Women who muster up the courage to make the first move on online dating sites are rewarded. According to data published in OkCupid, a popular dating site, female users get more dates with attractive men when they take the initiative to start a conversation.
The New York Times reported that the said study derived its conclusion by randomly picking and monitoring 70,000 users who had logged in the dating site at least three times within the same month. It was found that women who sent the first message were rewarded with a response rate of 2.5 times higher than men who did the same.
The online dating site also discovered that the male users, contacted by the women for the first time, were more "attractive" based on how other users rate men's looks and profile content. It was also found that 30 percent of women who made the first move ended up on a date, while only about 12 percent of men who did the same were rewarded with actual dates.
"When women are proactive there's a big win," Jimena Almendares, OkCupid Chief Product Officer, told ABC News. She added that the data show that women have so much to gain if they will speak up.
Although the study is unscientific and may only apply to OkCupid, Bumble, another dating app, is employing a process wherein only women can send the first message to men who matched their profiles. Whitney Wolfe, founder of Bumble, said the procedure makes a woman more confident and empowered.
"It makes for a healthier and more enjoyable all-around experience," Wolfe explained. "It puts the women in the driver's seat, and typically women aren't in the driver's seat."
According to the Business Insider, the new data supports a theory popularized by a 2015 book "The Mathematics of Love." Written by Hannah Fry, a mathematician at the University College London Center for Advanced Spatial Analysis, the book explained and used the Gale-Shapley matching algorithm to solve the challenge of matching two entities.
In the book, Fry showed that whoever is willing to face rejection and does the first move is always better off. On the other hand, the person who sits back and waits for advances often ends up with the least bad option.
