didn't end up working out
when I met there was a one understanding that she
(41:15):
was compared to a previous baseline, like considerably better than that.
But also there were, more importantly, these bigger overriding qualities,
things like kindness, things like curiosity. We shared a lot
of values in common, and so it was something where
I had felt very differently than I had in previous relationships.
(41:37):
That was something that for me surfaced fairly early on.
I don't think that always needs to be the case,
but here it happened to and kind of on her end,
she tells a story about when we were out for
sort of our first official date and I was asking
about her morning routine and she was talking about the
smoothie that she makes.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
I was like, okay, like, well, what goes into the smoothie?
And she's like, well, you know, it's a spinach and
some juice that goes in there and yogurt. Is like, ah,
what kind of yogurt do you use?
Speaker 2 (42:06):
And I'm a pretty curious person and I I didn't
even remember that conversation when she brought it up months later,
but she remembers that, like, gosh, when you were asking
me about what type of Greek yogurt I use there
was this level of interest, this curiosity, asking questions, wanting
to get to know someone, and for her that was
signaling of here's someone who's going to be growth mindseted
(42:27):
and there were a lot of things on her end
as well.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
And so any final thoughts for our listeners about how
you can use a behavioral science approach to date smarter.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
This idea that we invest a lot of time and
effort and lots of things that we care about is
one that seems very normal for so many aspects of
our life. And we think about getting our dream job,
when we think about having our health, whatever it might be.
(42:56):
And with dating, I think there's again like the same
idea that I approach things with that it'll happen when
it happens. What I would say is we have a
lot more agency than we often give ourselves credit for,
and we should think about those ways in which we
can exercise this on a daily basis. And maybe that's
saying I'm going to shift up my schedule a little bit.
(43:17):
I'm going to move from the Tuesday pottery class to
the Wednesday pottery class, meeting new group of people. I'm
going to make sure that i'm sitting out at the
community table. When I'm out at the coffee shop, I'm
going to set a date number and find an accountability
buddy and begin taking action in the ways that rest
(43:38):
within my control that improve our outcomes. And that's really
what I think the deep takeaway message is here.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Dating can feel mysterious and frustrating, but as Tim's work
shows us, it's not as out of control as we
often assume. There are strategies we can use to build resilience,
reduce anxiety, and maybe just maybe find that perfect person.
And if you want even more advice on the best
ways to go about that, check out Tim's book Date Smarter,
(44:07):
a strategic guide to navigating modern romance. If you have
thoughts about today's episode and the Science of Love, we'd
love to hear them. You can email us at Happiness
Lab at Pushkin dot fm, or leave us a review
to tell us what you like. You can also sign
up to learn more about the Science of Happiness and
join my free newsletter on my website, Doctor Lauri Santos
(44:28):
dot com. That's d r l a U RI E
s A n t O s dot com. Coming up
on next week's episode of the Happiness Lab, we'll explore
the misconceptions we have about attraction. We'll dig into the
science of happier bonding with an expert on the evolutionary
psychology of human mating.
Speaker 4 (44:46):
When we look at these differences and what men and
women say they want, they're not translating into their experienced
preferences when they're out there meeting real life people.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
That's next up in our series on the science of
love on the Happiness Lab with me doctor Lauriy Santos,
Pushkin admit it. At some point, you probably fantasized about
meeting somebody that you really clicked with, and in that fantasy,
things are really great. You're into them, they're into you.
You get a little jolt of joy every time you
(00:36):
see a text from their number. Over time, you start
to think, huh, I might love this person, or even
this is the human I'm going to spend the rest
of my life with. But of course there are some
steps you need to go through before it gets to
that point.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Before that happens, I'm going to have to have a
relationship at all. And before that's going to happen, I'm
going to have to go on a date. And before
that's going to happen, I am going to have to
get a date.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
This is Tim Malnar, a social scientist turned dating coach
in Boulder, Colorado. Before Tim became an expert on the
science of dating, he was pretty much the opposite I had.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
I think, up until the age of twenty eight twenty nine,
never asked someone out. My initial approach to love was
very much based on this idea that love will happen
when it happens. I just wasn't very proactive. I was
spending a lot of time pursuing self actualization and so
(01:36):
trying to make sure that I was getting into the
right grad schools. And I was playing soccer over in
Europe for a while, learning new languages, doing all of
these things that I thought would make me a more
interesting partner, and I realized that really wasn't moving the
needle forward.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
So Tim decided to look for love in an unlikely place,
the world of behavioral science.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
I was in a grad program at the time, and
I was digging into all this different academic research, these
social psychological frameworks, and I thought there must be a
way to be able to use these to help myself
in dating. And I think there's this commonly used expression
in academia that our research is often research, And so
I figured that we could use these studies to help
(02:20):
me date smarter.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
And Tim ultimately succeeded in his quest.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
I met my partner Page at a coffee shop about
six years ago.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
At this point, Tim now wants to share all that
he's learned. In fact, he has a new book called
Date Smarter, A Strategic Guide to Navigating Modern Romance. In
the book, Tim breaks down what the leading research says
about finding your life partner. He also gives some practical
tips for navigating the messy and often intimidating landscape of
modern dating. So stay tuned Happiness Lab listeners, because in
(02:52):
a second episode in our series on the Science of Love,
Tim and I will explore strategies for meeting someone in
real life, the ins and outs of online dating, and
how to know when you found the one. That's all
coming up after these quick messages from the Happiness Lab sponsors.
