Why Modern Dating Asks Us to Decide Before Attraction Has a Chance to Develop
By Johanna Stieg, LCSW
Dating has changed dramatically since modern online dating began in the mid-1990s. We now have access to more potential partners than any previous generation, yet many people I sit with as an individual and couple’s therapist in NYC describe feeling more disconnected, uncertain, and overwhelmed by the process of finding love.
The challenge may not be that we have fewer opportunities, but that we have adapted our expectations to a system that asks us to evaluate potential partners in ways that conflict with how humans have historically developed attraction, trust, and attachment. In adapting to this new model, we may also have begun to change our expectations around how we should evaluate our attraction to and interest in potential partners.
Dating apps have shifted the process from one of discovery into a process of evaluation. We are increasingly asked to decide whether someone is a potential partner before we have experienced the very things that create connection: familiarity, emotional responsiveness, shared experiences, humor, body language, and the feeling of who we become when we are with another person.
The question is not whether dating apps are good or bad. The question is whether the way we are using them aligns with how humans actually come to know one another.
Building familiarity matters
Humans have historically developed relationships in environments where repeated exposure was common. Many people met potential partners through shared communities, neighborhoods, friendships, or social networks. This repeated exposure mattered.
R.B. Zajonc's (1968) mere exposure effect demonstrated that familiarity itself can increase liking and positive feelings toward something—or someone. Simply encountering another person repeatedly creates opportunities for comfort, recognition, and fondness to develop.
I can think of several stories of people who, tired of the apps, reconnected with high school sweethearts, childhood friends, or people from their hometowns. Familiarity provides a foundation from which attraction can grow.
Modern dating environments have changed this process. Instead of repeated exposure to a smaller pool of familiar people, dating apps provide access to an almost endless stream of unfamiliar potential partners.
The benefit is obvious: we can meet people we may never have encountered otherwise. But the psychological tradeoff is that familiarity is no longer built into the process. It must be intentionally created.
We're Missing the Information That Matters Most
One of the biggest shifts in modern dating isn't simply that we meet online. It's when we're expected to decide whether someone is worth getting to know.
Dating before apps meant attraction more often developed through experience. We met someone, interacted with them, built familiarity, and only then decided whether we wanted to pursue a relationship. Today, that sequence has largely been reversed.
Then:
Meet → Interact → Build familiarity → Attraction develops → Decide
Now:
Evaluate → Compare → Decide → Maybe interact → Maybe develop familiarity
Before we've heard someone's laugh, noticed how they make eye contact, or experienced how we feel in their presence, we're already deciding whether they're worth our time.
This shift matters because attraction is not simply a cognitive process. It is an experiential one.
Research by Eastwick and colleagues (2011) has repeatedly shown that the qualities people believe they want in a partner often fail to predict whom they actually become interested in after meeting face-to-face. Traits that seem essential while scrolling through profiles frequently become less important once two people interact, while qualities people hadn't consciously prioritized—warmth, humor, responsiveness, or conversational ease—become far more influential.
This helps explain one of the central limitations of online dating. As Finkel and colleagues (2012) argue, dating apps are remarkably effective at expanding our access to potential partners, but far less effective at predicting who we will actually connect with. The qualities that make someone a meaningful partner emerge only through interaction. A profile can tell us about someone, but it cannot tell us what it feels like to be with them.
Research on "thin slices" of behavior helps explain why. Ambady and Rosenthal (1992) found that people gather meaningful interpersonal information from remarkably brief observations of another person's expressive behavior. Facial expressions, vocal tone, body language, and timing all contribute to our impressions of warmth, attentiveness, emotional availability, and safety. These are precisely the kinds of cues that disappear when we reduce another person to photographs, prompts, and text messages.
When I recently asked several people what they found most challenging about dating apps, one woman in her forties told me:
"The only way I've ever successfully started dating someone is by meeting them in person. Dating apps lack any genuine connection, making it incredibly easy to swipe to the next person. In person, I can sense if someone is serious within the first minute or two."
What she's describing isn't magic or intuition. It's the rapid accumulation of interpersonal information that occurs during face-to-face interaction—information that simply isn't available from a profile.
Modern dating encourages us to make decisions using the information that is easiest to display rather than the information that is most predictive of connection. We have become increasingly skilled at evaluating profiles while becoming increasingly removed from the experiences that actually allow attraction to develop.
The goal is not to force attraction where it does not exist. The goal is to give attraction the conditions in which it can develop.
Get beyond the first-date performance. Move past the pressure to immediately know. Allow yourself the opportunity to experience another person rather than simply evaluate them.
In short, modern dating has taught us to search for certainty before we have enough experience to find it. But intimacy has never worked that way. Healthy relationships are built through curiosity, repeated experience, and a willingness to tolerate uncertainty long enough for another person to become known.
A profile can tell you who someone says they are.
Only experience can tell you what it feels like to be with them.
And that experience—not certainty—is where attraction begins.
References
Ambady, N., & Rosenthal, R. (1992). Thin slices of expressive behavior as predictors of interpersonal consequences: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 111(2), 256–274. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.111.2.256
Eastwick, P. W., Eagly, A. H., Finkel, E. J., & Johnson, S. E. (2011). Implicit and explicit preferences for physical attractiveness in a romantic partner: A double dissociation in predictive validity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(5), 993–1011. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0024061
Finkel, E. J., Eastwick, P. W., Karney, B. R., Reis, H. T., & Sprecher, S. (2012). Online dating: A critical analysis from the perspective of psychological science. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 13(1), 3–66. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612436522
Zajonc, R. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 9(2, Pt. 2), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0025848