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Absolutely, nothing in this experiment is news to anyone that knows about dating dynamics. The experiment fails to account for the reason why people are on the site in the first place, it assumes the reasons are gender-agnostic, which is not the case. Men join okcupid to get laid, sure there are some outliers, (usually the most vocal,) and some of them are genuine, but many claim that wasn't that motivation for reasons easily explained by cognitive dissonance. Women join okcupid to get attention. Sure, a few are actually looking to find dates, but mostly, as my girlfriend says "okcupid is facebook for attention whores". For her, and any girl that grew up cute, she is used to getting a lot of attention, and this is just the online equivalent of wearing a miniskirt to a club. She loves it when guys spend ages writing creative messages, their fawning just plays right into her need for attention. She also loves the control, having the ability to just ignore someone who has spent so long trying to get her attention. okcupid addresses many human needs, but dating is very likely far down the list, past more involuntary needs. just because the world has gone digital, doesn't mean human psychology changes. Women have been adorning themselves for attention since we first started painting in caves, and men, well, men are just men, it's why there are nearly 7 billion of us on the planet. there'd be 8B if it wasn't for the xbox. The psychology of relationships really isn't that hard, it just seems like it when you're in one. |