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Why Don't Dating Preferences Predict Who We Fall for?

Paul Eastwick says the traits people name as what they want in a partner do a poor job of predicting whom they like once they meet face to face.

Introduce someone who has the three qualities a person listed, and that someone is liked. Introduce someone else with three different qualities, attractive, sociable, and a supportive kind person, and they are liked just as much, even though those traits were not on the list. People also meet someone who seems to check every box and do not feel it, or meet someone they would not have drawn up in advance and feel drawn anyway. That pattern shows up across the data.

The gap is hard to see from the inside. Asked for a type, a person names a few salient traits and misses the rest. The judgment can involve hundreds of preferences. Moving from three deal-breakers out to 35 traits explains a little of why one person appeals and another does not, and still misses most of the reason. Funny, adventurous, attractive, outgoing, and kind can each carry a different weight, and that weighting can be hidden from the person who holds it. People are choosing from only a few samples, so introspection about those weights stays limited.

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How Love Really Works ·

Hidden Brain

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  9. What Is Social Projection?Edward Lemay, a psychologist at the University of Maryland, says social projection is a bias where people assume others are more like them than they really are.
  10. What Is an Upward Comparison in a Relationship?Edward Lemay says an upward comparison is what happens when people measure their own relationship against one that looks better.
  11. Why Do People Project Current Feelings Onto a Relationship's Future?Edward Lemay says people project how they feel about a partner today onto the future of the relationship.
  12. Why Do World Beliefs Change How a Partner Looks?Edward Lemay says people use their beliefs about the world as a lens on a partner.

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