Choosing a partner.

A bunch of American university students – freshies (the natural prey of the research student) – were given the chance to try a free dating service. Based on psychological profiling, the service promised to hook them up with their ideal partner.

Hey, it was the start of the year, they were new to the place, so it sounded like a great idea. Lots signed up.

They completed reams of paperwork about their views and opinions, and were duly assigned a date. So far so good. After their night out, they were asked a single question by the researchers: Did they want to see this person again?

Did I mention this was a psychological study? Well, that's code for there being a sneaky element to it. When they first signed up for it (in person, not on line, this was back in the 70’s yanno) a panel of judges hidden behind a screen rated each participant in terms of a single factor: how attractive they were.

(Hold on for a minute while I get this picture of geeky researchers surreptitiously rating younger peoples' attractiveness out of my mind. Ick.)

(And there is no way this would get ethics-panel approval these days)

And so what do you think was the most pertinent factor in determining how much a person wanted to see their date again?  Was it their wit? Their ambition? Their scintillating conversational ability? Their shared views of life?

None of the above. For both men and women, it was overwhelmingly how attractive their date was. Hotness rules.

It’s the kind of result I hoped would have been different.  But I'm kind of not surprised about. Ah, we humans are a predictable lot.

Brains: 0; Hormones: 1.

Ok, there's more to the psychology of romantic relationships than that... but not much. I'll save it for a later post.