Speed dating

Speed dating is a formalized matchmaking process of dating system whose purpose is to encourage people to meet a large number of new people. Its origins are credited to Rabbi Yaacov Deyo of Aish HaTorah, originally as a way to help Jewish singles meet and marry.^[1][2][3] SpeedDating, as a single word, is a registered trademark of Aish HaTorah. Speed dating, as two separate words, is often used as a generic term for similar events.

The first speed-dating event took place at Peet’s Café in Beverly Hills in late 1998.^[1]

Organization

Wikimedia Deutschland Speed Dating at Wikimania 2012

Usually advance registration is required for speed dating events. Men and women are rotated to meet each other over a series of short "dates" usually lasting from three to eight minutes depending on the organization running the event. At the end of each interval, the organizer rings a bell, clinks a glass, or blows a whistle to signal the participants to move on to the next date. At the end of the event participants submit to the organizers a list of who they would like to provide their contact information to. If there is a match, contact information is forwarded to both parties. Contact information cannot be traded during the initial meeting, in order to reduce pressure to accept or reject a suitor to his or her face.

There are many speed dating events now in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. Requirements for each event vary with the organizer. Specific age range based on gender is a common restriction for events. Many speed dating events are targeted at particular communities: for example, LGBT people, polyamorists,^[4] Christians.^[5] Graduate student speed dating events are common.^[6]

Practice

Some feel that speed dating has some obvious advantages over most other venues for meeting people, such as bars, discotheques, etc. in that everybody is purportedly there to meet someone, they are grouped into compatible age ranges, it is time-efficient, and the structured interaction eliminates the need to introduce oneself. Unlike many bars, a speed dating event will, by necessity, be quiet enough for people to talk comfortably. Speed dating is for singles.

Participants can come alone without feeling out of place; alternatively it is something that women who like to go out in groups can do together.^[7]

Because the matching itself happens after the event, people do not feel pressured to select or reject each other in person. On the other hand, feedback and gratification are delayed as participants must wait a day or two for their results to come in.

The time limit ensures that a participant will not be stuck with a boorish match for very long, and prevents participants from monopolizing one another's time. On the other hand, a couple that decides they are incompatible early on will have to sit together for the duration of the round.

Most speed dating events match people at random, and participants will meet different "types" that they might not normally talk to in a club. On the other hand, the random matching precludes the various cues, such as eye contact, that people use in bars to preselect each other before chatting them up.

According to the New York Times, participants in speed dating experience an average of 2 in 10 or 3 in 10 matches. Online dating participants, in contrast, only find a compatible match with 1 in 100 or fewer of the profiles they study.^[8] As reported by the BBC in the Science of Love, it only takes between 90 seconds to 4 minutes of face-to-face interaction determine attraction, which gives speed dating an advantage over online dating.^[9][10]

Speed dating companies

While over 100 companies in the US offered speed dating through online registration during the growing of the Internet, between 2000 and 2005 three large speed dating companies emerged with a national footprint in the US, with events in over 50 US cities: Hurrydate, 8MinuteDating and Pre-Dating. Fastlife emerged as the largest speed dating company in Australia. Hurrydate was acquired by Spark Networks (Jdate/ChristianMingle). Pre-Dating was acquired by Cupid.com, but eventually became independent again. 8minuteDating remains independently operated. Fastlife was acquired in 2013 by Plenty Of Fish. However, in 2015, Fastlife was shut down.^[11][12][13]

Online speed dating

Several online dating services offer online speed dating where users meet online for video, audio or text chats. The advantage of online speed dating is that users can go on dates from home as it can be done from any internet enabled computer. The disadvantage is people do not actually meet one another. One of the advantages that speed dating has over online speed dating and online dating in general is that when being face to face with someone, you get a better sense of who they are due to their body language, gestures, tonality and more. ^[14]

Scientific research

There have been several studies of the round-robin dating systems themselves, as well as studies of interpersonal attraction that are relevant to these events. Other studies found speed-dating data useful as a way to observe individual choices among random participants.

First impressions

A 2005 study at the University of Pennsylvania of multiple HurryDate speed dating events found that most people made their choices within the first three seconds of meeting. Furthermore, issues such as religion, previous marriages, and smoking habits were found to play much less of a role than expected. ^{[15] [16]}

A 2006 study in Edinburgh, Scotland showed that 45% of the women participants in a speed-dating event and 22% of the men had come to a decision within the first 30 seconds. It also found that dialogue concerning travel resulted in more matches than dialogue about films.^[17]

In a 2012 study, researchers found that activation of specific brain regions while viewing images of opposite-sex speed dating participants was predictive of whether or not a participant would later pursue or reject the viewed participants at an actual speed dating event. Men and women made decisions in a similar manner which incorporated the physical attractiveness and likability of the viewed participants in their evaluation.^[18]

Subconscious preferences

Malcolm Gladwell's book on split-second decision making, Blink, introduces two professors at Columbia University who run speed-dating events. Drs. Sheena Iyengar and Raymond Fisman found, from having the participants fill out questionnaires, that what people said they wanted in an ideal mate did not match their subconscious preferences.^{[19] [20]}

Olfaction and the MHC

A 1995 study at the University of Bern showed that women appear to be attracted to the smell of men who have different MHC profiles from their own, and that oral contraceptives reversed this effect.^[21]

The MHC is a region of the human genome involved with immune function. Because parents with more diverse MHC profiles would be expected to produce offspring with stronger immune systems, dissimilar MHC may play a role in sexual selection.

