Latest news with #Gesselman
Boston Globe
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
More than 75,000 singles have taken this annual survey about sex and dating. This year's results are in.
WHAT SINGLES WANT Now for some relationship news. Match just published the results of its To make things more legit, the company works with experts at the sex-and-relationship-focused Kinsey Institute at Indiana University to ask the right questions, and to make sense of results. More than 75,000 people have participated in the surveys so far. Match let me see this year's results early – because of my job. The main takeaways – for me, at least. Yay to me being in my 40s. According to Match's summary, 'People in their 40s are in some kind of sexual prime.' Fan fiction is amazing. 'Twenty-two percent of single women say they're embracing erotic content and fan fiction. Porn remains popular and widely accessible, with 23 percent of Millennials watching several times a week,' the Match data says. We have gone ALL IN with AI. The report says 'a growing 26 percent of singles — a staggering 125 percent increase from 2024 — are using AI to enhance their dating lives.' Some people are also having relationships with AI. A graphic from Match about AI in its Singles in America study. The AI data is the biggest reveal, of course. It's also no surprise. Advertisement But is all of this OK? I consulted the Kinsey Institute's , a social development psychologist, who has focused on relationships and technology. I asked Gesselman if she thinks it's bad (or a lie) when people use AI to help them with their dating profiles. For the record, I have no problem with it. Geselman is fine with it, too. She said: 'I don't find that to be unethical. I think that in this technological world, in online dating, where everything is so fast-paced, you send messages to people and you may or may not get a response,' she said. 'The use of AI for those first messages, for that first introduction … and especially if people are giving AI a prompt like, 'Hey, here's a person I found on this app that I think is really attractive or really interesting; help me figure out how to word that.' I think that's totally fine.' Advertisement Amanda Gesselman is a social–developmental psychologist at the Kinsey Institute. She's the Head of Research Analytics and Methodology Core there, and the inaugural Anita Aldrich Endowed Research Scientist at Indiana University. Courtesy Gesselman said that yes, more people are using AI for partnership – even in 'robot boyfriend ways.' But who seeks these relationships? Who are the 16 percent of people who have relationships with AI? 'We definitely found that it is more concentrated in the younger singles. So in Gen Z, which is 18 to 26, I believe, one in three of those singles have used AI in that way, and 23 percent of millennials have used it as well. We also found that people who identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, were more likely than heterosexual folks to have used AI as a romantic partner, which is pretty in line with what I found beyond Singles in America.' This spike in AI relationships does not mean humans want robots instead of other humans, she said. 'There are a lot of media stories out there that are sort of framing the rise of AI, especially in terms of dating, as a scary replacement for human relationships. Like, 'Oh my God, is this going to take over and remove human connection altogether?' And what we found was that people who are using AI, or who have used AI as a romantic partner, are very much still looking for a human partner. It's just that this is serving as a kind of a placeholder for the emotional connection or the sexual connection that they're looking for with another person.' Advertisement Speaking of robot significant others: Sonoya Mizuno and Alicia Vikander in the 2015 British film EX MACHINA, directed by Alex Garland. Courtesy of A24 I'm all for practice and for any tool that helps us be less lonely. Also, whenever I freak out about tech, I remember my recent watch of Downton Abbey, where they all freak out because of the invention of the blender , and they think the blender will ruin humanity and labor and food, but then everything is OK. Again, you can dive into the YOUR STORY, PLEASE. Love Letters is accepting submissions for the next season of right , a breakup you powered through, or a lesson you learned about how you love. Basically, we want all the stories. To submit yours, email it to MY STORY in the subject line. (We do feature some guests anonymously, if your story is sensitive.) We are always taking anonymous letters for the Love Letters advice column. If you're wondering why you're single, not single, happy, not happy, learning, or … not learning in a relationship, TRASH DAY I'll leave you with a dramatic, artistic picture I took during a walk last week. It's a card that says, 'Happy Valentines' Day. Love, Derek.' It was flying around on garbage day, amid barrels of waste and an old mattress. Wherever Derek is, whoever Derek is … I hope everyone's OK and living their best lives. Putting positive thoughts into the universe about the Derek situation. – Meredith The card says "Happy Valentines Day. Love, Derek." It was next to trash on garbage day. I'm sure it's fine. Meredith Goldstein
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Growing Belief in ‘Love at First Sight'
