Searching Dating Sites Reduces Decision Quality

Dating sites as well as social networking sites have search options. In the case of dating sites were people can look for interpersonal romantic relationships these search options deliver more options to search and more possible partners – check out girlfriend activation system and learn how to make a girl fall in love with you. More options with searching often are accompanied by excessive searching and decreasing the quality of the choices.

In short: having more possible partners increases the searches instead of helping to decide based on the first search, “more means worse effect” it’s also called. The proposed mechanism behind this effect is: a large set of options may increase cognitive load, leading individuals to make mistakes. Moreover, reducing the cognitive resources by more searches due to cognitive load the searcher may be less likely to ignore irrelevant information and is more easily distracted by characteristics that were not that important in the beginning.

I know this effect from searching literature on PubMed, if not focusing I might end up with articles completely out of focus of the subject, like chocolate instead of ECT.

This topic has recently been studied and published. One hundred and twelve adolescents with experience of online romantic relationships participated in this study. These participants were divided on the dimension of those who seek the best and do exhaustive searches for all possibilities and those searching just for the “good enough”, searching until someone is found that crosses the threshold of acceptability. The research question was whether those searching the most would be more likely to employ excessive searches and be more vulnerable to the negative effect of excessive searching on decision making.

Those doing extensive searches are called maximizers, those searching for good enough are called satisficers.

Results indicated that the participants with high maximizing tendencies (i.e., maximizers) showed more pronounced searching than did those with low maximizing tendencies (i.e., satisficers).
The negative effect of excessive searching on decision-making was more prominent for maximizers than for satisficers in terms of final choices and selectivity.

This study revealed that maximizers exhibit a higher search ratio than those with low maximizing tendencies. More profiles on the dating site were examined as more options were provided to the maximizers. These more options resulted in worse choices. More options resulted in reduced selectivity in the maximizers.

So if you’re a maximizer please select a dating site with few search options otherwise your decision might suffer.

When maximizers’ cognitive resources are reduced by more searches, they may be less likely to ignore irrelevant information and more likely to be distracted by or attracted to attributes that are not pertinent to their original preferences

This study supposes that maximizing strategies is another characteristic of someone. It may be just one option used for specific kind of decisions, not a general tendency. What do you think, are you a maximizer or only in some instances like dating?

Yang, M., & Chiou, W. (2009). Looking Online for the Best Romantic Partner Reduces Decision Quality: The Moderating Role of Choice-Making Strategies CyberPsychology & Behavior DOI: 10.1089/cpb.2009.0208