Los Angeles, late 1990s
The creator of the format was Yaacov Deyo, a rabbi from the Jewish educational organization Aish HaTorah. His task was not romantic but communal: young people were meeting each other within the community less and less often. The first events took place around 1998 in an ordinary cafe, with only a few participants - it was an experiment, not an industry. Later, the organization registered the name SpeedDating as a trademark, and the word spread around the world from there.
The mechanics have been the same from the start. People sit at tables, get a fixed amount of time to talk - usually a few minutes - then there is a signal and they rotate around the room. Right after the conversation, each participant marks "yes" or "no" on a card. Organizers collect the cards and share contact details only with pairs where both marked "yes."
The value is not in the speed, but in what has been removed from meeting someone. You do not have to figure out how to end the conversation - the signal does that. You do not have to be rejected face-to-face - it stays on the organizer's card. You do not have to wonder whether the feeling is mutual - the math is done for you.
- Conversation
- Signal
- Card
- Rotate
Why psychologists love speed dating
For researchers, the format became a ready-made lab: in one evening, a person has a dozen first meetings under identical conditions, and every decision is recorded on paper. The best-known finding is that what people say they want before the evening does a fairly poor job of predicting whom they actually choose in the room.
The second observation is more interesting. In the classic version, men rotate while women stay seated. When an experiment reversed the roles and women rotated, the difference in selectivity between the sexes shifted: the side that stayed seated was more selective. This is one study with a student sample, and it has few reliable replications, so treat the finding as a hypothesis - but it is an eloquent one: some of what we consider nature is shaped by where the chairs are placed.
- Give the date a clear ending in advance: an hour, a cup of coffee, the walk to the subway.
- Decide right after the date, before your decision gets buried under reasons.
- Check your impression with a second conversation, not a third list of questions.
- Do not let the date drag on "however it goes" - an open ending exhausts you both.
- Do not compare a real person with a list of requirements you wrote at home.
- Do not mistake the room's rules for personality: who sits, who approaches, how much time is left.
Finish reading in the Miqo app
1 more minute, then a quiz at the end. Find it under “Relationships → First Dates”
Point your phone camera here to open the App Store or Google Play.
Sources
- Format created by Yaacov Deyo and Aish HaTorah, Los Angeles, late 1990s. Studies using speed-dating data: Paul Eastwick and Eli Finkel, 2008-2009