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By Stephen Beech
Stories are the best way to attract more interest on dating apps, suggests a new study.
Telling stories about your life creates empathy and connections with potential dates rather than "shopping lists" of qualities, according to the findings.
To attract more interest from potential partners, scientists say, don’t just list your best qualities in your profile – instead, tell a story about yourself.
Study author Dr. Gurit Birnbaum said: “We are fascinated by stories, yet we write our dating profiles like shopping lists.
“It’s not height or ambition that makes someone fall for you, it’s your entire story.
"But people can’t feel that from bullet points.”
Psychology professor Dr. Birnbaum and her colleagues at Reichman University in Israel took their inspiration from marketing research that has long found that storytelling is a useful advertising technique.
They explained that ads that use narrative techniques to engage shoppers and create an emotional connection to products will sell more products.
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The team wanted to see whether the same concept would apply to dating profiles.
The researchers conducted three experiments involving 594 total participants.
In each experiment, they showed single, young-adult participants dating profiles that presented either narrative or non-narrative descriptions of a potential date.
After viewing the profile, participants reported their empathy for and romantic interest in the person.
In each experiment, the exact same information was presented in either narrative or non-narrative form.
For example, in the first experiment participants read text profiles.
The non-narrative profile included bare facts such as the person plays the guitar, studies economics and likes to travel.
The narrative version wove those facts into a story, describing how the person’s grandfather had given them a guitar as a child and music became a through-line in their life.
Karsten Winegeart
In the second experiment, participants viewed photo profiles.
In the non-narrative profiles, the photos were taken in neutral settings, such as a park or a street.
In the narrative condition, the photos showed the person going about their daily life, doing things such as exercising, studying and spending time with friends.
In the third experiment, participants both read text and saw photos of potential dates.
The findings showed that, in all three experiments, participants had more empathy for the potential dates when they read or viewed the narrative profiles.
That increased empathy, in turn, predicted greater romantic interest.
Dr. Birnbaum says the findings, published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media, are good news for daters who feel burned out by the "transactional" nature of online dating.
She added: “By humanising profiles and encouraging genuine emotional engagement, storytelling actively counters the objectifying nature of online dating platforms.
“It can motivate date seekers to view potential dates as fellow human beings rather than mere commodities and foster a sense of connection in an otherwise detached medium of online dating.”
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