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. The idea seems so old-fashioned, so sentimental: that you could fall for someone 'at first sight,' deeply and instantly. It's straight out of the classic romance dramas—Jack's gaze freezing when he sees Rose on the Titanic's deck; The Notebook's Noah lighting up and asking, 'Who's this girl?' when he spies Allie across the amusement park. As a general rule, the stuff of popular love stories is not the stuff of real life. We know this, right? Not right, I guess. This year's 'Singles in America' survey—conducted annually by the dating company Match and the Kinsey Institute, and released today—found something surprising: Of the roughly 5,000 single American adults polled, 60 percent said they believe in love at first sight, a nearly 30 percent increase from 2014. Almost half of the respondents (people ages 18 to 98, from all over the country) said they'd experienced the phenomenon themselves. I didn't expect this, not only because the validity of the concept has been questioned for years, but also because it's such a dreamily romantic notion—a hopeful one, really. And these days, the common narrative about dating (and what I've found, to some degree, in my own reporting) is that many people are burned out, tired of the apps, and generally feeling pessimistic. This spike in belief even startled some of the researchers: Amanda Gesselman, a Kinsey Institute psychologist, told me that the results 'sort of blew me away.' [Read: The people who quit dating] But once Gesselman stepped back and thought about the finding, she said, it made some sense to her. In 2014, dating apps were relatively new. Couples tended to meet through friends or family; people would get to know each other for a while before pairing off. In more recent years, Gesselman has consistently found that swipe-based dating apps are the main way that partners meet—across age, gender, race, income, and geographic region. That style of dating has people in the habit of making quick calls, judging whether they have chemistry with a stranger after just one date. Paul Eastwick, a UC Davis psychologist who studies romantic attraction and wasn't involved with the survey, told me the same thing: 'Online dating has a lot of 'We met—no. We met—no. We met—no. We met—no. We met—oh, that was a good one!'' In other words, the slow burn has become less common. Instead, two other experiences may have become more common: the plainly bad first date, where a lack of connection is immediately apparent; and the kind of date about which a person might one day say: 'We knew right away.' Whether that latter scenario is truly love at first sight depends on what you mean by love—and, okay, also what you mean by sight. Eastwick has found that some people do feel strongly about a romantic prospect from the get-go: if not at first glance, then straight from the point of a first conversation. And when things click, he said, those feelings can run deeper than physical attraction. (If love at first sight was just thinking someone was hot, I'd experience it every day walking down the streets of New York City.) In a 2018 study of undergraduate students, Eastwick asked participants to reflect on their past relationships and describe how they'd felt at different points over the course of their time with their former partners. About a fifth of people said they'd been smitten upon meeting; they'd felt an instant bond, found some niche shared interest, couldn't stop talking. To be fair, that's the same portion of people who felt 'when I first met this person, I thought they were trash'—Eastwick's words, not mine! Nonetheless, he concluded that something like love at first sight, though not the norm, 'is real. It happens.' Of course, these were prior relationships; evidently, falling in love quickly doesn't mean that a relationship is going to last. What psychologists refer to as 'passionate love'—the buzzy, dizzying rush of early infatuation; the feeling of craving, even addiction—is neurologically distinct from 'compassionate love,' which tends to set in after a year or two and doesn't involve the same elevated cortisol and serotonin levels. And besides, maybe the participants who reported experiencing love at first sight were simply projecting that narrative retroactively. Capturing people's feelings in real time, as they first get together, is difficult, Eastwick said. He has tried asking participants in other studies to tell him as soon as they've met someone promising—and they have. But, he said, 'what you mostly get is: 'I'm really excited about this person!' And then when you check in a week later, they're like, 'Who now?'' Right around this point in our interview, the 'Singles in America' finding started to sound a little concerning to me; love at first sight, however possible, didn't seem like something to bank on. I imagined a nation full of people going on first date after first date: thirsty people crawling on their hands and knees, longing for a feeling that only a fifth of Eastwick's participants experienced and that hadn't even kept them together. A world with this many first dates is not a world I want to live in. 'I'm screaming into the void, being like, 'Hey, everybody, there was a way we used to date,'' Eastwick told me. ''You just kind of hung out with people and saw what happened.'' Relative to our era of snap judgments, he said, the old way of dating was 'democratizing.' [Read: No, you shouldn't 'date 'em 'til you hate 'em'] But Gesselman remains optimistic. Online dating may have primed people to expect too much too soon, but at least it hasn't destroyed their romantic idealism. Ten trillion swipes later—I'm guesstimating—the 'Singles in America' participants haven't given up. 'The overwhelming majority of singles in our survey reported that they believe that love can last forever,' Gesselman told me. 