(03:21):
Behavioral scientist and dating coach Tim Malnar wasn't always an
expert on finding love, and that's why he decided to
take a scientific approach to the challenges of modern data.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
I wanted to figure out, is there a way that
I can reverse engineer this process, not to guarantee that
I'm going to meet this person, but at least to
reclaim agency and take actions that are going to improve
the probability of that happening.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
So what was the approach you took to reverse engineering it?
What did you look to.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
I tried to understand at each point in this process,
are there certain numbers, Are there certain heuristics that can
be helpful for guiding this So, for example, there's this
great study out of the University of Copenhagen where the
researchers had sent about three hundred and sixty undergrad into
the field, and what they found was that on average,
(04:14):
men were getting a yes when asking women out about
one out of five times. And so I use this
twenty percent success rate and that was sort of my
guiding path of like.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Okay, cool.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
So if I go out and shoot my shot and
this doesn't work, it's actually to be expected, and I
can use this rejection as data points to learn maybe
what I might do better next time. If we think
about our happiness as sort of our expectations minus reality,
if I'm expecting to not get a date four out
(04:48):
of five times, it builds in a lot more resilience
for me.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
I love this idea of using the actual statistics to
build in the resilience. But if your guy looking to
ask women out eighty percent of the time, you're going
to get rejected. I'm guessing some people hear that stat
and they're like, that's terrible, Like I don't want to
deal with that. How did you cope with the emotionality
that comes with a number that might feel intimidating like that?
Speaker 2 (05:09):
I think you're right that hearing that there is a
higher probability of a failure than success is not always
the most encouraging message. But I think the important reframe
is a lot of our anxiety comes from uncertainty, and
of course there's always going to be uncertainty in dating.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
We can never avoid that.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
And I know you'd had Maya Schanka on the podcast
number of episodes back, and she was referencing the study
where we are more stressed when we have a fifty
percent chance of receiving an electric shock as opposed to
one hundred percent chance. And knowing these statistics, we still
don't have that certainty, but there is comfort in knowing
(05:48):
that we will strike out, and so when that happens,
we can put certain pieces into place to make ourselves
more resilient. For example, we might say, here's someone who
who I'd love to go talk to. If this doesn't
work out, I'm going to go on a run after this,
I'm going to go take a warm bath. I'm going
to listen to this music that always makes me feel better.
(06:08):
And we have these things in place ahead of time,
and having that plan can reduce some of the anxiety
that comes with putting ourselves out there.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
So it seems like it works in at least two ways.
Speaker 4 (06:18):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
One is it just normalizes it. It's like it's eighty
percent probably this is not going to work. I shouldn't
freak out whant to hear it. But the second thing
I hear you say, which is really important, is if
it's really an eighty percent shot that I'm going to
get dinged, I gotta have some strategies in place for
when that inevitable role probabilistically comes up, like Oh, I'm
going to get turned down, I get a call a friend,
I have to have some happy music. You build in
the resilience as you're going to kind of do better.
(06:40):
Another thing I know you've talked about is the idea
of having these statistics can shift our focus from outcome
to effort. What do you mean there? And why can
that be so powerful?
Speaker 2 (06:49):
The idea of focusing on what's in our control really
does improve how we approach dating overall. When we feel
like we have some agency over what's transpiring, agency over
our actions, this does provide us a good bit of comfort,
and so are a lot of different ways that we
(07:10):
can think about this happening. But it might be I
spend a lot of time working from home, and what's
in my control is not necessarily when I meet my partner,
but I do have control over deciding. I can work
from a coffee shop, and when I go there, I
can choose to sit at the community table. I can
choose to either do my yoga workout at home, or
(07:33):
I can go to class on Tuesday and Thursday. And
these are little decision points in our lives where reclaiming
little bits of control can provide us a comfort that
comes along with that.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
It's like, well, I'm not, you know, immediately going to
get my life partner, but at least I'm taking action.
You're kind of always working towards something, You're putting yourself
out there. Just that effort can feel really good.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
One of the frameworks I talk about in the book
is this idea of the date number and putting some
type of numerical value alongside whatever action is serving as
some type of choke point in our dating life. And
it should be something that feels like a bit of
a stretch. And so maybe that looks like each month,
(08:17):
I'm going to try and shoot for four social events,
something that is maybe mildly uncomfortable, but really thinking about
where am I getting stuck? Do I go on a
bunch of first dates and I'm very quick to write
people off because of this grass is greener on the
next date phenomenon? And if so, can I change and
set my date number around this year? I really want
(08:39):
to go on twelve second dates and just giving people
another shot.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
So this idea of a date number is just like
figuring out a number for the hard thing that you
want to do. And it sounded like at first your
hard thing was really asking people out, knowing that your
statistic was that you're going to get turned down eighty
percent of the time. Did you come up with a
specific date number for the number of people you're going
to ask out when you first started this?
