The first meeting, the first impression — this is the beginning of any communication between the two. A friendly party, conference, buffet, club, subway or street — there are many places where you can meet those who are of interest to us.
The first meeting, the first impression — this is the beginning of any communication between the two. A friendly party, conference, buffet, club, subway or street — there are many places where you can meet those who are of interest to us. How do we behave when we want to meet? What is the best place to start? How to build communication? In order for the acquaintance to be successful, we need to have time to do many things at once: to interest the interlocutor, establish good contact with him, ask questions, tell something about ourselves, show our strengths and at the same time not go too far with “self-promotion”. In order to study this process in more detail, my colleague Mikael Yan and I arranged private “speed-dating” parties in one of the Moscow youth clubs. With this format of dating, young people and girls communicate in pairs at the tables for several minutes, after which they move to neighboring ones, and at the end of the evening they make a choice.
CHOOSE A PARTNER, WE FORGET ABOUT WHAT QUALITIES WE WANTED TO SEE IN HIM BEFORE THIS MEETING.
The questionnaires that the participants of the date filled out during the experiment showed that the choice of a partner in no way depends on our fantasies about what qualities (confidence, intelligence, sociability, sense of humor) he must have. Western studies confirm that this also applies to weight, height, age, previous marriages and children, education, nationality, and religious affiliation. For the emergence of sympathy, the behavior on a date, the course of the conversation, is much more important.
Among dating strategies, there are winning ones and not so much. Girls, for example, highly value originality in a potential partner: an unusual beginning of a conversation, unexpected questions and topics. This is well known to street pick-up artists who like to cause slight confusion in their “victim”. A good impression is made by the initiative of men when meeting, their activity and talkativeness, confidence, while passivity and silence are rather repulsive. Girls are attracted by their ability to create comfort and ease of communication, interest in conversation. Well, unconventionality is also highly valued. Contrary to popular belief, young men are more likely to be discouraged by the desire of girls to shift all the responsibility for developing a conversation onto them.
The above does not apply to long-term relationships — they have their own logic and accents. Of course, the absence of a first vivid impression has a strong influence on the subsequent romance, but it can pale in comparison to the talents and strengths that we gradually reveal in a partner. Fortunately, life is not a “speed date” and usually gives us more than 5 minutes to get to know and feel a person.