Trying to work out who is single in a bar, approach them and asking them out before you know anything about them is not a very efficient way of finding a girlfriend or boyfriend.

 

There is a solution - speed dating, where a group of singles meet at an event in a bar or cafe. The men move from table to table for a fleeting¹ date with each woman, lasting² typically between three to four minutes.

 

Afterwards the participants tell the organisers, often online, which people they want to see again.

 

A recent study into speed dating habits concluded that if men and women go to an evening and have 22 separate dates, men are keen to see about five women again, while women would only choose to see two again, on average.

 

The research was done by economists³ Michele Belot from the University of Edinburgh and her colleague Marco Francesconi from the University of Essex, who collected data from 84 speed dating events involving 3,600 people in the UK.

 

This controlled environment is something that excites some economists as they are perfect for observing market forces at work- in this case the dating market.

 

"This is something that evolutionary⁴ psychologists and biologists do recognise," says Belot. "We know that across a whole range of behaviours women tend to take fewer risks.

 

"They relate this to the fact that making mistakes are much more costly⁵ for women than for men because of childbearing. So obviously if you make a mistake in dating the wrong man and having a relationship with the wrong man, you might have nine months carrying a child, then caring for a child. While for men, the costs are lower."

 

Other academic worksuggests that because men historically have not been so involved in parenting, they devote more time to "short-term mating", so they're not looking further than a date.

 

A study in the US, on the other hand, suggests the difference might simply be down to the seating arrangements, because the convention is for women to sit still at the events, while men move round and approach each woman.

 

The researchers found that when the roles were reversed at speed dating events, and women moved round to approach the men, they found that women made more offers than they did at events when they sat still. One possible theory is that the person who moves has more confidence.

 

Belot and Francesconi's study also took all the data provided by each person from their profile, to work out what attributes people were looking for in a potential mate.

 

"For both men and women, education and professional status matters. We found that women prefer taller men and men prefer slimmer women," says Belot.

 

Perhaps this is not a big surprise. But it turns out - people are often ready to compromise on these preferences.

 

So, if a woman likes academic men, but she goes speed dating one night and no one is particularly academic, she will lower her expectations on this occasion, and instead pick men who next best fit her criteria⁶.

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