Research · What predicts men's dating success
Looks win first glances. Getting to know you wins the rest.
Women say kindness matters most, then choose on looks in the first minutes. But every single trait explains only a sliver of who ends up together. The biggest share of attraction is unique to each pair and can't be predicted before you meet, and familiarity wears the looks filter down. For most men, the lever is more real encounters, not a secret trait.
What the studies found
Nobody can predict your chemistry with her. Not even you.
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r ≈ .40
Looks predict romantic interest when people meet, for both sexes.
Earning prospects sit near r ≈ .10. People's stated ideals barely predicted who they actually chose in speed dating (r ≈ .03).
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35%
of romantic desire was unique to the pair, the largest share.
Models using more than 100 traits measured before the date predicted it at essentially zero. Compatibility shows up only once two people have actually met.
Joel, Eastwick & Finkel, 2017Moderate -
Follow-ups
People who asked more follow-up questions got more second dates.
They were liked more because they seemed responsive, and nobody expected this to work. It's the best-supported conversation habit there is.
Huang et al., 2017Moderate -
60%
of couples still meet some way other than online.
39% of couples who met in 2017 met online. How a couple met made no difference to whether they broke up. Your app numbers are not your market value.
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Kind + bold
Dominance alone didn't raise attraction. Paired with kindness, it did.
Across three studies, prosocial men were rated more attractive, and dominance only helped men who were also kind. "Nice" fails when it means passive.
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1.2
effect size of individual CBT for social anxiety, against a waitlist.
It's built on practising the feared thing, and for a man held back by nerves it's the best-evidenced lever in this whole literature. Old practice-dating trials raised how often shy men dated.
“I think chemistry is mostly feeling like someone is actually curious about you. So yes, meet more people, but be real with every one of them.”Rose, in the clip above
Try this
What you can change, strongest evidence first.
No trial has assigned men to a dating strategy and followed them for a year. This ranking weighs how strong the evidence is against how much it's likely to pay off.
- Raise your volume of real starts.A weekly quota of hellos, conversations and asks. Chemistry is unpredictable, so more real meetings means more chances.
- Treat nerves as nerves.Small, graded steps against the fear, and a CBT therapist if avoidance is strong.
- Join two or three recurring groups, and keep going.Classes, clubs, teams, volunteering. Familiarity builds, and no cold approach is needed.
- Ask follow-up questions.Then trust that she probably liked talking to you more than you think: people underestimate it, every time.
- Show specific interest, not general eagerness.Liking one person in particular is liked back. Liking everyone reads as desperate.
Popular advice the evidence doesn't back
What to stop believing.
80% of women want the top 20% of men
It comes from a blog post about 27 women on Tinder. Peer-reviewed data show both sexes aim about 25% above themselves.
Be the alpha
In one study a neutral man was rated sexiest of all: the "alpha advantage" was really a penalty for being submissive. Aggressive and domineering men gained nothing.
Confidence is the single most attractive trait
No cross-cultural study ranks it first. Visible insecurity costs you and calm warmth helps, and real confidence comes from repetition, not from deciding to have it.
Women are manipulative, so play games
Men who see women that way read their partners' behavior more negatively than it was, and their relationships suffer for it. Self-identified incels reported depression at more than twice the rate of other men.
How your coach uses it
She counts what happens out there, not minutes in the app.
Missions, not lessons
Each week ends on a small real-world mission: a hello, a follow-up question, one ask.
Practice partners who aren't easy
Real women reply to men's first app messages less than 20% of the time. Practice that always goes well trains the wrong habits.
She steps back
As your real-world count grows, the check-ins get shorter. The goal is a life that doesn't need her.
Sources
Read the studies yourself.
- Eastwick et al. (2014). The predictive validity of ideal partner preferences. Psychological Bulletin.
- Walter et al. (2020). Mate preferences across 45 nations.
- Joel, Eastwick & Finkel (2017). Is romantic desire predictable?
- Hunt, Eastwick & Finkel (2015). Leveling the playing field.
- Huang et al. (2017). It doesn't hurt to ask.
- Boothby et al. (2018). The liking gap in conversations.
- Rosenfeld, Thomas & Hausen (2019). Disintermediating your friends.
- Bruch & Newman (2018). Aspirational pursuit of mates in online dating markets.
- Jensen-Campbell, Graziano & West (1995). Do nice guys finish last?
- Greater Good Science Center. The myth of the alpha male.
- Mayo-Wilson et al. (2014). Treatments for social anxiety disorder, a network meta-analysis.
- Lidborg et al. (2022). Masculinity and mating success, a meta-analysis.
- Hammond & Overall (2013). Hostile sexism and relationship quality.
- Costello et al. (2022), summarized in PsyPost.
How strong is it? Strong: meta-analyses, representative surveys or large datasets. Moderate: peer-reviewed but small or single studies. Nearly all of this is correlational, and most speed-dating studies used students. First Hello is a coach, not therapy.