Despite being involved in the dating advice industry and spending an inordinate amount of time analyzing and thinking about my own emotional life and relationships, I’m still amazed at how terrible I am at to evaluating romantic and sexual situations objectively. And I think we’re all terrible. In fact, I’m sad to report that I think I’m better than most at it, and I’m still terrible. The fact is that we’re all terrible at it.
Like when that girl you bragged to your friends about shows up on the first date, but you can’t remember why you liked her so much. Or the woman you’re so convinced is relationship material, but when she unexpectedly breaks things off with you you realize that you actually feel better without her around. Or the ex-girlfriend you miss horribly for months, but when you reunite with her it becomes abundantly clear why you broke up.
We’re all terribly unobjective with our emotional lives. We can’t seem to help it either. We all have ideals and dreams of what we want our perfect partner to be, what we want our perfect relationship to be, how we want our relationships to play out. Therefore we tend to see what we want to see in someone else, not what’s actually there. We’re all experts at projecting and distorting the reality in front of us to try to fit our own ideals. These distortions are called perceptual biases. They are the fun-house mirrors that misshape our perceptions of others in front of us. Some people are (far) more afflicted than others, but none of us are immune to it. But with practice and conscious awareness, we can help ourselves become more aware of these biases, and prevent them from getting us into too much turmoil.
Perhaps the biggest problem with both psychological research into attraction and relationships and dating and seduction advice is that we’re trying to measure and quantify something in which it’s impossible to be completely objective about. Psychological research into attraction is based on self-reporting. Dating advice is based on personal experience. The problem is we’re unable to provide reliable data. We’re poor curators of our own emotional experiences.
The phenomenon of perceptual biases has intrigued me for a couple years now. Many of my close friends have grown annoyed and tired of me constantly pointing out their biases to them. “You only liked her that much because she was the only girl on the bus,” or “Yeah, it makes it a lot easier when they think your job is cool.” Yeah, I’m a buzz-kill.
Below are ten perceptual biases that most of us fall victim to, five which distort how attractive we perceive someone to be, and five that distort how emotionally connected to a person we feel.
Perceptual Biases of Attraction
1. Contrast Bias – The contrast bias occurs when we meet a moderately attractive person in an environment with unattractive people. For instance, if you go to an office party, the one cute girl at work will suddenly look like a stunner surrounded by a bunch of married, aging, overweight women. Put that same girl in a night club and she’d look pretty average. But at the office party, suddenly her stock has shot through the roof. Another common example is when you have the “hot friend” phenomenon. When you meet a group of women, all of which are unattractive except for one. Suddenly that one attractive one looks a lot better. Any man who is really sexually experienced has run into the situation where he’s excitedly brought a girl home, only to get her home and her clothes off and realize he’s not actually that attracted to her. Welcome to the contrast bias.
2. Scarcity Bias – The scarcity bias is similar to the contrast bias, except instead of overestimating how attractive a person is based on other people being unattractive, the scarcity bias overestimates how attractive a person is because there are few or no other options. A perfect example of this happened with a friend recently in Thailand. We were taking a boat tour, and there was a very plain-looking French girl on our boat, along with about 12 Chinese tourists, most of whom were elderly or older couples. My friend started chatting to the French girl, who was pleasant but nothing really too exciting. By the end of the full-day boat tour, he excitedly described to me how they traded Facebook information and how he thought he liked her and wanted to meet up with her. I looked him in the eye and said, “You liked that she was the only available woman on a boat that you were stuck on for 12 hours, that’s what you liked. By tomorrow you’ll have forgotten about her.” Sure enough, he did.
3. Reciprocal Bias – The quote of mine that’s been passed around the dating industry more than any other is, “The biggest aphrodisiac is someone who likes you.” This is the reciprocal bias. That cute girl, as soon as she grabs your hand and tells you that you’re hot, goes from “cute” to “really sexy” in a heartbeat. The reciprocal bias goes in reverse as well. That “smoking hot woman” over there, once you talk to her and she shows absolutely no interest in you, immediately turns into that woman “with a nice body, but terrible attitude,” and you’ve already convinced yourself that you’d never date her and that you were stupid for wanting to.
4. Personality Bias – The personality bias may be one of the only biases that one could consider a good bias. The personality bias occurs when someone’s personality makes them appear more physically attractive to you. When a woman has a great sense of humor, or shares similar interests to us, or has similar perspectives on life, we inevitably find them to be more attractive. Recently, I met a cute girl who I found out used to compete in Halo tournaments for XBox. The nerd in me couldn’t help it, she immediately jumped up a level in my book.