Speaker 2 (09:02):
I did, And I like to put it was is
like we want the math in the happiness lab, right.
So I had set one at three hundred three hundred. WHOA,
this is overly conservative, and my date number was three
hundred asks.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
But in terms of the number.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Of dates that I had budgeted to go on, that
would have been sixty dates. Twenty percent. Success rate was
building in this big buffer for saying when I go
out and try and it doesn't work out, I shouldn't
be surprised, and so I think coming in with that
understanding really helped me say, like, great, okay, only two
hundred ninety nine more. This one didn't work out, Only
(09:40):
two hundred ninety eight more.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Which is so surprising because in some ways that seems
like a really big number. But one of the things we,
of course know from the research is that these finite
numbers are calming three hundreds of big number. Two hundred
ninety nine is a big number, but it's not infinite,
and that alone can reduce our anxiety a little bit,
which is kind of cool. The other thing is that
these larger date numbers are good from a psychological perspective
because they do something else that we might need in
(10:04):
the dating domain, which is that we're getting exposure to
the thing that we find really tough. One of the
things I loved about your book is that you compared
this idea of doing the hard thing in dating with
the kind of exposure therapy that we see in clinical practice.
When somebody's trying to get over a phobia, so you're
afraid of spiders, you have to expose yourself to this spider,
you're afraid of heights, you got to expose yourself to
the heights. If we're afraid of the asking out, we've
(10:26):
got to expose ourselves to the asking out. So it
becomes kind of rote and we get used to it.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
I think that's right. We can think about having a
fear of heights and starting at the second floor and
saying this feels a bit out of my comfort zone,
and then the next week going up to floor three,
floor five, and floor ten and building our way up
gradually and dating. There is a very similar parallel to
be drawn. Where it was really difficult for me to
(10:55):
approach the first person that I did, it was really
difficult to approach the last person that It is always
a hard thing, but in doing this over and over
and over again, there is a comfort that we begin
to develop, begin to reckon with this idea of this
fear of rejection, like gosh, I shot my shot and
this didn't work out and I lived to tell the tale.
(11:16):
And one other thing that I would say about the
exposure therapy piece is this was something that came out
of a therapy practice that I was in and my
therapist was trying to help me get to the bottom of,
you know, why is this idea of being single so scary?
And I would immediately spiral into these Oh it's twenty
(11:37):
years into the future and I'm sitting at this choir
concert for my sister's nine year old and everyone's coupled
and has children, and I'm the butt of the joke. Oh,
you know, Tim's just single again and brought up these
really uncomfortable feelings for me. And so she's like, you know,
just write that on a post note and put in
(11:59):
a really conspicuous place in your house. And so I
was living with roommates at the time, so I was like, well,
refrigerator is probably not the best place for like my deepest,
darkest insecurities. But I can put this on my bedside
table and still see it a good bit. And over
time I'd see this very hyper specific example of like
why I thought this was going to be such a
scary experience of saying hi to someone in the aisles
(12:21):
at Trader Joe's, And actually it was like, no, this
is kind of a bit of a jump here to say.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
If this doesn't go well, then you.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Know, I'm going to be at that choir concert twenty
years in the future all alone.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
It's so cool because the exposure really gets you to
set these realistic expectations. Again, this is something we know
from these clinical therapeutic practices, like oh, the spider's not
as bad or the height's not as bad. You're basically
teaching yourself that these practices and dating that cause anxiety,
they're actually not that bad. But the second thing this
big date number gives you is that you're also setting
these big goals into something a little bit tinier, which
(12:55):
we know from all the researcher on goal setting can
be so important, whereas you need three hundred for a
life partner, but you might just need sixty for a
first date or something like that.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Absolutely, So one of the things that a framework like
this allows you to have is when we develop a plan,
it's going to be more effective the more specific we're
able to be. So I talk about this idea of
implementation intentions in the book, where we're assigning a specific time, place,
and behavior to an action that we want to take. So,
(13:26):
for example, going back to this idea of going out
to four social events in a month, we might get
hyper specific and say, on Tuesday at seven pm, I'm
going to go to trivia night over at this specific bar,
and putting that onto our calendar does a couple things. One,
we have to opt out of a plan that has
(13:47):
already been made, which we know from the research makes
much more effective follow through. We see that and everything
from donating organs to things like automatic retirement savings and
so that is very powerful in and of itself having
on the calendar. Something else that allows us to do
is then implement other accountability mechan So I talk about
(14:11):
getting something I call a date mate, basically just your
accountability buddy. And I think anybody who's tried to have
like an early morning I'm going to go to the gym,
it's a lot easier to make that six am workout
happen if you're meeting someone there.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
I might just bail on myself. I'm probably not going
to bail on my friend.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
So with the date mat, this could be someone that
we check in with once a week and they know
you were planning to try and go out to that
trivia night this week. Did you end up making that happen.
It's not meant to cause any shame if it didn't happen.