'They believe there's someone out there for them.' Those ideas fit under an umbrella that psychologists call 'destiny beliefs,' a faith in predetermined bonds (as opposed to 'growth beliefs,' or the idea that a relationship requires maintenance and labor). Gesselman knows that such mystical thinking might set up unrealistic expectations. She also suspects that it can motivate people to commit to a relationship. Eastwick found that the participants who reported feeling the most romantic interest at the very start of a relationship also described feeling romantic interest for the longest amount of time. They were also less likely to have initiated the breakup. If you believe you've found your soulmate, after all, you might try especially hard to make it work. Love at first sight may be a high bar to clear. And holding such an ambitious standard could mean staying single for longer, or forever. But maybe fewer people these days are worried about that. Maybe they have full lives and want a relationship only if it's extraordinary. Partnership used to be a stricter societal norm than it is today; different possibilities for how to live a 'good life' are, little by little, opening up. Today's singles may know that love at first sight isn't all that likely. Perhaps more of them have the luxury of holding out for it anyway. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
The Growing Belief in ‘Love at First Sight'
The idea seems so old-fashioned, so sentimental: that you could fall for someone 'at first sight,' deeply and instantly. It's straight out of the classic romance dramas—Jack's gaze freezing when he sees Rose on the Titanic's deck; The Notebook 's Noah lighting up and asking, 'Who's this girl?' when he spies Allie across the amusement park. As a general rule, the stuff of popular love stories is not the stuff of real life. We know this, right? Not right, I guess. This year's 'Singles in America' survey —conducted annually by the dating company Match and the Kinsey Institute, and released today—found something surprising: Of the roughly 5,000 single American adults polled, 60 percent said they believe in love at first sight, a nearly 30 percent increase from 2014. Almost half of the respondents (people ages 18 to 98, from all over the country) said they'd experienced the phenomenon themselves. I didn't expect this, not only because the validity of the concept has been questioned for years, but also because it's such a dreamily romantic notion—a hopeful one, really. And these days, the common narrative about dating (and what I've found, to some degree, in my own reporting) is that many people are burned out, tired of the apps, and generally feeling pessimistic. This spike in belief even startled some of the researchers: Amanda Gesselman, a Kinsey Institute psychologist, told me that the results 'sort of blew me away.' But once Gesselman stepped back and thought about the finding, she said, it made some sense to her. In 2014, dating apps were relatively new. Couples tended to meet through friends or family; people would get to know each other for a while before pairing off. In more recent years, Gesselman has consistently found that swipe-based dating apps are the main way that partners meet—across age, gender, race, income, and geographic region. That style of dating has people in the habit of making quick calls, judging whether they have chemistry with a stranger after just one date. Paul Eastwick, a UC Davis psychologist who studies romantic attraction and wasn't involved with the survey, told me the same thing: 'Online dating has a lot of 'We met—no. We met—no. We met—no. We met—no. We met—oh, that was a good one!'' In other words, the slow burn has become less common. Instead, two other experiences may have become more common: the plainly bad first date, where a lack of connection is immediately apparent; and the kind of date about which a person might one day say: 'We knew right away.' Whether that latter scenario is truly love at first sight depends on what you mean by love —and, okay, also what you mean by sight. Eastwick has found that some people do feel strongly about a romantic prospect from the get-go: if not at first glance, then straight from the point of a first conversation. And when things click, he said, those feelings can run deeper than physical attraction. (If love at first sight was just thinking someone was hot, I'd experience it every day walking down the streets of New York City.) In a 2018 study of undergraduate students, Eastwick asked participants to reflect on their past relationships and describe how they'd felt at different points over the course of their time with their former partners. About a fifth of people said they'd been smitten upon meeting; they'd felt an instant bond, found some niche shared interest, couldn't stop talking. To be fair, that's the same portion of people who felt 'when I first met this person, I thought they were trash'—Eastwick's words, not mine! Nonetheless, he concluded that something like love at first sight, though not the norm, 'is real. It happens.' Of course, these were prior relationships; evidently, falling in love quickly doesn't mean that a relationship is going to last. What psychologists refer to as 'passionate love' —the buzzy, dizzying rush of early infatuation; the feeling of craving, even addiction—is neurologically distinct from 'compassionate love,' which tends to set in after a year or two and doesn't involve the same elevated cortisol and serotonin levels. And besides, maybe the participants who reported experiencing love at first sight were simply projecting that narrative retroactively. Capturing people's feelings in real time, as they first get together, is difficult, Eastwick said. He has tried asking participants in other studies to tell him as soon as they've met someone promising—and they have. But, he said, 'what you mostly get is: 'I'm really excited about this person!' And then when you check in a week later, they're like, 'Who now?'' Right around this point in our interview, the 'Singles in America' finding started to sound a little concerning to me; love at first sight, however possible, didn't seem like something to bank on. I imagined a nation full of people going on first date after first date: thirsty people crawling on their hands and knees, longing for a feeling that only a fifth of Eastwick's participants experienced and that hadn't even kept them together. A world with this many first dates is not a world I want to live in. 