We’d like to believe that the phrase “nice guys finish last” is just some cliché phrase villains use in teen movies, but a group of studies published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin suggest that uber-confident bros are basically winning the ladies over by scaring off the good guys. Womp.
For the first study, researchers gave 173 men and women a questionnaire to evaluate how overly confident they were. They gauged this by quizzing them on how much they “knew” about ideas and concepts that don’t actually exist. Then, they told the participants to make online dating profiles that represented who they were as a potential mate and asked others to rate how confident and desirable they came across as. As expected, the people who were overconfident in the questionnaire came across as such in their dating profiles. However, the people who rated their profiles thought the mega-confidence was a turnoff.
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In a very similar study published in the journal, researchers asked 438 men and women to answer a questionnaire, assess their confidence levels, and create dating profiles. Then, more than 300 people judged the aforementioned profiles. Researchers found that those who were categorized as “overconfident” by the assessment were rated as confident and arrogant. But unlike in the first study, their giant heads didn’t impact their desirability. Hmm.
In another study, which feels a lot like The Bachelor, researchers asked more than 100 new subjects to compete with participants from the second study for the attention of a would-be romantic partner. They asked each of the suitors to imagine that they had joined a dating website and were attending a singles’ mixer where the one person they really wanted to pursue was in a conversation with another attendee and that two other “less attractive” potential mates were standing nearby.
Next, participants were asked if they would rather sit at a table with the most attractive date (who was chatting with a competitor) or a less attractive date who wasn’t chatting with a competitor. In general, participants were less willing to compete with others whose profiles reflected confidence and arrogance. Instead, they picked the table with the less attractive dates and no third party to compete with for attention.
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Interestingly, the results applied to both genders—so overly confident women were also nailing it in the dating world.
Granted, more research needs to be done on this subject before we can come to any firm conclusions. But in the meantime, don’t let people who seem more confident than you keep you from putting yourself out there. Oh, and keep in mind that online dating might not be a bad option if you feel like only d-bags approach you when you’re out.