Speed date flirting by Sam van Rood
Sam is the love doctor on GMTV, The Wright Stuff, How to find a Husband and more!
He also works with several London speed dating companies.
Below is a full chapter from Sam's book
"Teach Yourself Flirting
Flirting when speed-dating is a specialist art. It is different from normal flirting as you have such a short time to make a first impression: three minutes. Actually, you have even less time to make a first impression as most women make up their minds about a potential partner when speed-dating in 30 seconds or less.
What not to do!
The biggest mistake you can make when you are speed-dating is to treat it like a job interview. There are a surprising number of speed-daters out there who do exactly this, particularly women. It is easy to fall into the job interview trap. After all, 20-30 speed-dates in one night can be pretty exhausting, and you can lapse into asking boring, standard questions.
The biggest turn-off in speed-dating is to ask the standard question: 'What do you do?' Work is a boring topic, unless you have an incredibly interesting job, and even then it is risky territory. You may have great chemistry, but the other person's job may be an instant turn-off. You only have three minutes, so use them wisely and leave work out of it. When speed-dating, talking about work is banned!
It's all about chemistry - keep it casual
Speed-dating is all about chemistry. It is about sitting down with a person, having a light fun chat and seeing if there is any connection between the two of you. It is not a job interview, nor a stage play. It is about having a chat with someone and making a quick decision about whether you want to see them again.
When you meet someone for the first time, you will get an instant first impression. You know if there is chemistry or not. Usually, if there is chemistry, you end up chatting to the person for much longer and then taking it from there. Speed-dating is an accelerated version of this process.
You won't learn about chemistry if you have a boring chat about their job. You will find out if there is chemistry through a casual conversation - start by asking some fun and interesting questions.
Learn from the world's first speed dating experiment
It is useful to have a look at the results of the world's first largescale, speed-dating experiment. It was run by Professor Richard Wiseman at the Edinburgh Science Festival in the UK.
The results from the experiment showed that women make up their minds about their dates much more quickly than men and also showed some of the best chat-up lines.
The experiment involved 100 members of the public taking part in 500 speed-dates. Each participant rated the attractiveness of the people they dated, and also indicated if they would like to meet up again.
Forty-five per cent of women reached final decisions about their potential mates in less than 30 seconds. In comparison, only 22 per cent of men made up their minds in the same time. Professor Wiseman commented that in speed-dating, men only have a few seconds to impress women - which makes their opening comments particularly important. Women were also twice as picky as men, the men ticked twice as many 'yes' boxes as the women. The top male and female speed-daters had a 100 per cent success rate - with all of their dates wanting to meet up again.
The effectiveness of opening comments was analysed by looking at the highly successful and most unsuccessful speed-daters. The most successful got their dates to talk about themselves in an unusual or quirky way. The top rated female asked, 'What's your favourite pizza topping?' The top rated man asked, 'If you were appearing on Stars in your Eyes [a UK talent programme], who would you be?' Those who failed made statements like, 'I have a PhD in computing' or used clichés such as 'Do you come here often?'
The best topics for conversation were also analysed - travel came out trumps, and movies came out bottom. Apparently, since men and women have such different taste in movies, this topic increased their chances of disagreement. Conversations about travel and dream destinations made people feel good and appear more attractive.