- Researchers in Israel conducted a small experiment with heterosexual college students interested in romantic relationships.
- Students wore wrist monitors to track their movements and sweat gland activity during first dates.
There are physical signs your first date is headed in the right direction, and you can spot them within the first two minutes of meeting, according to researchers at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
They conducted a small study with 16 heterosexual men and 16 heterosexual women who were all college students interested in romantic relationships. The researchers mixed and matched the subjects for a total of 46 five-minute dates, during which they monitored the subjects' sweat gland activity and behaviors. After each date, the subjects told researchers whether they were romantically and sexually attracted to their match.
With dates where both subjects said they were romantically and sexually interested in the other, the researchers found the two people were more likely to have synchronized sweating and movements. These movements included smiling, nodding, and shifting arms or legs.
"The study clearly showed that when couples synchronize their physiology with one another and adapt their behavioral movements to their partner during the date, they are romantically attracted to one another," Dr. Shir Atzil, a co-author of the study, previously told the Daily Mail.
With this study, it's unclear if attraction led to the synchronized behaviors, or if the synchronized behaviors led to subjects' attraction, so it's an area of interest for future research, said Atzil.
The researchers also found that men and women felt different levels of sexual attraction when their movements and sweating synchronized. Women tended to say they had a higher level of sexual attraction in these cases than men did, so the researchers dubbed them "super-synchronizers."
Last year, another small study from researchers at Leiden University in the Netherlands found that synchronized sweating during a date could signal romantic attraction. They did not, however, find a correlation between synchronized movements and attraction.
In addition to these physical reactions as potential markers of a match,