Just a quick overview of some social psychology

1. Sex and Dating Products
A short review on the fundamentals of
interpersonal attraction*
And how to abuse them via product features
-Patrick McGrath, July 2012

2. Psychology Disclaimer:
• The field of social psychology is largely based on empirical evidence
supported by correlation. Correlation – the observation of a statistical
relationship between two variables. IE, sometimes when X happens, Y also
happens.
• Correlation is not to be confused with causation. The principles
presented within do not always occur given the predicated actions. They
just occur enough of the time to have a significant confidence that there is
a likelihood they exist together.
• In stats, a .5:1 relationship is considered a ‘mid to strong’ relationship. As
in, variable a occurring every other time that variable b occurs.

4. Social Exchange Theory
• Social change and stability as a process of negotiated
exchanges between parties.
• We run an internal cost-benefits analysis when examining the
subjective value of a potential relationship – romantic or
otherwise.
• Think of your current or previous job. Your employment
fulfillment is generally defined by its relationship to your
available alternatives. By the same token, performance
generally dwindles when you are halfway out the door.
• More alternatives generally lowers the subject fulfillment of
your current situation. ‘Grass is greener’ mentality.

5. Social Exchange Theory (cont’d)
• Satisfaction = Outcome – Comparison Level
• Comparison Level = Outcome relative to
expected outcome based on past experiences.
• The issue with online dating – we allow users
too many alternatives! Thus causing them to
devalue what they have in front of them.

6. Product Ideas:
• Add diminishing returns to the Match % of a
photo reel relative to amount of messages
sent that day.
• First message (for men) free, the rest
compound in cost.
• Educate user base to the drawbacks of having
too many alternatives
• ?

7. Labeling and Framing
• The tendency for people to act / behave in a way that allows them to
maintain or inflate ego by identifying themselves as above average.
• In an effective demonstration of this strategy, researchers Alice Tybout
and Richard Yelch (1980) showed how the labeling technique could be
used to increase the likelihood that individuals would vote on Election Day.
They interviewed a large number of prospective voters, and randomly told
half of them that, based on their responses, they could be characterized as
"above-average citizens likely to vote and participate in political events."
The other half of the interviewees were informed that they could be
characterized as about average in terms of these interests, beliefs, and
behaviors. Those respondents given the label as being a good citizen and
as having a high likelihood of voting not only came to see themselves as
better citizens than those labeled as average, but they also were more
likely to vote in an election held one week later

8. E-mails don’t lie, do they?*
*Not for me, they don’t

9. Product Ideas:
• Manipulate user base by making them believe they will
be ‘above average’ for completing an action.
• Potential flow : New user – congratulations, based on
your profile information, you seem to have a much
higher chance at not dying alone if you commit
yourself to a subscription!
• This is obviously too forward, and likely has to be
either
– Broken out into segments via CRM
– Timed events based on average user engagement numbers

10. Implicit Egotism
• People are disproportionately likely to marry
others whose last names resemble their own*
• Demonstrated via:
– Shared surnames
– Similar birthday numbers / months
– Jersey number paired subliminally to own name
*‘How do I love thee? Let me count the J’s: Article

11. Product Ideas:
• New dating / social product – populate fake
user base dynamically with profiles that
represent iterations on the users own name /
birthday. Done via illiteration or
prefix/suffixing.
• IE: Patrick McGrath:
– Patty Mayonaise
– Patricia McKensie
– Erica McGraw (Born in October)

12. Mere Exposure Effect
• People tend to develop a preference for things
merely because they are familiar with them.
• Branding – the reason Coke marketing execs
are allowed to spend hundreds of millions of $
on brand oriented advertising with no reliable
tracking mechanism

13. Mere Exposure Effect (Attraction)
• People self-report the *assumption* of higher
levels of liking the more familiar they are with
someone.
• Reality? Studies show that, particularly within
romantic relationships, liking goes down after
people find a dissimilar interest before
meeting face to face.

