Many months ago, I was at a get together at a friend's place, and we suddenly realised that five out of seven of us were single. The discussion went on to why that was so and ended with the familiar rant – 'but where are the eligible single people!' To which we realised that all of us had friends, apart from this gang, who were single and who we feel are wonderful and so dateable. So we said let's get them introduced. The idea was to start a blog of postings, where we featured our friends who were single, and wrote testimonials for them. And tried to get friends and friends and friends together. That night some were excited about the idea, some were not too sure it'd work, but it made for a great dinner conversation nevertheless. That was then. And it was forgotten soon after. Till yesterday, when I had a chat with H on dates; blind, eyes wide open and the hurried kind.
It turned out both of us were as averse to the idea of a blind date as we were to speed dating. And firm believers in 'when it happens, it'll happen' and 'this kind of stuff is not for people like us'. I guess it had something to do with our old fashioned idea of romance. I dug deeper to see what makes people flock to it and make it such a rage.
Speed Dating was started by a Jewish organisation to get Jewish couples together, before it turned popular culture. Participants are given 3-7 minutes to chat individually with other participants, usually moving from table to table, and asked to write down their preferences when everyone's met everyone. Sort of like a round robin. If the preferences match, telephone numbers are given out and dates arranged. But is 3-7 minutes enough to decide if you want to date that individual or not?
UPenn says yes. They studied speed dating and found that decisions were made within the first 3 seconds, and issues such as religion, previous marriages, and smoking habits were found to play much less of a role than expected. A university in Edinburgh also found that dialogue concerning travel resulted in more matches than dialogue about films. In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell talks of two professors who run speed dating events, Sheena Iyengar and Raymond Fisman, who found that the preferences stated before the dating event did not match the subconscious preferences of the participants after the event was done. So they always picked people who did not match the profile they stated they desired before the event.
Most communities encourage dating, or as they call it, arranging a meeting, to bring eligible singles together. Arranged Marriages are probably the best case studies for blind dates, where others set two people up based on their perceptions of a good match. As urban living changed, and people moved from joint to nuclear to now single residency, the traditional dating opportunities minimised, thus generating the need for concepts of online dating and speed dating, which are more inclusive and offer a wider selection of candidates.
But whether it family arranged dates, regular dates, blind dates, group dates, holidates (people in long distance relationships who meet on vacations) or speed dates, we pass our verdict in the first three seconds. Everything after that is just validating what we already know and feel. But as in all games, there's no guaranteed win. You have to lose some to win some.
2 comments:
very entertaining to read! Ended with a thoughtful note :)
Very well written and thought-provoking too. Enjoyed reading it!
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