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When you meet someone, you necessarily spend time talking. If you like the person and you want to know if the attraction is reciprocal, try to measure the time it takes to respond to you. According to a study, if you have a conversation with quick exchanges, it is rather a good omen!
Chatting is a great way to get to know someone, especially a potential romantic partner. If you often know if you like the person within moments, it can be more difficult to determine if the attraction is mutual. Nonverbal cues such as eye contact and smiling can indicate romantic interest…as can responding more quickly to what you say, according to researchers at Dartmouth University.
Faster exchanges
“We’ve all had the experience of hooking up with some people but not others. We wanted to see if anything in people’s conversations reveals when they hook up“said Emma Templeton, a graduate student in psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth and one of the study’s co-authors.”Our results show that the faster people respond to each other during a conversation, the more connected they feel“.
The study, recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, consists of three separate experiments. The first focused on response time and the social bond that is established between 66 strangers. They took part in ten conversations, during which they could discuss the subject of their choice. These discussions were recorded on video so that participants could review it and assess how connected they felt with their interlocutor at all times. Researchers found that conversations with faster response times were linked to a stronger sense of social connection.
Strong connection
They then tried to determine if these results also applied to close friends. The response time data was similar: the smoother the conversation, the more participants felt connected to their interlocutor. “It is well established that, on average, there is a gap of about a quarter of a second between speaking turns during a conversation.
Our study is the first to look at the significance of this interval in relation to human connections.“, noted Thalia Wheatley, the study’s lead author and holder of the Lincoln Filene Professorship in Human Relations at Dartmouth.”When people feel like they can almost finish each other’s sentences, they close that 250 millisecond gap, and that’s when two people are in sync.“.
Even more surprisingly, the study shows that outside observers also use response times to determine whether two people have an affinity. You are at a party and you want to know if your friend is having a good time with this beautiful stranger he/she has just met? Pay attention to the pace of their conversation. The faster they respond to each other, the more interested they are in the idea of getting closer.
The conversation… but not only!
Still not 100% sure? You can pay attention to other signs of mutual attraction before taking action. A study dated 2018, published in the journal Psychological Bulletin, revealed that people behave in a very specific way when they are interested in someone. The main clues? Start the conversation, want to be physically close to the person and imitate their behavior. If you notice any of these signs, enjoy the moment and see what happens next.
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The voice matters too
In addition to all these criteria, the voice also seems to be a major asset of seduction. According to Dr. David Puts, an American researcher who conducted a study on the subject for the University of Pennsylvania, “male individuals who speak with low frequency variations are judged to be the most attractive by women”. But this element unfortunately cannot be changed or controlled, the timbre of the voice being a naturally stable element specific to each of us.