Love is actually blind

The case for blind dates

I heard love is blind

This expression is pretty universally known, since Shakespeare introduced it in his plays. But even its meaning has evolved and changed over time. Initially it was used to describe how love can make us do silly things:

The Merchant Of Venice, 1596:

But love is blind and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit;
For if they could, Cupid himself would blush
To see me thus transformed to a boy.

Another way this expression has been used is that love can deceive us; how our expectations can lead to disappointment. Or it could also mean we have an unconditional love for someone, we’re willing to forgive someone no matter what, even if they’ve done something wrong.

But maybe it should be about how we don’t care how a person looks and we care more about their inner beauty?

OkCupid’s Crazy Blind Date 💘

In 2013, OkCupid launched “Love Is Blind Day”, where they removed everyone’s profile photos from the site temporarily. They also launched the “Crazy Blind Date” app where they would pair you off with someone nearby and automatically set a time and place for the date. Both people had to agree but you couldn’t talk to them before hand. They just had to show up.

Never heard of app? Well it’s because it shut down after 2 months. It was a complete flop as people demanded to see photos and know who they were dating. Their website traffic went down 80% so they quickly re-activated photos. So they only had about 10,000 people download and use the app.

What happened with the blind dates? 🙈

Even though there were still a small group of people that used the app, they were able to get collect people’s rating whether it was a positive or negative experience. Since majority of them were OKCupid users, they were able to correlate their feedback with their actual profiles and attractiveness ratings.

Blind dates are a better experience. Period.

It turns out that people’s looks had almost no impact on the experience. Actually, it didn’t matter at all how much someone was better looking than the other (let’s say a person rated 7 on attractiveness scale dated someone who is a 3). One thing that was consistent was that the dates were a positive experience. According Dataclysm, 75% of women had a good time and for men it was 85%. In essence, everyone had fun — they were spontaneous and got to know each other on a genuine level.

On the OKCupid website, the 20% of users that decided to stay on reported higher engagement. The level of connection was better, people were actually responding more and exchanging contact information.

“So absent our users actual desires, it would be a better site if we didn’t actually have pictures.” — Christian Rudder

We’re all biased 😓

What’s the lesson here? Well for one thing, we are all biased and it’s important to acknowledge this. Sometimes, we are making decisions on information we do have rather than information we DON’T have. Rudder describes this as superficial preselection. Online, we are heavily preselecting online for something that, once they meet someone in person, isn’t really all that important.

We also create weird expectations when we see photos. For example, another dating app I’ve been following is Dating Ring, a matchmaking service. Their customers actually get angry at them when people are paired with someone more or less attractive then them.

“Studies show that people tend to date people who are the same level of attractiveness.” — Lauren, Dating Ring

This makes plenty of sense. In fact, AirBnB cites a study that when we are judging strangers, we tend to pick people who are most similar to us because we think this will mean you have more in common.

While, this might be true, I’m sure all of you know that this is a dangerous bias. For one thing, this means that with photos, we might be less inclined to open up and make genuine connections with one another. I think another issue is that you are making a decision solely based on similarity and attractiveness rather than chemistry and compatibility.

What’s blinding you?

I guess this is an opportunity to think about what’s blinding you from finding love. What are your personal biases? What information are you making snap judgments on?

Maybe you could open up a little bit before making a decision about someone. Maybe you need to give someone a bit more time to show you who they are. Perhaps you need to suspend your expectations and treat this more like a blind date.

I think it’s time for another evolution of the expression that “love is blind”. It should mean that love needs to be open, free of judgments, and without expectations.