How much thought do you put into your online dating profile?   What do you think you’d have to write about to get the best results?  

Studies show that men tend to look for someone they find physically attractive, sporty and understanding while women want someone understanding, funny and in touch with their emotions.

The big question, is do you write about you or write about the person you are looking for?    Professor Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire carried out a study at the Edinburgh International Science Festival to help answer this question.  He asked  40 men and 40 women to write 25-word personal ads – then got another set of volunteers to circle the ones that appealed.

The results showed a “golden formula” that you should stick to when writing a profile.   You should spend 70 per cent of the profile describing you and 30 per cent describing what you are looking for. If you spend more than 70% of the profile talking about yourself then you might appear to be egotistical. Likewise, you may give you the impression you are trying to hid something  if you don’t write enough about yourself.     

In the studies, the ads that were closest to the 70:30 rule were the ones that had clearly the largest number of replies.

Interestingly, Wiseman used a separate panel of volunteers to predict which ads they thought would get the most responses. There was a huge and evident gender difference. The male volunteers were extremely good at predicting which ads would have the most success while the women completely failed.

Wiseman concluded that women should perhaps get a man to look over their dating profile to get the best results.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 23rd, 2009 at 2:11 pm and is filed under Dating Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.