“Whatever happens, happens,” students said with a shrug and slight smile before they went inside Dittmar Memorial Gallery in Norris University Center on Monday to meet potential romantic interests.
Meanwhile, 12 women stood in line outside of the gallery, laughing and tapping their heels while they waited. A few male students came back from supplying saliva downstairs. They sat quietly with clasped hands until given further instructions.
This was all part of the preliminary routine for speed dating, a romantic attraction study hosted by psychology professor Eli Finkel and co-sponsored by NU’s Residential College Board.
This is the second time NU students had the opportunity to participate in speed dating from Finkel. Finkel and his research assistants received a response from about 400 students for the study, and narrowed the pool down to 96 men and 96 women.
“I think that – and this isn’t unique to Northwestern – there is a sense of no dating scene here so it doesn’t surprise me that people want to try this,” said Paul Eastwick, a fifth-year graduate student who is helping Finkel with the study.
The speed daters are separated into four groups, two made up of freshmen and sophomores and the other two made up of juniors and seniors. There are three sessions each day from Monday through Wednesday.
In each session, about 24 students rotate and talk to members of the opposite sex for four minutes each, with about two minutes to jot down quick notes in between. The whole session takes about two hours.
Finkel and his research assistants are trying to replicate the successful study they conducted in spring 2005. This time, they made a few changes.
“This is the first study we know of to look at biological measures,” Finkel said, referring to the saliva samples participants had to donate during the speed dating pre-session events. “We’ll be able to draw fascinating conclusions about the biochemistry of desire. For example: Do certain hormone levels make people flirt more assertively?”
This is also the first study Finkel knows of that uses video cameras to record the subjects during speed dating, tracking their interactions and facial expressions. He said he thought people would get used to them within the first 30 seconds of the date.
“I thought the cameras would be a big distraction, but I forgot about them pretty quickly,” said Weinberg freshman Tracy Fuad.
Fuad said she heard about the event through an e-mail sent over her residential college’s listserv and thought it would be interesting and fun to meet new people. This sentiment was echoed by several other NU students who decided to devote two hours of their time to meet a potential romantic interest.
Anil Wadhwani said he didn’t know what to expect but ultimately was glad he participated.
“I just thought it was new and different and fun, something worth trying,” the Weinberg freshman said. “I don’t know if anything is going to come out of it, but I’m always up for trying something new.”
Eastwick and Finkel said when the study was done in 2005, they found that participants really enjoyed speed dating and learned a lot about the initial moments of meeting someone, even if they did not come away with a future soulmate.
“Our initial intuition had been that people can’t learn anything substantive – only physical attraction – but the data from two years ago was remarkably sophisticated,” Finkel said. “In the scientific community, people critiqued our work, saying speed daters go just for a hook-up or short-term relationship, but people are much more likely to say that they are looking for a long-term relationship.”
Finkel and his team usually follow up with their speed dating subjects for about three months with surveys and questionnaires, he said. For this study, students can earn up to $46 by filling out surveys through February – if they make a love connection. The average person got two-and-a-half mutual matches during the previous speed dating study follow-up, Finkel said.
For now, students said they would wait and see if anything comes out of the study.
“It was more fun than I thought it would be,” Fuad said. “I think you can get to know a lot about someone on the first impression.”
Reach Corinne Lestch at [email protected].
