When we think about the kind of person we’d like to date, we often list the qualities we most desire in a partner—our dealmakers. But we also have our deal breakers—qualities that would disqualify
someone as a dating prospect, regardless of how many other wonderful
traits they have. There has been a great deal of research on dealmakers,
but until recently, not much on deal breakers. In a series of
studies, Peter Jonason and colleagues investigated the most common
relationship deal breakers and how they affect our dating choices.1
In the first study, the researchers just wanted to get a general
sense of what traits people were likely to see as deal breakers. They
surveyed 92 college students who were asked to list their personal deal
breakers for long- and short-term relationships. Most of the students
didn’t name that many—an average of just under 5 deal breakers for
long-term relationships, and 3 for short-term relationships.
That first study generated a list of 49 possible deal breakers. In a
second study, a separate sample of 295 students rated the extent to
which they felt that each of those 49 traits was a deal breaker for
them. In general, women were more likely than men to identify these
traits as deal breakers. The table below shows the most common deal
breakers. They tended to focus primarily on health (STDs, bad smells); dating behaviors (dating multiple partners, already in a relationship); and negative personality traits (untrustworthy, abusive, uncaring).
Of course, small samples of college students don’t represent most
singles. So in a third study, the researchers surveyed a nationally
representative sample of 2,744 single American adults. These
participants were given a list of 17 traits and were asked to check off
the ones they felt were deal breakers (as many as they wanted). The
table below shows the percentage of participants who chose each of the
17 traits, broken down by gender. Participants chose an average of six deal breakers, with women choosing slightly more than men.
How do deal breakers affect our dating choices?
The researchers also wanted to understand how these deal breakers
affect our dating decisions. So they conducted three other experimental
studies, varying the deal-breaking information that participants
received about potential mates.
In one experiment, 132 adults evaluated profiles of four potential
mates who were attractive and successful. They were asked to rate how
likely they would be to consider a purely sexual relationship; a
short-term relationship; a committed long-term relationship; or a friendship
with each of these four people. After the participants made their
ratings, they learned that each of the potential mates possessed a
specific potential deal breaker (e.g., an unhealthy
lifestyle, undesirable personality traits, interest only in a casual
sexual relationship when you’re interested in a serious relationship, or
vice-versa). Participants then re-evaluated their interest after learning about the deal breakers.
The results showed that non-dating-related deal breakers (unhealthy lifestyle, undesirable personality traits) made people less inclined to have any
type of relationship with the person, including friendship. The deal
breakers that involved discrepancies between their own and the potential
mate's dating intentions, however, only negatively impacted romantic
interest. And while one might have expected men to be more willing than
women to date someone interested in casual sex
when they wanted something more, the researchers did not observe this.
Men were generally more willing than women to engage in both short- and
long-term relationships with each of the potential mates. Finally, women
had a more negative reaction than men to learning that a person had
negative personality traits.
In their last two experiments, the researchers examined the relative effect of deal breakers and dealmakers. The question: Are deal breakers more important than dealmakers in determining romantic interest?
In one study, 193 adults were asked to imagine they had just met
someone new, and to rate how learning new pieces of information about
that person would affect their likelihood of accepting or rejecting the
individual as a short- or long-term relationship partner. Five pieces of
information were potential deal breakers—poor hygiene; short tempered;
has an STD; promiscuous; and drinks excessively—and five were
dealmakers—physically attractive; kind; good career; good sense of humor; intelligent.
The results showed that the deal breakers had a bigger
effect than dealmakers on participants’ interest in a potential mate.
However, this wasn’t true for everyone: Those who saw themselves as undesirable short-term mates rated dealmakers as more important than deal breakers when considering the person as a short-term mate.
In a final experiment, the researchers varied the relative number of
deal breakers and dealmakers that participants learned about a potential
mate (dealmaker:deal breaker ratios of 0:5, 1:5, 2:4, 3:3, 4:2, 5:1, or
5:0). They then asked 271 adults to consider a situation in which their
potential partner had x DEALMAKERS and y DEAL BREAKERS. They were asked
to rate how likely they would be to consider that person as a friend; a
short-term partner; or a long-term partner. Like the previous study,
this experiment also found that deal breakers had a bigger effect on
relationship intentions than did dealmakers; this tendency was greater
for women than for men.
The researchers interpreted their findings as being consistent with
evolutionary theory which posits that women are more discriminating in
their mating choices
than men. This was supported by women’s slightly greater tendency to
deem various traits deal breakers and their tendency to be especially
affected by the presence of deal breakers in a potential mate. However,
statistically, these gender differences were significant, but fairly
small, suggesting that men and women don’t differ very much in terms of
their deal breakers or how important they are in their dating decisions.
This research also shows that when it comes to evaluating potential
mates, we don't "accentuate the positive," as the old song goes, but
rather, we put more weight on important negative traits.
The big unanswered question in this research is how this operates in people’s actual mate choices. What we say
we want in a mate doesn’t always line up with what we really choose.
Research on speed-dating has shown little correspondence between the
traits people claim they are looking for in a mate and the traits possessed by the people who interest them at an actual speed-dating event.2 In
addition, research has shown that people are often willing to agree to a
date with a flawed suitor if they believe that person is real, rather than hypothetical.3
Would these deal breakers really break the deal in a real-life dating
context, or are we more willing to compromise than we admit?
- Gwendolyn Seidman,
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