Speed-dating has become enormously popular around the world over the last few years, and it’s not hard to understand why. It’s the distillation of dating to a simple snap judgment. Everyone who sits down at one of those tables are trying to answer a very simple question: Do I want to see this person again? And to answer that, we don’t need an entire evening. We really need only a few minutes.

Velma, for instance, said that she picked none of the men and that she made up her mind about each of them right away. “They lost me at hello,” she said, rolling her eyes. Ron, who worked as a financial analyst at an investment bank, picked two of the women, one of whom he settled on after about a minute and a half of conversation and one of whom, Lillian at table two, he decided on the instant he sat down across from her. “Her tongue was pierced,” he said, admiringly. “You come to a place like this and you expect a bunch of lawyers. But she was a whole different story.” Lillian liked Ron, too. “You know why?” she asked. “He’s from Louisiana. I loved the accent. And I dropped my pen, just to see what he would do, and he picked it up right away.”

As it turned out, lots of the women there liked Ron the instant they met him, and lots of the men liked Lillian the instant they met her. Both of them had a kind of contagious, winning spark. “You know, girls are really smart,” Jon, a medical student in a blue suit, said at the end of the evening. “They know in the first minute, Do I like this guy, can I take him home to my parents, or is he just a wham-bam kind of jerk?” Jon is quite right, except it isn’t just girls who are smart. When it comes to quick assessment of potential dates, pretty much everyone is smart.

The funny thing though, is that when we are asked what we look for in a potential partner our actions does not match our initial list.

Two professors (Fisman and Iyengar) made a speed-dating experiment at the back of the West End Bar on Broadway, across the street from the Columbia campus. They are identical to standard New York speed-dating evenings, with one exception. Their participants don’t just date and then check the yes or no box. On four occasions—before the speed-dating starts, after the evening ends, a month later, and then six months after the speed-dating evening—they have to fill out a short questionnaire that asks them to rate what they are looking for in a potential partner on a scale of 1 to 10. The categories are attractiveness, shared interests, funny/ sense of humor, sincerity, intelligence, and ambition. In addition, at the end of every “date,” they rate the person they’ve just met, based on the same categories. By the end of one of their evenings, then, the professors have an incredibly detailed picture of exactly what everyone says they were feeling during the dating process. And it’s when you look at that picture that the strangeness starts.

As one professor explains:

At the Columbia session, I paid particular attention to a young woman with pale skin and blond, curly hair and a tall, energetic man with green eyes and long brown hair. I don’t know their names, but let’s call them Mary and John. I watched them for the duration of their date, and it was immediately clear that Mary really liked John and John really liked Mary. John sat down at Mary’s table. Their eyes locked. She looked down shyly. She seemed a little nervous. She leaned forward in her chair. It seemed, from the outside, like a perfectly straightforward case of instant attraction. But let’s dig below the surface and ask a few simple questions. First of all, did Mary’s assessment of John’s personality match the personality that she said she wanted in a man before the evening started? In other words, how good is Mary at predicting what she likes in a man?

Fisman and Iyengar can answer that question really easily, and what they find when they compare what speed-daters say they want with what they are actually attracted to in the moment is that those two things don’t match. For example, if Mary said at the start of the evening that she wanted someone intelligent and sincere, that in no way means she’ll be attracted only to intelligent and sincere men. It’s just as likely that John, whom she likes more than anyone else, could turn out to be attractive and funny but not particularly sincere or smart atall. Second, if all the men Mary ends up liking during the speed-dating are more attractive and funny than they are smart and sincere, on the next day, when she’s asked to describe her perfect man, Mary will say that she likes attractive and funny men. But that’s just the next day. If you ask her again a month later, she’ll be back to saying that she wants intelligent and sincere.

You can be forgiven if you found the previous paragraph confusing. It is confusing: Mary says that she wants a certain kind of person. But then she is given a roomful of choices and she meets someone whom she really likes, and in that instant she completely changes her mind about what kind of person she wants. But then a month passes, and she goes back to what she originally said she wanted. So what does Mary really want in a man?

“I don’t know,” Iyengar said when I asked her that question. “Is the real me the one that I described beforehand?”

She paused, and Fisman spoke up: “No, the real me is the me revealed by my actions. That’s what an economist would say.”

Iyengar looked puzzled. “I don’t know that’s what a psychologist would say.”

They couldn’t agree. But then, that’s because there isn’t a right answer. Mary has an idea about what she wants in a man, and that idea isn’t wrong. It’s just incomplete. The description that she starts with is her conscious ideal: what she believes she wants when she sits down and thinks about it. But what she cannot be as certain about are the criteria she uses to form her preferences in that first instant of meeting someone face-to- face. That information is behind the locked door in our unconscious mind.

The above discussion is exactly why I recommend not creating lists of your ideal partner and not creating lists of who you are, when writing an online dating profile. Instead write about what you actually do, what you like to do in your spare time, what you like about your job. And be specific. Instead of writing: “I like reading good books” write about the last book you read – good or bad. Don’t describe who you are – show it!

But what are your experiences on this matter? Are you constantly attracted to other types of persons than you say you are?

“It’s JerryTime!” is a comical look at a guy named, Jerry, and his oh-so-typical life. Jerry is a generic, every day kind of guy who you root for, but yet you still cringe when he walks in the room.

Check out his ever-painful speed dating experience with special guest Kristen Schaal, who plays “Mel” on HBO’s hit series Flight of the Conchords.

I have friends who love speed dating (probably for the cocktails); they can’t get enough of it. Then I have other friends who want nothing to do with it.

Since the concept seems to be divided I dug into the issue a bit to see about the pros and cons of speed dating. What do you think?

Pros of Speed Dating

• It’s an efficient use of your time. You meet several� new people in just one night instead of over the course of weeks or months.
• Speed dating events are usually held in bars. A few drinks help take the edge off.
• You can go with your friends, which makes for a fun night out regardless of the people you meet.
• No one has to know you went unless you tell them.

Cons of Speed Dating

• It feels forced.
• Everyone around you can hear your conversations.
• Other than age and gender, the people on the other side of the table haven’t been matched to you at all.
• If you go with friends, you and your friend might end up liking the same person.

Still on the fence about whether or not to try speed dating? Check out our Online Dating Pros and Cons page that compares match making services to online dating.

You never know, you might find that speed dating really is right for you.

It’s not just speed dating anymore. And it’s certainly not the singles bar either. It’s organized dating by way of big number cocktailing, choreographed lunches, and group dinners. So many options for the singleton these days. All it takes is a little bit of courage and some time spent coming up with clever first-date questions to make yourself stand out from the others.

Even if you don’t make a love connection, group dating or organized dating will at least give you a few giggles, a couple of good dating tales, and a a nice night out with your girlfriends. Here are a few of the biggies worth trying:

8minute Dating
pre-dating.com
It’s Just Lunch
Eight at Eight Dinner Club