Evanston, IL, USA. Flocking to an online dating site with a wish list of ideal traits that you desire in a mate may not get the results you desire. Research shows that once you actually meet a potential dating partner, those ideals are likely to fall by the wayside.

When people examined written descriptions of potential partners, they liked those that matched their ideals more than those that mismatched their ideals, but those same ideals didn't matter once they actually met in person.


"People have ideas about the abstract qualities they're looking for in a romantic partner," said Paul Eastwick, assistant professor of psychology at Texas A&M University and lead author of the study. "But once you actually meet somebody face to face, those ideal preferences for traits tend to be quite flexible." Say you prefer a partner who, online or on paper, fits the bill of being persistent. "After meeting in person, you might feel that, yeah, that person is persistent, but he can't compromise on anything. It's not the determined and diligent kind of persistent that you initially had in mind," Eastwick said.

The idea is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, said Eli J. Finkel, associate professor of psychology at Northwestern University and co-author of the study. "People are not simply the average of their traits," he said. "Knowing that somebody is persistent, ambitious and sexy does not tell you what that person is actually like. It doesn't make sense for us to search for partners that way."

Three studies were designed to explore how traits that people ideally desire in a romantic partner (the ideal partner preferences) are realized when individuals initiate and maintain a romantic relationship.

• Baseline attraction experiments demonstrated that the expectations of participants could be manipulated by changes in a potential romantic partner's written profile to make it appear as more of a match to the seeker's expecations.
  
  
• However, after a live interaction, the match vs. mismatch manipulation was no longer a factor in the romantic interest.
  
  
• Participants appeared to reinterpret the meaning of the expected traits as they applied to the potential partner, a context effect predicted by classic models of person perception.

In another step, the researchers conducted a longitudinal study of middle-aged adults:

• Participants evaluated a current romantic (but not merely desired) partner more positively if the partner matched their overall pattern of ideals traits.
  
  
• The match in high- or low-rated ideals was not relevant to participants' evaluations.

"Thinking about this or that feature of a person apart from taking the whole person into account doesn't predict actual attraction," said Alice Eagly. "While some online dating sites have video features that provide some context, generally people are matched on their answers to specific questions that do not capture the whole person."

Scores from answers to questions such as "How much money do you earn?" or "Are you extroverted?" provide two-dimensional facts rather than three-dimensional humanness, Finkel said. For those seeking prospective partners, don't be surprised if you end up ignoring your preconceived notions about what would make an ideal mate.

"Based on those ideals, you might end up liking a person upon meeting face to face, or you might have the opposite reaction," Finkel said. As Eastwick notes, it is not uncommon for someone to say, 'If you had tried to set me up with this guy, I would never have gone out with him, but I'm so glad I did!'"

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