'I'm screaming into the void, being like, 'Hey, everybody, there was a way we used to date,'' Eastwick told me. ''You just kind of hung out with people and saw what happened.'' Relative to our era of snap judgments, he said, the old way of dating was 'democratizing.' But Gesselman remains optimistic. Online dating may have primed people to expect too much too soon, but at least it hasn't destroyed their romantic idealism. Ten trillion swipes later—I'm guesstimating—the 'Singles in America' participants haven't given up. 'The overwhelming majority of singles in our survey reported that they believe that love can last forever,' Gesselman told me. 'They believe there's someone out there for them.' Those ideas fit under an umbrella that psychologists call 'destiny beliefs,' a faith in predetermined bonds (as opposed to 'growth beliefs,' or the idea that a relationship requires maintenance and labor). Gesselman knows that such mystical thinking might set up unrealistic expectations. She also suspects that it can motivate people to commit to a relationship. Eastwick found that the participants who reported feeling the most romantic interest at the very start of a relationship also described feeling romantic interest for the longest amount of time. They were also less likely to have initiated the breakup. If you believe you've found your soulmate, after all, you might try especially hard to make it work. Love at first sight may be a high bar to clear. And holding such an ambitious standard could mean staying single for longer, or forever. But maybe fewer people these days are worried about that. Maybe they have full lives and want a relationship only if it's extraordinary. Partnership used to be a stricter societal norm than it is today; different possibilities for how to live a 'good life' are, little by little, opening up. Today's singles may know that love at first sight isn't all that likely. Perhaps more of them have the luxury of holding out for it anyway.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Singles using AI to date up 300 percent from last year, says Match
In an online landscape where AI is everywhere, including dating apps, it's not shocking that some singles are using AI to meet a partner. Just over a quarter, 26 percent of singles, are using artificial intelligence to enhance their dating lives, according to Match's latest Singles in America study. This is a whopping 333 percent increase from 2024. SEE ALSO: Majority of Gen Z would marry an AI, survey says Match and the Kinsey Institute surveyed around 5,000 U.S. singles between the ages of 18 and 98. According to the report, nearly half of Gen Z singles have already used AI in their dating lives, whether to better craft their profiles or messages, or to screen for compatibility. Out of all singles, 44 percent said they'd like AI to help filter matches, and 40 percent want help creating the perfect dating profile. According to the report, nearly half of Gen Z singles have already used AI in their dating lives, whether to better craft their profiles or messages, or to screen for compatibility. Meanwhile, 44 percent consider it a dealbreaker to use AI to alter their photos, and 36 percent consider it a dealbreaker to use AI to generate conversations. Some daters Mashable spoke to earlier this year believe AI shouldn't be used in dating at all, as it's disingenuous, but others see it as another tool of the trade. "AI isn't replacing intimacy, it's giving singles an edge," said Dr. Amanda Gesselman, psychologist at Kinsey and Match's director of sex and relationship science, in the press release. "For a generation overwhelmed by options, tools that bring clarity and efficiency are more than welcome." While Gesselman says AI isn't replacing intimacy, Match found that 16 percent of singles have engaged with AI as a romantic companion. This soars to 33 percent of Gen Z and then 23 percent of millennials. A different, non-Match survey from April found that 8 in 10 members of Gen Z would marry an AI. An expert told Mashable at the time that it makes sense given that younger people are digital natives, but it comes with risks. Some researchers say AI companions are dangerous for minors because they could develop an emotional dependence on them. It seems that singles are leaning into both technology and romance. Seven in 10 respondents said that they believe in destiny when it comes to relationships, with 73 percent of singles believing in forever love. Belief in love at first sight has increased to 60 percent, up from 34 percent in 2014. Featured Video For You Mashable Rants: Is flirting with AI considered cheating? But people may not actually be seeing this play out IRL. Thirty-nine percent of singles say they don't know anyone in their life who represents "relationship goals." People are looking to social media for their ideas on modern love. "Reality TV and Instagram have made love feel more like a highlight reel than a lived experience," said Gesselman. "The pressure to find something picture-perfect can be paralyzing." Reality TV, Instagram — and AI. Forty-five percent of survey respondents said AI partners make them feel more understood, and active daters are three times more likely than inactive daters to turn to AI for companionship. And 40 percent say having an AI boyfriend or girlfriend is cheating — a debate that Mashable has weighed in on. But will daters even want a human companion if AI "understands" them? We might have to wait for the 2026 survey to know. See more survey results at Singles in America.