A speed "date" lasting several minutes should be long enough for the MHC hypothesis to come into play, provided the participants are seated close enough together.

Olfaction and pheromones

The TV news magazine 20/20 once sent both a male and a female set of twins to a speed dating event. One of each set was wearing pheromones, and the ones wearing pheromones received more matches.^[22]

Age and height preference

A 2006 study by Michèle Belot and Marco Francesconi into the relative effects of preference versus opportunity in mate selection showed, while concluding that opportunity was more important than preference, that a woman's age is the single most important factor determining demand by men.^[23] Although less important than it is to men, age is still a highly significant factor determining demand by women.

The same study found that a man's height had a significant impact upon his desirability, with a reduction in height causing a decrease in desirability at the rate of 5% per inch.

Selectivity

Studies of speed dating events generally show more selectivity among women than among men. For instance, the Penn study reported that the average man was chosen by 34% of the women and the average woman was chosen by 49% of the men.^[15] New studies suggest that the selectivity is based on which gender is seated and which is rotating. This new study showed that when men were seated and the women rotated, the men were more selective.^[24]

Spin-offs

The popularity or charm of speed dating has led to at least one offspring: Speed Networking. A structured way of running business networking events with the goal of making meeting potential business contacts easier and more productive. Some speed dating companies have now started offering free speed dating where you do not pay unless you meet somebody you like.

Business speed dating has also been used in China as a way for business people to meet each other and to decide if they have similar business objectives and synergies. Speed dating offers participating investors and companies an opportunity to have focused private meetings with targeted groups in a compact time frame.

In popular culture

• Frasier. "Sliding Frasiers" (2000): Frasier attends a speed date, describing it as "all the stress and humiliation of a blind date, times twelve."
• Peep Show. "Jeremy's Broke" (2008): Mark goes speed dating but has little luck: "Ohhh, Saz, she implied she might be ticking. Maybe she did tick! Maybe the data wasn't collated correctly! Maybe she's my hanging chad!"
• Sex and the City. "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (2000): Miranda, the lawyer, pretends to be a stewardess at the event after telling her first few "dates" that she is a successful lawyer scares them off^[25]
• Providence. "The Mating Dance" (2001): Syd goes to a "speed dating" event.^[26]
• Kath & Kim. "Gay" (2002): Kim, estranged from her husband of 2 months, goes with her friend Sharon to a speed dating event.^[27]
• Reba. "Switch" (2002) : Reba's daughter, Cheyenne, convinces her mother to try speed-dating.^[28]
• Monk. "Mr. Monk Goes to the Theater" (2003): Adrian Monk tries to talk to a suspect at a speed dating event.^[29]
• Dead Like Me. "Hurry" (2004): Daisy goes speed dating to take the soul of one of the men participating.^[30]
• Gilmore Girls. "But Not as Cute as Pushkin" (2004): Featured Rory's friend Paris attempting speed dating after the death of her professor boyfriend.^[31]
• Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. "Queer Eye For The Shy Guy" (2004): a straight man is made over to attend a speed dating party.^[32]
• 60 Minutes II. "60 Minutes II" (2004): Featured speed dating in the segment called "Love in the 21st Century"^[33]
• The Vicar of Dibley. "Happy New Year" (2005): Geraldine Granger receives a ticket to a speed dating event for her 40th birthday.^[34]
• Beauty and the Geek. "Episode 204" (2006): Featured speed dating as one of the challenges faced by the "geeks".^[35]
• The Bill. "Episode 405" (2006): Yvonne Hemmingway persuades Honey Harman to go with her to a speed-dating event.^[36]
• The L Word. "Lifeline" (2006): Alice and Kit go to a speed dating event.^[37]
• Various dating game shows such as The 5th Wheel
• Psych. "He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, He Loves Me, Oops He's Dead" (2007): Shawn and Gus connect supposed "alien abductions" to a speed-dating event at a local bar, and attend undercover to solve the kidnappings.
• The Friday Night Project. "Series 5, Episode 8 - Guest Host: Rupert Everett" (2007): Justin Lee Collins and Alan Carr take Rupert Everett to a When The Music Stops speed dating event in a London bar.^[38]
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. "Starved" (2005): When a speed dating service is linked to three rapes, Detective Benson goes undercover to catch the culprit.
• Valentine (2000)
• Je préfère qu'on reste amis... (2005)
• Hitch (2005)
• The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005)
• Shoppen - a German movie on speed dating (2007)
• Speed-Dating (2010)
• In the UK, the Local Government Association with the Solent Peoples Theatre developed "political speed dating" in 2004. Not a niche dating event; these are run by local councils to introduce young constituents to their representatives.^[39]
• BBC,^[40] The Science of Attraction within Speed Dating
• House. "Private Lives" (2010): House, Wilson and Chase participate in a speed dating event.

See also

• Meeting system
• Speed Networking

References