5. Barriers Bias – The barriers bias relates to the scarcity bias in that we tend to overvalue things in which we perceive to be hard to obtain. The barriers bias occurs when there are barriers to being with a particular person, causing our attraction for them to increase. An extreme example of this would be celebrities. From a purely physical perspective, you and I probably meet women who are just as physically attractive as celebrities, but our perception of them would not be even close to the same. The barriers bias can play out on a large scale or small. The girl you were talking to and her friend stepped in and dragged her away, chances are you are going to remember her as more attractive and more interested than she actually was. The girl you meet who is moving across the country tomorrow, otherwise she would definitely go out on a date with you, your perception of her will probably be that she’s more attractive as well. The barriers bias also affects relationships or perceptions of relationship material as well. We have a tendency to idealize people we’re unable to be with, both in terms of how attractive they are, but also in terms of how good our relationship would be with them.
Which brings us to…
Perceptual Biases in Relationships
6. Physical Bias – Plain and simple, the more physically attractive a woman is, the more likely we will be to idealize her, over-estimate her, and become emotionally invested in her. As men, our emotions are yanked around by how physically beautiful a woman is. And it’s a pretty short leash. This one definitely afflicts me often, and I hate that it does. I would like to say I’m not so shallow, but the more physically beautiful she is, the more I’m going to invest in her emotionally, and the more I’m going to convince myself that there’s potential for something more significant with her when there probably actually isn’t. Believe it or not, the physical bias can actually be negative as well, depending on a guy’s beliefs. I have met a number of guys who when confronted with an attractive woman, will get excited and talk about how attractive they are. But when confronted with an absolutely drop-dead gorgeous woman, they begin to nitpick faults and criticize her before even meeting her. If a man believes himself to be unworthy of a supremely beautiful woman, he will actually develop a perceptual bias AGAINST them.
7. Sexual Bias – One of my strictest rules for myself and my clients is to never make any major commitment decisions with a woman without having sex with her first. Aside from the whole “test drive before you buy” argument, the fact remains that men are not objective about a woman before we’ve had sex with her. We inflate our perception of them and over-estimate how much we actually like them. Yeah, it’s screwed up, but it is what it is. The reverse is often (but not always) true as well: that our perception of a woman immediately after sex will be deflated and we will underestimate what we actually feel for her.
8. Mystery Bias – This one is probably more common for women than men, but we both do it. The mystery bias occurs when you really like someone, but you don’t know a whole lot about them yet. The less we know about them, the more we fill in the gaps with our own idealizations of who they are. This can be particularly dangerous if we’re not able to be around them often, such as in a long-distance relationship scenario. Long distance is so dangerous emotionally because we’re not forced to be in the other person’s business all of the time, our communication is always full of excitement and longing. The multitude of boring, drab interactions where she does a myriad of minor things to annoy you are missing. You don’t see their flaws, only their virtues, since that’s all you have time to show to one another. As a result you replace their flaws in your mind with made up virtues. And eventually reality comes and bites you in the ass.
9. Turbulence Bias – The turbulence bias is when we overestimate the emotional connection and compatibility we have with someone whom we’ve suffered through a lot of emotionally difficult circumstances with. This can play out in a number ways. A girl who you’ve gone through a traumatic event with can suddenly seem like someone you relate to and connect with on a deeper level than you actually do. Or a girlfriend who you keep breaking and reuniting with, it’s easy to perceive those break ups and reunions as further proof that you two belong together, since you’ve gone through so much together. Or the girl who is cheating on her boyfriend with you, and is struggling to decide whether to end that relationship or not and the drama that ensues as a result, one can easily feel that these struggles and obstacles you overcome together “mean” something, and imply that there’s some deeper purpose for you being together. This is all fantasy. It’s a romantic concept better left to Disney movies.
10. Serendipity Bias – Another romantic fallacy. The serendipity bias is when we interpret coincidences involving a woman to signify something deeper or some sort of “fate” that is bringing you two together. For instance, maybe you go on a few dates with a woman who moves away to go to grad school. You then take a job overseas in Barcelona, and just happen to run into her walking around Barri Gotic. She’s studying abroad. The spark reignites, except this time you can’t help but feel that there’s some deeper purpose that’s bringing you together. As a result, you overvalue the meaning of the relationship and perhaps see an emotional connection that isn’t really there.