But the idea is that when we're accountable to somebody else,
we're more likely to take those actions that improve our
probability for success.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Here.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
It's so interesting because I think when you first hear
this idea of a date matit, you might assume this
is more like a wingman, like that's the person who's
supposed to go with you to a trivia night and
kind of talk to the person for you. But what
you mean more is like the person you're checking in
with to make sure that you're following through on the
plans that you decided for yourself.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
It's funny that you bring that up about heading out
to an event with someone else. I was running a
dating workshop over the weekend and someone had raised their hand.
They're like, hey, you know, I struggled to get out
of the house, and it's easier if I go with
a friend. Is it possible if people will still like,
come say hi to me if I'm with someone else.
And one of the guys just jumps and he's like,
(15:26):
I would never feel comfortable approaching someone. And I was
looking back on my own dating life and just sort
of reflecting on this question and thinking that I'd probably
approached somewhere in the ballpark of seventy eighty people over
a multiple year time horizon, and one of those times
I had approached someone who is with someone else, Which
is not to say that it's an impossibility, but it
does make it more difficult. And certainly if it helps
(15:48):
you get out of the house, it's great to have
that person, but then just realize it.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
But then ditch them, go sit somewhere else. Yeah, exactly, Okay,
So hopefully listeners who are interested in finding their partner
are hearing this and saying, oh, date number. It fits
with the behavioral science. If someone's thinking that, what's their
first step to determining their own date number? What advice
do you have?
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Getting clear on where we're getting stuck?
Speaker 2 (16:14):
And this can be something that's difficult to do because
by definition, when we have a blind spot, it is
something that we don't see.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
So it could be.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
We might text a few people who know us well,
ask a therapist, as family members, someone who will give
us an honest opinion. Hey, why do you think I'm single?
What do you think is really holding me back right now?
It's a tough question to ask. Is vulnerable, but there
can be a lot of power in getting that feedback.
And then if they're saying you're swiping and swiping and swiping,
(16:44):
you're messaging, you're rarely meeting up, and it makes sense
that you're among the seventy eight percent of online daters
who report experiencing burnout. And then if that's the case,
then we can take tangible actions for saying like, Okay,
maybe I want to try more of an in real
life approach. What does that look like? So the first
step is yeah, like you said, really getting clear on
(17:06):
what you're doing, and then coming up with some type
of number around that goal that feels like it's going
to push you without leading to burnout.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Here.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
So, now that you've got a plan to step out
of your comfort zone, the next question is where do
you actually meet people with real relationship potential on dating
apps and bars, in the checkout line at dunkin Donuts?
And what actually makes a first date good. We'll tackle
all that and more when the Happiness Lab returns from
this quick break. Dating coach and behavioral scientist Tim Malnar
(17:53):
is on a mission to make the process of finding
love in the modern world a bit easier, and one
of his more controversial suggestions is that we're better off
looking for love in real life not online. In fact,
Tim has argued there are lots of psychological reasons that
dating apps tend to us astray.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Our brains are not designed to be able to make
sense of lots and lots of options. So we know
this from work from folks like Barry Schwartz that this
idea of paradox of choice is we get overloaded and
we're not able to make those value the line decisions.
So you can think about going out to the cheesecake
factory and you have like two hundred and twenty five
options on the menu, and you're like, I don't know,
(18:32):
should they get like the Cajun jumbalayapasta or you know,
the other whatever. And it's much easier for us when
we go to a nice restaurant we have six to
eight choices, and we're like great. When we enter the
online dating world and we have limitless options, or this
perception of limitless options, we experience a sense of overwhelm.
And I remember being on a date, probably at seven
(18:54):
or eight years back at this point, and we were
thirty minutes into dinner and things were going really well,
and I was kind of teasing, and we're like, gosh, like,
why did it take so long for us to meet up?
Speaker 3 (19:05):
This has been great? And I remember she pulled out
her app.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
And she went to the section where it had active
messages and just said nine to nine to nine plus.
So she'd received over one thousand messages from people, and
so it didn't matter like, oh, man, was that the
right thing to text? Maybe that wasn't funny enough, maybe
it wasn't unique enough. No, this is just a choice
overload problem. Voter Choice is great research on this, where
(19:32):
we see when we have a ballot that has lots
and lots of options, it's very difficult for us to
actually make choices that are aligned with the political values
that we hold. And when that gets down into six
to eight range, that's a pretty comfortable decision making range.
And so what some of the apps Hinges a good example,
(19:53):
have started to do is they'll say, if you have
more than x ongoing conversations, we're not going to allow
you to continue to swipe, because we know that's not
productive for what we're trying to do here.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
So it seems like some of the apps try to help.
But then sometimes apps have features that we to try
to narrow down the playing field, and then that messes
us up. I mean, one thing we talk about a
lot on the Happiness lab is we have no idea
about the kinds of things that will make us happy,
and I think that that's definitely true in the dating domain.
We just have all these predictions about the kinds of
things we want in a partner, but we're often wrong.