14. Mere Exposure Effect (Sex)
• College dorm study / office workplace studies
– In co-ed workplaces and dorms, people are
much more likely to engage in sexual activity
with each other directly correlated to how
close they live to / work to one another.
‘Familiarity does indeed promote attraction via live interaction’ Article

15. Product Ideas:
• Many are already seen, in the form of purely
availability:
– Online now! Buttons
– Lying about distance of partner

16. Matching in Physical Attractiveness
• People tend to pair together with people they
are similarly as physically attractive as.
• The closeness in SD of objective physical
attractive eventually predicts
success/longevity of relationship

17. Product Idea:
• As a user engages with someone of equal
physical attraction (considering the
marketplace, and relative CTR of profile
image), hit them with more subscription /
micro transaction CTAs before they engage
($$) OR label / frame them with a CRM e-mail:
You two look like a great match!
• The latter – greater product satisfaction, word
of mouth. The former -

18. Women Dig Taken Men
• Women screened on idea of ‘ideal’ mate
partner.
• 59% of Women tested (P<.05) were interested
in pursuing a romantic relationship with the
man.
• When another group of Women was tested
with the assumption that the man was taken,
90% of the Women were interested in
pursuing a relationship
‘Who is chasing whom? The impact of gender relationship status on mate
poaching” Article

19. Product Idea:
• Above a certain match % (testing required) on
a dating site, label the man as ‘responds
selectively’ to messages, or suggest that he is
in a relationship (CRM, site popup?)

20. The Fun Stuff!

21. Women ovulating = ONS*
• Countless research shows that women choose
their men with a one night stand in mind
during the 4-6 days of ovulation each month.
– Fitness, masculinity, ‘V’ shaped body type
– Higher sex drive ‘during’ period – eliminated by
the discomfort
– Solution? Be a good boyfriend: www.goodvibes.com
*Horrible product idea – supposing we operate a ‘cleanwhistle’-esque property, and
eventually facilitate birth control prescriptions, we can predict to a degree when a
female user is ovulating, and thus ping high potential match % men that she is
‘interested in you’ or has ‘checked out your profile’

22. Misattribution of Arousal
• Our tendency to mistake our assumption of what
is causing us to be aroused*
– Arousal – defined as a feeling of elation, and being
aware or awake and reactive to stimuli
– Classic study – ‘Love on a Bridge’. Subjects found
themselves more attracted to and likely to rate higher
in objective attraction female confederates after
traversing a narrow and swaying bridge as opposed to
a stable bridge.
• Coffee dates – caffeine stimulates the limbic system, a
large player in our appetite satiation.
‘Love on a suspension bridge’ Article

23. Performance Anxiety 
• Our creator had a good chuckle to himself
when he crafted our nervous systems.
• Parasympathetic vs Sympathetic – why
performance anxiety kills the ‘mood’
• Sympathetic – cortisol, fight or
flight, anxiety…when our body prepares itself
for fight or flight, it flushes our system with
cortisol to prepare for the engagement.
• Shuts of PSNS, diverts blood flow from ‘mood’

24. Oxytocin
• Called many things – ‘bonding chemical,’ ‘Love drug’
• We only have one DNA ancestor who also owns this brain
abnormality – Bonobos monkeys
• Women secret much larger amounts of oxytocin than
men, which has the following consequence:
– Stimulation of milk ejection
– Stimulation of uterine contraction
– Establishment of maternal behavior
Evolutionary researchers believe that this hormone exists purely as
a mechanism to attach a birthing mother to her young – Women
produce an enormous amount of oxytocin at child birth

25. Stimulating Oxytocin
• Physical touch
• Hugging / Cuddling
• Sexual Arousal
• Orgasm – many exponential factors higher

26. Dopamine and Sex for Men
• Men produce the most amount of dopamine
during sex after longer periods of
abstinence, or new partners.
• Men produce less dopamine as a result of
non-novel encounters over time.
• IE – Keep it novel, keep them wanting, or give
them much more of it to produce the same
level of addiction.

27. Sex and Jealousy
• Long time hypothesis – men are more jealous
of a shared body (pure sex) where as women
are more jealous of a shared mind (emotion)
• While Women are disproportionately more
forgiving than Men of a sexual
indiscretion, both Men and Women are more
jealous of emotional infidelity compared to
sexual infidelity.
‘Sex differences in Jealous: A contribution from Attachment Theory’ Article

28. So, with what you have learned – what is the ideal date situation?