Gone in 30 seconds... your chance of a date

WOMEN are much quicker than men at making up their minds about a potential partner, a study has found.

A speed-dating experiment showed that men have only seconds in which to impress a woman - and can stand or fall by the quality of their opening chat-up lines.

Women were also far more picky than men, and less willing to make do with second best.

Professor Richard Wiseman recruited 100 visitors to the Edinburgh International Science Festival to take part in 500 speed dates.

Initial results revealed that in about a third of cases, participants reached decisions about potential partners in less than 30 seconds.

This was true of 45% of women’s decisions, but only 22% of men’s.

Prof Wiseman, from the University of Hertfordshire, who conducted the study last Sunday, said: “Men are often accused of being shallow and judging women very quickly. However, this evidence suggests that women may make up their minds much quicker than men.”

The most successful charmers encouraged their dates to talk about themselves in an unusual or quirky way.

The top-rated man’s best line was: “If you were on Stars in Your Eyes, who would you be?”, while the top-rated female’s winning question was: “What’s your favourite pizza topping?”

Failed Casanovas tended to be far less creative as they struggled to impress with comments such as “I have a PhD in computing”.

Women were twice as fussy as men when deciding who they liked, but the top-rated man and woman both had a 100% success rate. Every one of their dates wanted to meet them again.

Prof Wiseman said the two speed-daters with the 100% success rate both had average looks, but scored highly on creativity.

The most physically attractive participants of both sexes were not always among the top performers.

“Some of the best looking people were intensely dull or not the sharpest knives in the drawer,” said Prof Wisesman.

When discussing films, fewer than 9% of the pairs wanted a second meeting. But this rate doubled when the talking point was travel.

A questionnaire found that men and women had very different tastes in movies, possibly explaining why films were a poor conversation choice.

Just under half of men said they liked action films, compared with 18% of women, and while 29% of women enjoyed musicals, only 4% of men did.