How to Date Efficiently Part 3
…or more reasons why you should ask people out.
Here’s a writeup of a psych study that attempts to discern differences in how men and women respond to sexual offers. In the study, confederates went up to random students on campus who they found attractive and asked them one of three questions: 1) would you go out with me tonight; 2) would you come over to my apartment tonight; or 3) would you go to bed with me tonight.
You can read the paper if you’re interested in the results, but here are what I think are the two most interesting results to the study:
- “Ratings of the confederates’ attractiveness were found to have no effect on the results”
- 50% of people said yes to the request to go on a date.
My takeaway: asking random people out on dates worked for these people 50% of the time, and it didn’t even matter how attractive the asker was!
Granted, the study took place on a college campus in the 1980s, but mathematically, taking initiative in dating is the optimal strategy, and this study provides empirical evidence that the odds of getting someone to say yes to a date are actually pretty good. So if you were previously convinced that you should be asking people out but perhaps were too scared to pull the trigger (and my advice on dealing with rejection didn’t help), be emboldened by the knowledge that random strangers had a 50% hit rate for asking people out.
I have a hard time believing the 50% success rate is independent of how attractive the asker is. They don’t mention this at all in the paper.
I know some guys who can basically ask random girls to hook up and get laid that night, and other guys who would get slapped for doing the same thing.
I think it’s perhaps important to note that guys were only successful in asking girls out on dates, and not asking them to have sex with them that night.