And one of the things I'm struck by is that
(20:26):
in your book you talked about how you and your
wife were on the same dating app at the same time,
but you didn't ever see each other because you had
filters on that filtered each other out, which I found
so striking.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
I love this story. I think it's a perfect example.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
I was two years outside of Page's age filter, and
we were talking a number of months into dating. We're like, gosh, oh,
so you were unlike jein Bumble as well. You know,
we're living a mile of part I wonder when we
had to come across each other and we were going
through all the filters that we had set, like we
wouldn't have not online anyway, And it is, like you said,
(21:02):
it's something where we have this false sense of I
have control over this. I can filter for someone who's
over six feet tall, I can filter for someone who
is this religion. I can filter for someone who has
these drug and alcohol preferences. And yet the whole time
we're filling in the blanks of the story of who
we think we're going to be meeting up with. This
person says that they're religious. Are they going to be
(21:25):
the person who's in the front pew every Sunday? Or
is this someone who maybe they celebrate Christmas nic go
once a year and like that's what being religious means
to them. And so we're creating these ideas that often
turn out not to be true, and the filters can
be highly destructive for finding out what we actually want
and recognizing some of those qualities. You know, there's not
a filter to turn on to say how kind am I?
Speaker 3 (21:47):
How loyal am I?
Speaker 2 (21:48):
What's my level of trustworthiness? And I think that they
really do steer us wrong in that department, So.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
That abs are steering us wrong. We should commit to
meeting people in real life, but where should we think
about going to meet a new partner in person?
Speaker 2 (22:04):
I would start by saying that I don't think we
should ever head out to places just for the idea
of I'm going to meet someone here who's going to
be my future romantic partner. It puts far too much
pressure on the situation, and it creates strong likelihood that
we're going to be disappointed instead. I think there's this
(22:25):
matrix of is this something that I'm genuinely going to enjoy?
If I head out to that Saturday morning trail maintenance crew,
I'm probably going to get some fresh air. I'm probably
going to meet some people who are kind and generous
and who volunteer their time. Maybe I happen to meet
someone who's a good friend. Maybe I happen to meet
someone who ends up being a future matchmaker. Maybe I
(22:47):
meet someone who ends up being my life partner. But
it is really important to focus on those types of
places that we're genuinely looking to have a good time at.
And I think there's also this idea of what's the
likelihood that I'm going to have a conversation. So if
I go to a concert, there are a lot of
people there, but there's not a super high probability that
I'm going to be having a conversation. If I go
(23:09):
to a book club by definition, there's a curated group
of people who are designed to be talking and interacting
with one another, and so being thoughtful about am I
going to have a good time here? Is there high
likelihood that they're going to be different people here? And
will I likely interact with them? Those are good filters
as it were, to be able to begin thinking about
(23:31):
where we might head out to meet people in real life.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Okay, so we're at the spot that we're going to
have a good time, we can have a conversation. There's
somebody we might be interested in talking to. What's the
next step? Do we go with a goofy pickup line?
How does it work?
Speaker 3 (23:45):
There are a number of different approaches.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
One of my favorite is called the foot in the
door approach, and it comes from the old business adage
where if we wanted to sell something, if we could
get like a literal or figurative foot in the door,
we've crossed over this threshold and now we're more likely
to close the sale. And so in the dating context,
there's research on this idea of if we first open
(24:11):
with a small favor, something like hey, I'm looking for directions,
or like can I have a light for my cigarette?
When people open with this small favor first before going
into and I'd love to grab a coffee sometime, They're
five times more likely to get a yes. And so
that can look like a lot of different things in
real life. Going back to the coffee shop example, you're
(24:33):
sitting at the community table, you need to go to
the bathroom, and you turn to the person next to
you and just say, hey, do you mind watching my
stuff while I go to the bathroom. It's a pretty
low stakes thing to say. And then we come back like, hey,
thanks so much, you working on anything fun today? But
now that I've had that initial conversation, that initial touch point,
(24:53):
it's much more likely that if I later say, like,
you just have like a really good smile and good
energy about you and be really fun to go for
a walk, would you be out for that sometime, our
probability is much higher.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
When you're talking about this, this sounds so easy, But when
I talk to the young people I work with, like
my Yale students, they would describe and act like that
is incredibly anxiety provoking. And I think that it's true.
These days, we just have more friction for these quick
conversations with people, in part because we're on our phones
all the time, and that means when we're first starting out,
we do kind of experience a little anxiety when we're
trying to do this. So any tips for regulating the
(25:25):
anxiety when you were doing these light icebreakers.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Yes, I don't want to talk about these things as
if it's easy. It was never easy for me. Speaking
from personal experience, it did get easier and understanding some
of the research. Nick Appley does a lot of great
research on this at the University Chicago, and the upshot
of a lot of his findings are people enjoy being
talked to a lot more than we think, a lot
(25:50):
more than they think, and we enjoy those conversations a
lot more as well. So for me as academic, that's
something that did give me a good degree of comfort,
but also just creating some of these opportunity of response mechanisms.
