Dan Ariely brings behavioral economics to the awkward, boring first date conversation: “Basically, in an attempt to coordinate on the right dating strategy, we stick to universally shared interests like food or the weather.” Ariely gave online daters a list of “interesting and personally revealing” questions they were allowed to ask. “What we learned from this little experiment is that when people are free to choose what type of discussions they want to have, they often gravitate toward an equilibrium that is easy to maintain but one that no one really enjoys or benefits from,” writes Ariely. “The good news is that if we restrict the equilibria we can get people to gravitate toward behaviors that are better for everyone (more generally this suggests that some restricted marketplaces can yield more desirable outcomes).” [%comments]
Spicing Up the Awkward First Date Conversation
and 
. You can also watch it on 
Isn’t this sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy? Starting by characterizing a first date as “awkward and boring” means, ab initio, ruling out anything else.
From a female viewpoint (sadly underrepresented in these econ discussions), men seem to want to date somewhat crazy women, because they’re entertaining, then they don’t want to be in a relationship with them, because they’re crazy.
People seek lots of different, often conflicting things from a first date: running away from being alone with themselves; feeling desirable enough to date/be dateworthy; stories to tell friends; curiosity; immediate sex; next date; relationship etc. So, forcing all of these things into one mold of a first date is not analytically helpful. It would be better to first sort out the main purpose(s) of the date, and then analyze different strategies.
I think a first date is successful if you’ve learned something nice or interesting about another person. That’s a pretty low threshold, which is just fine for a first date. If you can’t be bothered with a second date, why overdo it on a first date?
Another over-analyzed topic. Just be yourself… don’t pull any punches… be liked or not liked for being yourself… you know where you stand… and never havveto worry about maintaining the BS persona that so many people start the process out with.
See:
http://www.redditgadgetguide.com/r/AskReddit/comments/djj0k/whats_the_worst_first_date_conversation_youve_had/
Hilarious.
Totally used this advice on okcupid a couple weeks ago (I originally read this on dan ariely’s blog) and am totally dating some cool hottie girl who I met from okcupid.
I just started asking questions like
- tell me what you are proud of
- tell me some super interesting/weird stuff
- what was a major set back
- what are you terrible at
(I offered some deep info of me as well)
In an online dating format people have time to contemplate these tough questions as on the spot its a little tough to think about these things.
I think there are some really good benefits of asking these questions
- it gave us much more interesting stuff to discuss
- I felt like she knew the real ‘me’ not the one I try to sell. There is very little to lose by being super honest to someone online about some deep life goals or accomplishments or limitations. The hard part is moving the discussion to these topics and these questions facilitated moving past superficial topics. The reason the original post worked is because people were constrained to controversial topics. One can’t just blurt these things out in general or they would be seen as crazy. What I tried to do was constantly nudge the conversation beyond stuff Id normally talk about with someone I met .
- Lastly I felt that this honestly lead to additional honesty thus quickly deepening the connection.
So yeah I cant believe Im dating someone I met online but whatever we are totally both into each other and its pretty awesome.
Yikes, this sounds complicated. Best argument so far against blind / online dates. Back when I was single I avoided this torture by meeting people at my regular cafe hangout, classes, etc so I already knew the guy was wonderful and our date conversations were not nearly as stilted.