Dating profiles that tell stories get more interest than bullet-point lists
American Psychological Association / Psychology of Popular Media
Tell a story on your dating profile. That is the practical takeaway from three experiments involving 594 single young adults, published in Psychology of Popular Media by psychologist Gurit Birnbaum and colleague Kobi Zholtack at Reichman University in Israel.
The finding is straightforward: when dating profiles presented information in narrative form rather than as a list of attributes, viewers reported significantly more empathy for the person behind the profile. That empathy, in turn, predicted greater romantic interest. The effect held across text-only profiles, photo-only profiles, and combined text-and-photo profiles.
Same facts, different packaging
The experimental design isolated storytelling as the variable by keeping the actual content identical. In the first experiment, participants read text profiles. The non-narrative version listed facts: plays guitar, studies economics, likes travel. The narrative version wove those same facts into a story — a grandfather's gift of a guitar, music as a thread through the person's life. Same person. Same information. Different structure.
The second experiment used photographs instead of text. Non-narrative profiles showed the person in generic settings — a park, a street. Narrative profiles depicted the same individual engaged in daily activities: exercising, studying, spending time with friends. The images told a story of a life in motion rather than a person posing for a camera.
The third experiment combined both elements, presenting text and photos together. Across all three, the pattern was consistent. Narrative profiles generated more empathy. More empathy predicted more romantic interest.
Borrowed from the advertising playbook
Birnbaum and Zholtack drew their hypothesis from marketing research, where storytelling has been studied for decades. Advertisements that embed product information within a narrative — a character's journey, a problem-and-solution arc — consistently outperform ads that simply list product features. The emotional connection created by narrative structure makes consumers more receptive.
The researchers reasoned that dating profiles function as a form of self-marketing. And just as consumers respond better to stories than specifications, potential romantic partners might respond better to a life story than a feature list. The data support that reasoning.
The empathy mechanism
The key mediating variable was empathy — not just liking or attraction, but the capacity to feel something of what the other person might feel. Stories, by their nature, invite perspective-taking. They position the reader as a witness to experience rather than an evaluator of attributes. A list of qualities invites judgment: Is this person tall enough? Successful enough? Interesting enough? A story invites imagination: What would it be like to know this person?
That distinction matters for online dating specifically, because the medium encourages exactly the kind of transactional evaluation that narratives counteract. Swiping through profiles is, by design, a process of rapid sorting. Stories slow that process down and replace it with something closer to human connection — or at least a simulation of it.
What the study does not tell us
The experiments measured initial impressions, not actual dating outcomes. Participants viewed profiles and reported their feelings. They did not go on dates, form relationships, or even exchange messages. The gap between "I find this profile appealing" and "this person and I would be compatible" is wide and well-documented in relationship research.
The sample consisted of young single adults in Israel. Cultural attitudes toward dating, storytelling, and self-presentation vary significantly across populations. Whether the narrative advantage holds in cultures with different dating norms, or on platforms with different formats (video profiles, for instance), remains untested.
There is also a practical barrier. Writing a compelling personal narrative requires skill and self-awareness that not everyone possesses equally. If narrative profiles work better, that advantage may accrue disproportionately to people who are already good communicators — potentially widening rather than narrowing the gap between dating "haves" and "have-nots."
Still, the study offers a concrete, evidence-based piece of advice for the estimated 300 million people worldwide who use dating apps. Ditch the bullet points. Tell the story of how you got here. The person reading your profile is more likely to see you as a human being — and that, it turns out, is what makes them want to meet you.