A good example, I met my partner Page at a
(26:10):
coffee shop and I really want an excuse to come
up and talk to her, And I went over and
I said, like, Hey, do you mind if I plug
in my laptop here? That didn't feel like a crazy
thing to say, It was still hard. There was still
like a level of anxiety, but understanding the social context
(26:30):
that this is a normal thing to do within a
coffee shop. I would often do this whether or not
I was interested in someone, Like, my battery is running low,
I need an outlet.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
You're buy an outlet. This is a convenient option.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
So one thing I think is just having a rough
idea of like, here's something I might say, and then
if this doesn't go the way that I hoped, what
can I do to elegantly gracefully extract myself from the situation.
You know, Hey, no worries, hope you have a great
rest of your day, And just understanding that, like I
can get myself out of this situation in a way
that leaves them feeling respected and leaves me with my
(27:05):
dignity intact as well, and then having those lists of
things that make you feel better at the already, like
get on the phone with my friend right now.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
You also are big on making sure that you can
be the one that receives conversation from someone else that
you're doing something that allows you to seem a little
bit more approachable.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
What sort of behavior does that entail? There are different
ways to do this. Some of my favorites are giving
people something easy to comment on. And so one way
we might think about doing that is putting certain stickers
on the back of a laptop and the back of
a water bottle, and someone can come up and see
your Bryce Canyon sticker and be like, oh my gosh,
(27:41):
you've been a Bryce Canyon. Another thing could be you
know something that you're wearing. Maybe you're a big Patriots
fan and you have your Patriots shirt on, or your
Patriots mug or whatever it might be. It's an easy
conversation piece for people to make a quick comment on
the game, to make a quick comment on their favorite players.
And so if we're not as comfortable approaching other people,
which I think is very very common today, we can
(28:04):
make it slightly easier for other people to approach us.
And part of that is being ready and willing to
receive that. It's like if I have noise canceling headphones,
people are much less likely to approach me than if
I'm just sitting glancing up every once in a while,
sit it at a community table. Context helps drive that
approachability piece.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
So far, we've heard Tim's suggestions for meeting people in
real life, but what if you're still attached to those
online dating apps, Are there actually effective ways to use them?
And how do you know when it's time to stop
swiping and commit. We'll get into Tim's tips for online
dating when the Happiness Lab returns from the break. Social
(28:55):
Scientists Turn Dating coach Tim Malnar is a big advocate
for meeting people in real life, but he also knows
that dating apps can help you find your person if
you use them wisely. So I asked Tim to share
his best practices, starting with what the science says about
choosing your profile picture.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
It's really helpful when we're going through setting up a
profile to put yourself in the place of someone who's
going through this on the other end, and to understand
I might not make it past the first picture if
this doesn't seem like it's something that's interesting to me.
So some of those things with respect to choosing best pictures,
candid pictures perform very well, so these receive about fifteen
(29:34):
percent more likes. We also know that beach shots aren't
performing very well, so women who have beach photos get
forty seven percent fewer likes on these men get eighty
percent fewer likes.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
That seems weird because I think my stereotype is like,
showing off your body is a good thing, but people
seem not to like that.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
That's incredible. Yeah, it's an interesting one. Another one that
for me was surprising when I was digging into this
research was that black and white photos actually perform very well.
They perform better than color photos. In general, They're about
twice as likely to get a positive swipe. Maybe less
surprising is smiling, having that like open posture, not being
(30:14):
with someone who could be perceived as a significant other.
And this might seem like an obvious one. You're like, oh, well,
like I know this is my sister. Clearly they're going
to know this is my sister too. It's like we
probably wouldn't know that, you know. Going back to that
putting yourself in their shoes piece, what about selfies? How
do those do selvies do not do well, particularly mirror
based selfies. And so if you are able to have
(30:37):
a friend do a quick photo shoot. This is one
of those very high leverage moments with respect to online dating.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Talk in the book about this idea of.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
The preto principle, this eighty twenty rule where twenty percent
of our actions often get eighty percent of the results,
and then the other eighty percent of our actions are
aimed at remaining twenty percent there. So in dating, this
can look like asking a friend for a quick photo shoot.
It can also look like sending a text message out
(31:08):
to some friends and saying, Hey, I'm getting pretty serious
about dating right now. If you happen to meet anyone
or know anyone who you might set me up with,
please feel free to let me know. These are things
that don't take a lot of time but can be
very high leverage as opposed to the typical way that
a lot of people interact with online dating, which people
on average spend fifty one minutes a day on dating
(31:31):
app So that's twenty five hours in a month. But
there's not a lot of time spent actually meeting up
for dates. And so I'm very interested in those things
that we can do to spend a lot less time,
a lot less frustration, and spend more time on dates
meeting up with people hopefully having a good time getting
to know someone.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Okay, so that's the picture that we put in our profile,
but they also have some text. What does the research say.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
We'll start with proofreading. Proofreading is something that is often overlooked,
and this is something that turns off a lot of people.
But fifty percent of people will disqualify a profile if
there is even a simple TYPEO in it. So just
do one last pass over it to make sure that
you don't have any typos in it. Being able to
(32:16):
respond to something in a way that allows people to comment.
