We Are Strangers to Ourselves, Says Study
That precious image you have of yourself as a unique, discerning, free-thinking individual who's guided by your own particular tastes and idiosyncrasies? Sorry to crush one of the few delusions that makes life worth living, but it's a total fantasy, at least according to Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, whose book Stumbling on Happiness insisted that people have no idea what will make them happy. He's now conducted research to prove that, even when it comes to romance, we're better off going by the experience and advice of others, rather than trusting our own minds. And just to lend further authority to the study, it involved speed dating!
33 female students went on a five-minute date with a male student, having first been furnished with either a profile of the guy including a photo, or another woman's "enjoyment rating" of her date with the same man. In either case they were asked to first predict their rating of the date on a scale of 1-100, and what do you know, other women's experience was a far more reliable predictor of how interminable/tolerable/fun those five minutes would be than what was anticipated based on the photo/profile.
"Most Westeners would reject the notion outright that someone else would pick your marital partner more accurately than you can," says Gilbert. "It's not clear to me that's true." Wow: Somewhere, that chick who writes about arranged marriages is smiling and concocting another book proposal.
