Psychology library
Short explainers on the effects that dating advice and adverts often lean on. Each one says what the research shows, what sellers say it shows, and what does not follow. The marketing lines on these pages are marked as cited from a public source or as typical lines written for the page.
Looking for a particular advert? Marketing claims translated goes through eight, one by one.
How people respond to each other
Effects between two people: what tends to happen when one person does something and the other responds.
Reciprocity of liking
On average, people who think someone likes them report a little more interest in that person, and tend to underestimate how much they were liked.
Evidence: Supported with caveats
Self-disclosure
Sharing personal things and liking tend to go together, and strangers grew closer when talk deepened step by step than with small talk.
Evidence: Supported with caveats
Mirroring
Being subtly mimicked raised liking in one early experiment; later tests are mixed, and mimicry that does not fit the moment can feel off.
Evidence: Plausible
Synchrony
Moving in time with someone tends to increase affiliation in lab tasks; in dating, coordination may follow interest rather than create it.
Evidence: Plausible
Turn-taking and reply timing
In spoken talk, replies tend to come within a fraction of a second; whether text reply timing affects attraction has not been studied well.
Evidence: Plausible
Emotional contagion
Moods can spread a little between people in lab settings; no verified study shows that anyone can choose what another person feels.
Evidence: Plausible
Social proof and mate copying
Other people's choices shift our judgments; in rating studies this sometimes extends to how desirable a pictured person looks, unevenly.
Evidence: Plausible
How your own mind reads things
Habits of attention and judgment that shape what any of us notice, conclude and keep thinking about.
Attention: what you notice, and what you think others notice
Your attention is selective: worry and unfinished goals pull it, and people tend to overestimate how much others notice them.
Evidence: Plausible
Cognitive biases in reading people
Predictable errors in judging others: favouring what you already think, assuming others share your view, and trusting your reads too much.
Evidence: Plausible
Confirmation bias
People tend to seek and favour evidence that fits what they already believe; that this shapes hopeful reads of a person is untested.
Evidence: Plausible
Projection and assumed similarity
People tend to assume others share their choices and views, and their own interest can colour how they read someone else's.
Evidence: Supported with caveats
Rejection sensitivity
A research measure of how readily people expect and perceive rejection; higher scores go with reading ambiguous behaviour as rejection.
Evidence: Plausible
Rumination and the Zeigarnik effect
Going over something again and again is not a sign of positive feeling, and the claimed memory advantage of unfinished business did not hold up.
Evidence: Plausible
What marketing leans on
Effects that dating advice and adverts often borrow, set beside what the research has and has not shown.
Uncertainty about being liked
One lab study found that uncertainty about being liked raised attraction ratings; better-tested designs show costs, and in other experiments vagueness lowered appeal.
Evidence: Plausible
Reinforcement, reward and dopamine
Dopamine mainly signals the gap between expected and actual reward; using it to sell unpredictable behaviour in dating goes far beyond the research.
Evidence: Plausible
Perceived selectivity
Interest aimed at one person tends to be received better than interest in everyone; pretending to be choosy is a different thing.
Evidence: Plausible
Anticipation and novelty
Looking forward to something good can be pleasant in itself; withholding contact to build anticipation is a different thing and is not supported.
Evidence: Plausible