Imagine you are trying to figure out if Jane has a dog. You find out that she lives in Wisconsin. You read a study that states that 50% of women in Wisconsin have a dog. You now make the conclusion that there's a 50% chance of Jane owning a dog. So far, so good. It seems reasonable. Suppose now that you learn that Jane has a special affinity to cats and that she posts a lot about how she hates dogs on social media and finds them dirty. Are you now going to still think there's a 50% chance she has a dog? No.

When it comes to dating, it seems that people don't apply the same reasoning when it comes to meeting new people. Sure, if you read a study that certain kinds of men do better with women than others, it may be advantageous to have those traits and to adopt them when talking to women. But the problem is this would only be useful if all you knew about the person you're talking to is a woman. The problem, of course, is that this is never the case. When you're talking to a Jane at a bar, on tinder, or on some other app, you're learning tons of things about her. You're learning about how she looks, what she wears, what her interests are, how she talks, whether she's argumentative or not, whether she's extroverted or not, etc etc. You are learning about her, not necessarily women. There is no study that has sampled women just like her that you can refer to. Because there is only one Jane.

The truth is that trying to adopt rules and patterns when interacting with people in your dating life is a fool's errand. It may be advantageous to learn about them when analyzing a population's dating habits as a whole if you were a social scientist but seems entirely unreasonable when talking to a specific woman or man. A better strategy is to simply read the person you are specifically talking to and simply notice how they react to how you talk and to what they say. Every person is different.

When you ignore the specific for the general, you're bound to miss out on information that the person is specifically giving you for more general information that is ultimately irrelevant. This also allows you to harbor in biases and not even give people a chance just because you had earlier bad experiences or learned about how men or women behave as a whole from some study. Treat people as individuals and you'll not only feel happier but just do better in your dating life as a whole.