( Photo / Kaylee Weatherford )

Troy University’s UAC and M.I.S.S. ELITE Society host “6 minutes, 6 feet” speed dating event to celebrate Valentine’s Day.

Assign seated students role A or B and moving students the remaining role. Start the first 'speed dating' role play. Let students role play the situation for one minute and then say stop. Ask the moving students to switch to the next partner. It helps if students move in one direction. For example, ask students to rotate in a clockwise manner. Student Speed Dating can be adapted to any course. Students speak to each other in pairs for a prescribed period of time. The purpose is to break down bar.

Oluwaseun Omotayo

Staff Writer

The University Activities Council created a list of events lined up for students on campus for February – and although you may have missed out on some there is one activity left.

The last event UAC will organize this month is an outdoor game night at Camp Butter and Egg Adventures scheduled for Feb. 24 from 5:30 p.m. until 8 p.m.

UAC’s goal is to provide a space for “students to enjoy a fun game night in a relaxing and safe environment,” according to Vice President of UAC KeneshiaMahan.

The group partnered with several organizations on campus to provide other events this month, as well.

The first one was a drive-in movie night at Camp Butter and Egg Adventures for a viewing of the Black Panther movie on Feb. 3.

The next event, which was held at Hal Hall on Feb.10, was “6 feet for 6 minutes,” a speed dating event that was organized in collaboration with M.I.S.S ELITE Society (MES). The event was from 7 p.m. until 9.m., and about 50 students were in attendance and were given snacks and Valentine’s Day treats.

“Each individual that attended had 6 minutes to talk to their date while they sat 6 feet apart to respect CDC guidelines,” said Gretil Sutton, a senior elementary education major from Valley, Alabama.

Sutton serves as the current president for MES and explained that “the attendees rotated 12 times, so they talked to at least 12 people throughout the event.”

“The organizers provided roses for the participants so they could give a rose at the end of the event to the person they matched or connected with the most,” Gretil said.

UAC also held Casino Night again this year.

“It is our annual tradition which gives students an opportunity to interact with other people,” Mahan said.

The event was held in the ballrooms Feb. 17 at 7 p.m. and included prizes and food.

UAC officers said they hope the events the group plans help give students an avenue to socialize despite COVID restrictions.

Stanford researchers analyze the encounters of men and women during four-minute speed dates to find out what makes couples feel connected.

By Brooke Donald

Stanford researchers studying how meaningful bonds are formed analyzed the conversations of heterosexual couples during speed dating encounters. Successful dates, the paper notes, were associated with women being the focal point and engaged in the conversation, and men demonstrating alignment with and understanding of the women.

Can you 'click' with someone after only four minutes?

That's the question at the heart of new research by Stanford scholars Dan McFarland and Dan Jurafsky that looks at how meaningful bonds are formed.

McFarland, a sociologist at Stanford's Graduate School of Education, and Jurafsky, a computational linguist, analyzed the conversations of heterosexual couples during speed dating encounters to find out why some people felt a sense of connection after the meeting and others didn't.

Their paper, 'Making the Connection: Social Bonding in Courtship Situations,' was published this month in the American Journal of Sociology.

'One of the key features of a community, social network or relationship is the sense that it's meaningful, that there is some kind of force behind the relationship,' McFarland said. 'We wanted to get at what the essence of the connection is, what makes people feel like they bonded.'

McFarland said much of the literature on social bonding points to characteristics – traits, status, attributes, motivation, experiences – as reasons why people connect. But, he said, those explanations ignore or downplay the role of communication.

There is a great deal of uncertainty, the paper notes, about the meaning of signals we send to other people, and how that plays into forging interpersonal connections.

'We wanted to see if there is anything about the interaction that matters or is it really just what I look like, what I do, what my motivation is. Is it all things that are psychological or in my head or is there actually something in how we hit it off?'

Their analysis of nearly 1,000 dates found that words, indeed, do matter. How the words are delivered, when and for how long make a difference to how people feel toward each other, and in this case, whether the men and women sensed that they 'clicked' during their encounter.

The four-minute date, the study found, was enough time to forge a meaningful relationship – something that seemed to go beyond looks and motivation. But female participants reported lower rates of 'clicking' than men, suggesting the women are more selective and, in this particular setting, more powerful.

The participants in the study were graduate students at Stanford, and wore audio recording devices during their dates. The dates lasted four minutes each, and after they were done, the participants filled out a scorecard that, among other things, asked if he or she would like to go out on a real date with the person. If both parties said yes, a real date was set up.

For the purposes of this study, the participants also filled out pre- and post-date surveys.

The dates were transcribed and computer software was used to analyze the words and speech to see if any characteristics of the language corresponded to the participants' reporting of feeling a sense of connection.

'We were looking at conversational behaviors or speech features and how they express characteristics of the social experience, how you feel about the other person,' Jurafsky said.

Women reported a sense of connection to men who used appreciative language ('That's awesome' or 'Good for you') and sympathy ('That must be tough on you').

Women also reported clicking with male partners who interrupted them – not as a way to redirect the conversation but to demonstrate understanding and engagement, for example, by finishing a sentence or adding to it.

Both genders reported clicking when their conversations were mainly about the women.

'You could say men are self-centered and women are always trying to please men and dates will go well if they talk about the guy, but it turns out that's just not true. It's just the opposite,' McFarland said. 'This is a situation in life where women have the power, women get to decide. So talking about the empowered party is a sensible strategy toward feeling connected.'

Hollis Student Speed Dating Websites

While interrupting could be viewed as positive, asking a lot of questions tended to have a negative result.

'Women feel disconnected when they have to ask men questions, or when men ask them questions,' the paper said. Questions were used by women to keep a lagging conversation going and by men who had nothing to say.

Successful dates, the paper notes, were associated with women being the focal point and engaged in the conversation, and men demonstrating alignment with and understanding of the women.

Hollis Student Speed Dating

Shared stories also indicated a sense of connection, as did speakers who showed enthusiasm by varying their speech to get louder and softer.

The researchers said the longer it took for the individuals to decide on a date, the more they reported having a bonding experience, suggesting communication can change someone's feelings about another person and break the association with traits.

Further studies could look at same-sex relationships, for example, or could explore the transitions to other states, like marriage.

Stanford's Institute for Research in the Social Sciences and various grants from the National Science Foundation supported this interdisciplinary research effort.

Media Contact

Hollis Student Speed Dating Site

Dan McFarland, Education: mcfarland@stanford.edu

Dan Jurafsky, Linguistics: jurafsky@stanford.edu

Hollis Student Speed Dating Videos

Hollis Student Speed Dating Sites

Brooke Donald, Stanford News Service: (650) 725-0224, brooke.donald@stanford.edu