Carrot Dating for the Extremely Hard Up

According to this 'reliable' U.K. source, there is now a new app that allows for men to offer women bribes in hopes of obtaining dates with them, such as jewelry or plastic surgery.  This web site was developed by the same guy that came up with SeekingArrangement.com, the site that allows "sugar daddies" to connect with young women in return for their being quasi-mistresses.

This is uncomfortably close to prostitution.

Anyway, the idea is that, if otherwise unacceptable guys were to be able to get into the dating door with an attractive woman, this might give them an opening for the woman to see their positive side and be attracted in turn.  It's a hopeful idea, but not likely to work.

Here's the psychology behind why it won't work.

Two separate reasons:

1.  There's the cognitive dissonance thing, as suggested by Leon Festinger back in the 1950's.  Briefly, this is a social psychological theory that holds that when a person has two or more cognitions, ideas, beliefs, values, or emotions, she motivated to reduce that uncomfortable state.  If a young woman is going out with what she perceives to be a marginal guy, she is likely to experience some cognitive dissonance that might be more or less be dependent on whether an inducement is present:

a)  She is going out with a questionable guy, but without any external reason to justify it (e.g., as a favor to a friend she is going out with her nerdly cousin); so she has to come up with some possible explanation as to why she is doing so.  In the absence of some external inducement, she might conclude that she is attracted to the guy.

b)  But if some inducement is present, she can readily ascribe why she is doing so in terms of the inducement.  She does not have to explain her behavior in terms of attraction: the inducement suffices.*

In the illustration below, Belle, the Beauty, would be attracted to the Beast because she could not otherwise account for the incongruence between his appearance and her going with him.

2.  Then there's research by Edward Deci that indicated that, if you attach an extrinsic reward to an activity that had been otherwise intrinsically rewarding, the extrinsic reward tends to eclipse the intrinsic reward and when it is discontinued, the activity tends to be less likely to persist.  In other words, whatever pleasure she might have found from his company is offset or obscured by the offer of the jewelry or the boob job or other extrinsic reward, and makes it less likely that she will enjoy being with him with no external inducement.

[Silly picture comment: I don't think an actual carrot would work, unless she's a bunny.  And I don't know of anyone who wears dresses so short!  I might go out with a M.I.T. grad out of curiosity, but you would never catch me wearing skankwear.]

*This is why going on a blind date to help out a friend seldom leads to any positive vibes.  I've been there.


http://metro.co.uk/2013/10/20/carrot-dating-controversial-new-app-allows-men-to-offer-women-bribes-for-dates-4153532/