Principal Investigator Alex 'Sandy' Pentland
Project Website http://groupmedia.media.mit.edu/speed.php
An answer to the irrepressible question. In May 2004 and December 2004, a total of 70 5-minute real-life speed-dating sessions were analyzed. By mathematically modeling the participants speaking styles, we devised a system to predict with high accuracy if the other person was romantically interested, or considered you a possible friend or colleague.
The results of these experiments were quite revealing. Speech features explain 1/3 of the variance for objective results (R 0.45, p 0.03). Both male and female results show strong correlation with female speech features - perhaps, as anyone would have guessed, the woman's reactions are more representative of the outcome.
Influence parameters, which measure turn-taking in conversation, show more correlation with business relationships and friendship, and less with attraction. Back and forth exchanges - where one partner goes "aha", "yup", etc. improve the possibility of a woman saying "yes".