Perceptual biases are an inevitable part of dating. Of course, I’m being a little hyperbolic when I claim we all “suck” at dating. The fact of the matter is the dating game is a numbers game, and all of us are going to strike out the vast, vast majority of the time. Whether an interaction ends within five seconds or five years, almost all of your relationships are going to end. The hard part is knowing when they’re ending or if they should end or not. We’re all bad at that. Perceptual biases act as a fog that most of us have trouble wading through and realizing there are obstacles in front of us until we smack right into them.
The goal is not to get rid of perceptual biases, but to understand them and become aware of them. Perceptual biases can be enjoyable at times, but they can be dangerous as well. Know and understand which ones you’re susceptible to, and use that understanding to inform your relationship decisions in the future. Hopefully, you can spare yourself a little extra heart break.
Deep post Entropy.
The one that sticks out the most was the last point:Serendipity bias.Similar situations used to occur to me often,where I would give meaning to things which probably has just occured by chance.It’s different if the girl and I mutually feel that it was predestined that we meet again.But the irony from in my AFC days was that I was the only one seeing a hook up as predestined and “meant-to be”.That mentality made me invest way more in the girl,while she drifted apart.
I think a lot of newbies can learn from this article.Keep your shit in check!
By the way Mark,I want you to co-sign an article of yours over at my blog.It’s my latest blog post.I featured an article by you[50% rule],which was one that helped me out a lot.IDK if you still abide by that concept(you should),but it’s be nice for my blog followers to see an actual big-wig comment on an article by him.So you cam find that article at the link below.If not,just click on my name and it’d redirect you to my latest post(your article).Thanks in advance bro’.
http://kennyspuathoughts.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/50-rule-by-mark-manson-aka-entropy-pick-up-artist/
Man, I feel sorry for your friends. You do indeed sound like a buzz-kill ;)
Interesting article. The first Bias, contrast bias, is very well explained in Dan Ariely’s book, predictably irrational:
[quote]We always seek to draw comparisons, and we are often unaware as to how seemingly irrelvant factors such as the simple presentation of options, actually influence what we select.
Thus, given three choices, A, B (very distinct, but equally as attractive as A), and A- (similar to A, but inferior), we will almost always choose A, because it is clearly superior to A-.
Say we are trying to decide on a vacation between two choices: a Paris trip with free breakfast and a Rome trip with free breakfast. We cannot decide between the two because we love Paris and Rome equally.
Simply adding a third option – an “A minus” version of one of the options, will cause us to pick the A version, over the equally atractive B version.
Thus, the simple addition of a third “A-” option, “Paris without a free breakfast”, will cause us to choose “Paris with a free breakfast”, the “A” option, over “Rome with a free breakfast”, the equally attractive “B” option.
Similarly, had the third option added been “B minus” – “Rome without a free breakfast”, we would have selected that “B” option – “Rome with a free breakfast”.
This is irrational behavior because in the presence of two equal options, we couldn’t decide between the two, and the presence of a third, inferior option, shouldn’t cause us to suddenly prefer one of the two.
Ariely did an experiment where he used photos of undergrads to test this; 75% of research subjects chose choice A over choice B.
[i](from bookoutlines.pbworks.com/w/page/14422685/Predictably%20Irrational )[/i][/quote]
I’m sure someone has already read that chapter and made it into PUA doutrine: go out with mates that aren’t as tall/good looking/well dress/witty or agressive as you and you’ll easily stand out.
Darn
BB tags!Best article I’ve read in a LONG time. Kudos, Mark.
I’ve recently been obsessed with the idea of perceptual biases after working with so many hard case guys with bad inner game. What really happens and how they perceive it are so different most of the time and they just have no idea. I think it’s something that permeates the entire industry (and as you’ve said, the entire world really) to such a large extent but goes largely unnoticed.
So many things that we believe (esp with sex/dating/relationships) just don’t hold up under rational scrutiny.
This is a great article. It helped clarify a lot of mistakes I’ve made in relationships that I knew were there, my experiences have made me more aware of these biases and have made me a little cynical over time about how strong a connection really is.
Excellent post, I agree in practice but disagree with the philosophical treatment of the cases, and I don’t think it is just an academic point. On the contrary, I think it has consequences for having a more serene and realistic understanding of life and relationship.
