It Pays to Be Picky in Love

THURSDAY, Feb. 22 (HealthDay News) -- Attention, speed daters: You need to be really choosy if you want a healthy love life.

That's the bottom line of a study from Northwestern University, in which researchers set up speed-dating sessions for 156 college students, then evaluated how the degree of the daters' selectivity affected the number of their matches.

Daters who picked most of the potential partners offered were often rejected, the researchers found.

"If you are unselective in your approach, people are going to be able to tell and are not going to like it," said Eli J. Finkel, a co-author of the study, due to be published in the April issue ofPsychological Science

In other words, he said: "You look desperate."

For years, relationship experts have thought that one of the best ways to get someone to like you -- for platonic friendships, at least -- is to communicate your liking for them, said Finkel, assistant professor of psychology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.

But this evidently does not hold true for romantic relationships, the new study suggests.

"When you tend to like everyone in a romantic context, it doesn't have this 'What a friendly guy,' 'What a nice girl' tone," Finkel said. "It has a more desperate component to it."

And, he warned, "Even the slightest tinge of despair is not going to be appealing."

In the study, the students talked for four minutes each with 9 to 13 opposite-sex persons, all potential "matches." After each meeting, they answered questions about whether they liked the prospective partner and whether they were sexually attracted. When they left, they recorded on a study Web site whether or not they would be interested in meeting the other people.

Mutual "yes" answers were given contact information for each other.

Selectivity turned out to be crucial in getting good matches, said Paul Eastwick, a Northwestern University graduate student who served as the study's lead author.