So for example, we might say, you know, ask me
about the time I super glued my hand to the
wall or had to go down the emergency slide on
an Air India flight. These are all things that can
help us make ourselves more approachable. Honesty is always something
(32:36):
that is paramount here and also being positive. I think
that we want to be able to tell people all
the things that we don't want, and we're like and
I wouldn't date someone of this political affiliation. I wouldn't
ever do this. And there are a lot of ways
that we can signal these same things, but in a
way that exudes more positivity. So we might say like
(32:57):
looking for someone open minded and that may touch on
certain political beliefs without having to say, you know, like
this is what I'm not looking for, or instead of
like no workaholics, I'm seeking someone who've values quality time
and work life balance. If you like animals, you could say,
if you don't like animals, wipe left. The other reframe
(33:17):
is like looking for a fellow animal over here. So
that's what we put in a profile. But then if
our profile works, we have this moment that can feel
really nerve wracking, which is that we have to send
the first message. What does a good first message look like?
A great first message is something that first of all,
asks an open ended question, something that someone is able
(33:37):
to respond to. When we're thinking about these messages, we
want to invest a little bit of time looking through
their profile, making a thoughtful comment on something that they
have said about themselves. And at the same time, we
don't want to obsess. You know, we're not penning the
great American novel here. This is just an opportunity to
(33:58):
reach out and to maybe start a spark that leads somewhere.
One important thing when we're thinking about online messaging is
the amount of time time we're spending back and forth
before we're actually getting to a date. It can feel
very tempting to want to understand everything about this person
(34:19):
before understanding if it's a good idea to meet up
or not, and there are certain safety considerations for sure.
At the same time, research from Hinge suggests that there's
this sweet spot between about two to five days where
people are comfortable meeting up. So on average people think
that's a good amount of time. That's not going to
(34:40):
be for everyone, but it is helpful to keep in
mind that we don't need to have these digital pen pals,
and instead we can say like, Hey, this has been
really fun. I've enjoyed our banter. I think we might
even do a better job in person. What are your
thoughts on going for a walk Friday at six pm
over on the Highline.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
And I love that particular example because that gets to
another thing you suggest, which is that when you're asking
for the in real life moment, you got to be
very specific, concrete let's meet up at the high at
seven pm and do this thing. We're going to take
a walk, rather than like, hey, let's just meet up.
That seems to work better too, huh.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
It's so much easier to know what we're signing up
for when we say the time, place, behavior invitation versus
the hey are you around this weekend? I don't know
what I'm signing up for the high Line at seven pm.
There's a specificity that allows us to understand what we're
getting ourselves into.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
And so a problem with meeting up in real life
is that we're all really busy. You had this lovely solution,
which you called turtlenecking your dating life.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
What is that In the dating world where people are
experiencing record high burnout rates, being able to cut down
on the effort, the overwhelm, the choice overload is really helpful,
and so being able to automate certain things makes our
life a lot easier. Steve Jobs was iconically someone who
(36:08):
we're pretty much the same outfit for good portion of
his career, and so one of the things that I
suggest is using that same black turtleneck. Analogy from Steve
Jobs is like picking out a first date outfit.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
What is your dating uniform going to be?
Speaker 2 (36:24):
For me? I had this Henley that I love with
these particular pair of pants, and I was like, I
don't need to obsess over what I'm going to wear
on this date. I know that if I go on
a date, this is what I'm pulling out of my closet.
And it made this a lot easier. One fewer thing
that I needed to obsess over.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
You've done this too, for even what the date is.
I think you want to kind of make it authentic
to the person you're talking to, but you had some
go tos, your kind of date spot turtlenecks.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
If I understand it right, there's a careful balance here
between wanting to be thoughtful and say like, hey, there's
this great Italian restaurant in your neighborhood, maybe we try
and meet up there. That shows a certain level of thoughtfulness,
and there's also this balance with our own schedules, living
busy lives and thinking about how can we date, Recognizing
(37:12):
that I don't have to go on Yelp and scour
reviews for every restaurant on the Upper east Side. I
know that there's this really great Ramen place. I know,
like this is actually on my way back from the
office anyway, so it works well with my day. So
I'm going to suggest this, and maybe we have to
iterate and maybe Ramen on the Upper east Side turns
(37:33):
in Tacos somewhere else, but at least it provides that
tangible starting point and keeping that balance, but also having
the ability to cut down.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
On some of that choice overwhelm.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
The other thing we need to cut down on is
just how obsessed we get everything. You know, you mentioned
this idea. You can invest in the first message, but
you don't need to obsess over it. You just mentioned
you don't need to do this huge Yelp search to
figure out where you're going to go. I think one
of the problems with online dating is it can become
a bit of a compulsion, especially when it comes to
just the swiping. Tell me a little bit about what
we know about how much online dating has in common
(38:08):
with other addictive behaviors that people can fall into.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Online dating, and particularly swipe based dating algorithms are made
based on a very similar algorithm to how slot machines operate,
where we don't know when we're getting that dopamine hit.