Basically, you talk like there was THE real value of a girl for one person, and he may fail to estimate it correctly because of various biases (she is the only decent girl at a party, etc.). This ignores the fact that context and social influence constitutes what values is in the first place. Humans are inherently contextual beings.
Let’s take an example: at a dinner of old high school mates you end up sleeping with the girl who was the nicest in your class. Objectively, she is just average (the other girls in your class were all ugly).
Now you would say that you have been biased in considering her more attractive that she is. I disagree. Humans are inherently contextual beings who have an history. We are not estimating the objective size of the moon. She is part of your history, you are having fun during the dinner, lots of memories are involved, ending the night together would be a little bit crazy. These are not bias factors interfering with the objective estimation of the value of a Van Gogh’s painting. These are factors that actually explain why that night together HAS value and will be remembered as a nice crazy adventure.
Now, of course if you think that you may as well marry that girl from high school, well yes you are biased. But the failure is in misunderstanding the contextual nature of human life. That was a great one night stand, and at the same time it is unwise to plan a long relationship.
Also, it is of course possible that the “in that context it made sense” line of reasoning become an excuse to justify stuff that did not make sense, not even in that context!
I believe understanding the contextual nature of human life helps becoming a happier person.
Great article, I would have split it into two parts though since its so cerebral.
Why don’t they teach this on e-books? Why, God? Why?
You mean why don’t they teach this in school lmao.
Study social psychology and you’ll learn all about it. ;)
In social contexts the number one priority of our minds is often not accuracy or truth, but protecting our ego. Everybody has these biases. It requires knowledge, self-reflection and courage to poke through them.
Indeed!
I recommend you read the book Thinking, Fast and Slow. It basically is the book about psychological studies of two different systems (Not actual physical systems but merely descriptive. The author explain that one in the Introduction.) of instinct/intuition/gut feeling/etc and of logical/analyzing/etc.
Fascinating book and relevant to this post!
Thanks Mark.
I recommend this blog and your book as always as I can.
Nice Article. Super relevant. The Turbulance Bias actually reminded me of another bias that could easily be added to the list: The “Investment Bias.” Basically, the more someone invests in a person, the more they justify their decision. For example if a guy invests alot of time and money in a girl (i.e. buying dinner, tickets to events etc), he will like her more and convince himself that she was worth it, even if she barely reciprocates. (after all, who wants to feel that their time/effort was a waste)
Excellent stuff Mark. To add to the discussion, there are also a whole host of “Attribution Biases”. They function to protect our self-esteem, often at the expense of a clear perspective about our own and others’ behavior. In other words, we distort reality to keep a favorable picture of ourselves…but that distorted picture interferes with our behavior and choices.
The most prevalent of these biases is the “Fundamental Attribution Error”. This bias causes us to blame our own shortcomings on situational factors, while blaming the failures of others on stable parts of their personality. In a dating context, someone might justify his failure to approach a woman because the “situation wasn’t right” (thereby protecting his self-esteem). However, he might say his buddy is a “wimp” if he doesn’t approach (boosting his own self-esteem by comparison). In both cases, the bias helps improve the guy’s self-esteem…but it does nothing to help him approach, take action, and get what he wants.
I discuss two additional self-esteem related biases (Self-Handicapping and Pre-Judging) and how they relate to dating in an article here:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-attraction-doctor/201201/where-is-love-how-do-you-find-love
Keep up the good work!
“The fact of the matter is the dating game is a numbers game, and all of us are going to strike out the vast, vast majority of the time. Whether an interaction ends within five seconds or five years, almost all of your relationships are going to end. ”
hmmm… that I really liked. No one has ever said that to me before.
So would you say that hot women and highly desirable men are probably more or less immune to the reciprocal bias (for obvious reasons)?
I wouldn´t say they´re immune. I don´t think anyone´s immune. What I would say is that people who are not very desirable are even more susceptible to it.
Excellent subjective and objective insights. What I really appreciate about this article is that you are doing a real exploration of concepts in depth psychology…something that is really lacking in however you would define this movement we’re all connected to. Some bloggers will skim psych only at the surface of its corpus (i.e. the undergraduate level), but the real stuff is in the depth. Nice job. Look at Stephen Mitchell’s work if you haven’t already.
There’s also a consistency bias. You keep dating somebody who’s bad for you because you can’t admit to yourself that you should have dumped her months ago.
you met a girl who used to play in Halo tournaments?!?! That’s hot.
No, bro, that’s reciprocal bias lol