People with a clear purpose in life are perceived as more romantically attractive.
- In one study, people whose profiles displayed specific life goals were rated higher.
- Participants gave higher ratings to profiles who share the same life goal as them.
- Profiles highlighting financial objectives were less attractive to volunteers.
If you’ve recently had difficulty dating, it may be beneficial to first focus on your personal development and find new life goals. This was revealed by Washington University in St. Louis (United States) in a study, the results of which were published in the journal International Journal of Applied Positive Psychology.
4 types of objectives put forward by fake profiles created on dating sites
“Research has shown that people with purpose in life are more satisfied, more committed, and more invested in their romantic relationships. However, the mechanisms between positive relationship outcomes and feeling useful are not yet clear “, they wrote. To better understand how having specific goals can influence others’ evaluation of profiles on dating apps, the scientists recruited 119 people.
As part of the work, the team focused on four categories of “purpose in life”: prosocial orientation, relational orientation, financial orientation and creative orientation. Prosocial orientation refers to a person whose goals are related to helping others, relational orientation refers to goals focused on family and finding a partner, financial orientation refers to goals related to financial security and creative orientation refers to goals focused on creativity and originality.
For the intervention, the authors created four profiles corresponding to each category, as well as five profiles indicating no objectives. Then, participants each read and ranked the nine fake profiles based on various attractiveness criteria.
Love: having specific goals would make you more attractive
According to the study, people whose profiles displayed specific goals were rated higher than those whose profiles displayed no life goals. In detail, the volunteers also gave a higher rating to profiles who share the same orientation as them. On the other hand, researchers found that being financially oriented might turn off adults unless they, too, are financially motivated.