Intermittent rewards produce highly addictive tendencies. So, for example, we
keep swiping and swiping and swiping, not knowing when that
(38:35):
reward is going to come. We want to just keep
doing this behavior over and over again. There's some interesting
psychological research from a skinner. We did this with pigeons
and they're pecking at this little lever trying to understand,
you know, when are they going to get a.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
Little piece of food.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
And for those pigeons that pack, get some food, peck,
get some food, and then eventually the food stops being administered,
they'll stop pecking, whereas the other ones who get this
on an intermittent reward schedule, so they pack and sometimes
get the food, pack, sometimes get the food. That's a
highly addictive patterning and it's something that we see all
the time with online dating. And it's not a coincidence
(39:14):
that these are engineered in this way, especially when you
think about the incentives that these app companies have for engagement,
for time on the app, and all.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
Of these things.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
So what do we know about what a healthy amount
of time looks like on these apps?
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Healthy is going to be a little bit different for
each person. In general, something like fifteen minutes a day
is what a lot of experts recommend for interacting with
these One thing that I suggest is setting an alarm
when you log into the platform, because it can get
very addictive. That we were just talking about, and so
(39:49):
it's easy to blow past that fifteen minute hard stop
unless we have something reminding us like okay, time to
get off these things. In terms of regularity, Again, this
is person dependent, but often I'd say something like three
times a week fifteen minutes. It's enough to stay current,
to stay fresh. If you're worried about missing a match
or responding quickly enough to message, you can always just
(40:12):
be upfront and say like, hey, you know, I'm much
quicker over text. So if you do end up being
free for that walk on the high line, then text
me here's my number. But we want to avoid that
situation where we're constantly logging in, and generally speaking, the
amount of time on average that people are spending is
much too high for protecting our mental health.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
And so those are some of the pitfalls of apps.
But hopefully we either do that or we meet a
person in real life and we find somebody that we
really like. And so how can you tell when the
person you've found is the right one to invest in
when it's time to stop dating other people.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
It's a great question, and from a numerical standpoint, like, yes,
I had set this date number goal, I said, all right,
I'm willing to ask out up to three hundred people.
I had found some pretty good matches along the way,
things that for small reasons didn't end up working out
when I met there was a one understanding that she
(41:15):
was compared to a previous baseline, like considerably better than that.
But also there were, more importantly, these bigger overriding qualities,
things like kindness, things like curiosity. We shared a lot
of values in common, and so it was something where
I had felt very differently than I had in previous relationships.
(41:37):
That was something that for me surfaced fairly early on.
I don't think that always needs to be the case,
but here it happened to and kind of on her end,
she tells a story about when we were out for
sort of our first official date and I was asking
about her morning routine and she was talking about the
smoothie that she makes.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
I was like, okay, like, well, what goes into the smoothie?
And she's like, well, you know, it's a spinach and
some juice that goes in there and yogurt. Is like, ah,
what kind of yogurt do you use?
Speaker 2 (42:06):
And I'm a pretty curious person and I I didn't
even remember that conversation when she brought it up months later,
but she remembers that, like, gosh, when you were asking
me about what type of Greek yogurt I use there
was this level of interest, this curiosity, asking questions, wanting
to get to know someone, and for her that was
signaling of here's someone who's going to be growth mindseted
(42:27):
and there were a lot of things on her end
as well.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
And so any final thoughts for our listeners about how
you can use a behavioral science approach to date smarter.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
This idea that we invest a lot of time and
effort and lots of things that we care about is
one that seems very normal for so many aspects of
our life. And we think about getting our dream job,
when we think about having our health, whatever it might be.
(42:56):
And with dating, I think there's again like the same
idea that I approach things with that it'll happen when
it happens. What I would say is we have a
lot more agency than we often give ourselves credit for,
and we should think about those ways in which we
can exercise this on a daily basis. And maybe that's
saying I'm going to shift up my schedule a little bit.
(43:17):
I'm going to move from the Tuesday pottery class to
the Wednesday pottery class, meeting new group of people. I'm
going to make sure that i'm sitting out at the
community table. When I'm out at the coffee shop, I'm
going to set a date number and find an accountability
buddy and begin taking action in the ways that rest
(43:38):
within my control that improve our outcomes. And that's really
what I think the deep takeaway message is here.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Dating can feel mysterious and frustrating, but as Tim's work
shows us, it's not as out of control as we
often assume. There are strategies we can use to build resilience,
reduce anxiety, and maybe just maybe find that perfect person.
And if you want even more advice on the best
ways to go about that, check out Tim's book Date Smarter,
(44:07):
a strategic guide to navigating modern romance. If you have
thoughts about today's episode and the Science of Love, we'd
love to hear them. You can email us at Happiness
Lab at Pushkin dot fm, or leave us a review
to tell us what you like. You can also sign
up to learn more about the Science of Happiness and
join my free newsletter on my website, Doctor Lauri Santos
(44:28):
dot com. That's d r l a U RI E
s A n t O s dot com. Coming up
on next week's episode of the Happiness Lab, we'll explore
the misconceptions we have about attraction. We'll dig into the
science of happier bonding with an expert on the evolutionary
psychology of human mating.
Speaker 4 (44:46):
When we look at these differences and what men and
women say they want, they're not translating into their experienced
preferences when they're out there meeting real life people.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
That's next up in our series on the science of
love on the Happiness Lab with me doctor Lauriy Santos,
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