Research Summary
Research Summary
People Are Experience Goods: Improving Online Dating with Virtual Dates
Description
Because internet search mechanisms are designed for finding searchable items, we tend to conceptualize the things we seek online in terms of their objective characteristics. For some pursuits, however, this illuminates a mismatch between processes and goals. In online dating, for example, the most important characteristics we look for in romantic partners are not searchable, but experiential--that is, something like "compatibility" or "mutual attraction" must be experienced before it can be judged. We suggest that widespread disappointment with online dating can be traced to this mismatch between desired traits and searched-for traits. While online dating websites offer a cornucopia of information, they fail to simulate the face-to-face interactions by which we normally judge our relationship potential with one another. The same shortcoming applies to other experience goods, such as foods, which we might sample in an offline environment. We present a novel virtual dating interface as one way of sampling an experience good online; this is a preliminary test to encourage future research. In our study, partners explored a virtual environment in an interaction analogous to sharing a trip to a museum a real first date, and we found this pre-meeting intervention led to greater liking after a subsequent face-to-face meeting than did a traditional online information search.