Women told:
Men on a date hate competition from a woman's mobile, says study
Paying more attention to your mobile phone than to your opposite number on a first date is one of the best ways for a woman to ensure there won't be a second date, suggests a poll of single Britons.
Men are over four times as likely as women to name such behaviour their biggest turn-off on a first date -- according to a poll of 541 singletons conducted by YouGov on behalf of Craigslist (www.craigslist.co.uk), the free classified ads website used by a growing number of Brits for internet dating.
Over a fifth (21%) of single men identified it as "the most off-putting kind of behaviour" on a first date, compared to just 5% of single women.
Why?
"Men feel a great need to perform on a date", says Andrew Marshall, a relationship therapist and author of the book, "I Love You But I'm Not IN Love With You: Seven Steps To Saving Your Relationship".
"On a date, it's as if the man's the performer and the woman's the audience. And when you go to a play or film these days, what the audience is always told is: 'switch off your mobiles'."
Men are also more competitive, adds Andrew Marshall, whose next book is on singles. "Their self-esteem is built on people laughing at their jokes. Look at their behaviour in a group, where the man who has centre stage is the alpha male. There's nothing worse when you're trying to perform than not having your audience's full attention."
YouGov asked 541 single Brits to identify the kind of behaviour they would find most off-putting about the other person on a first date.
The only option that outscored "Paying more attention to their mobile than to me (e.g. repeatedly taking, making calls, reading or sending texts or emails)" was "bad personal hygiene, grooming or odour" (28%). But the latter was something that both genders found almost equally off-putting.
Singletons as a whole rated "paying more attention to their mobile than to me, etc" (12%), a far bigger turn-off than the likes of "making repeated sexual references, innuendoes or suggestive comments (8%)", "asking to sleep with me at the end of the date" (7%), and "producing a calculator when the bill comes" (2%).
The mobile phone option was not the only one to divide the genders:
• Women were six times as likely as men to name their biggest turn-off as "Asking or expecting to sleep with me at the end of the first date" - named by 12% of women, compared to 2% of men.
• Men were three times as likely as women to identify their biggest turn-off as "Talking too much about their previous girlfriend/ boyfriend, spouse or partner" - named by 6% of men, compared to just 2% of women. This supports the theory that men are more competitive.
• Women were almost twice as likely as men to name their biggest turn-off as "Putting me down/ making jokes/comments at my expense" - named by 9% of women but just 5% of men.
The results of the Craigslist poll follow hard on the news that the new "A - Z of Modern Manners", compiled by Debrett's, the arbiter of etiquette, devotes an entire page to slamming "the horrors of the public Blackberry" and the ill-manners of those - generally, as it happens, more men than women - who are forever casting furtive public glances at their mobile phones.