UCR Talk Abstract—May 2008

Searching for and choosing a long-term mate is not only one of the most important decisions in our lives, but also one of the most difficult: we are hampered by lack of knowledge of the options to come and inability to return to options already passed by, and we have to make a choice that will be reciprocated by the other person.  How do we make this challenging mutual sequential choice—specifically, how do we decide when our search is over?  To find out, we could follow a set of individuals through multiple relationships over an extended period of time—or we can speed things up, by having mate seekers participate in speed-dating events and observing their searches as they meet and interact with a succession of potential partners.  In this talk, I will discuss how speed-dating allows us to compare stated mate preferences with actual choices made; evaluate how accurately people can judge whether others are romantically interested in them; test models of satisficing search that adjust mate aspiration levels lower after failed relationships and higher after successful ones; and check how well-matched people end up being as a result of their search and choice process.

Biography

Peter M. Todd grew up in Silicon Valley, studied mathematics and electronic music at Oberlin College, received an MPhil in computer speech and language processing from Cambridge University, and developed neural network models of the evolution of learning for his PhD in psychology at Stanford University.  In 1995 he moved to Germany to help found the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition (ABC), based at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin.  The Center's work was captured in the book Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart (Gigerenzer, Todd, and the ABC Research Group; Oxford, 1999); the sequel, Ecological Rationality: Intelligence in the World, covering information-environment structures and their impact on decision making, is being finalized.  Todd moved to Indiana University in Bloomington as Professor of Informatics, Cognitive Science, and Psychology in 2005 and set up the ABC-West lab there.  His ongoing research interests span the interactions between and co-evolution of decision making and decision environments, including the ways that people and other animals search for resources—including mates, information, and food—in space and time.