An experimental study examining the best time to send a romantic love message after a first date found that sending a message the next morning resulted in the highest interest in the love interest. Texting right after the date or two days later wasn’t very effective. Women were more sensitive to the effects of text timing than men. The paper was published in. Journal of social and personal relationships.
A first date is the first meeting between two people who express romantic interest in each other. During this time, they form first impressions and evaluate each other for compatibility as potential spouses. A positive experience on the first date increases the likelihood that communication will continue and the two of you will meet again.
However, once the date is over, one of you should initiate continued contact by calling or texting the other person. The exact timing of this continuation is a subject of great debate in popular culture. For example, in the television series How I Met Your Mother, one character advises another character to follow the “three day rule,” suggesting that they should wait three days before asking for a date.
This rule is intended to prevent the person from appearing too eager or needy. On the other hand, waiting too long can give the impression that the person is playing hard to get, which can reduce interest from potential partners.
There’s a lot of debate online about the best time to call or text after a first date. A Google search returns billions of results for “when to text after the first date.” Recommendations range from texting right away to waiting a few days before resuming contact.
Study author Lars Teichmann and his colleagues wanted to scientifically explore the optimal time to text after a first date. They hypothesized that the relationship between text message sending time and dating relationship intentions would be in the shape of an inverted U. In other words, they expected there to be an ideal “sweet spot” for texting that would maximize dating relationship intentions, but that texting before or after this ideal time would produce worse outcomes.
The authors also wanted to investigate the psychological mechanisms underlying this effect and whether gender, attachment style, and uncertainty avoidance moderate this effect. For example, the study authors wanted to test whether delaying a text message would lead individuals to think more about the date (and perceive themselves to have higher “mate value”) compared to a situation where a date message was sent immediately.
The researchers first conducted a preliminary study to determine which time points to include in the experiment. Participants were 100 adults from the US and UK recruited through Prolific, with an average age of 38 years. They were asked to indicate what would be considered “too early” or “too late” as a date for sending a message. On average, participants reported the highest relationship intentions for potential partners who messaged them approximately six hours after the date. Text messages less than 20 minutes from the date are considered too early, and text messages more than 40 hours from the date are considered too late.
The participants in the main experiment were 543 heterosexual men from the US and UK, also recruited through Prolific. The average age was 40 years old, and about half were women.
In an online survey, study participants read a hypothetical scenario of a first date involving dinner at a nice Italian restaurant. The scenario stated that after the date, depending on the experimental group to which you were randomly assigned, you would either text your date immediately after they broke up, text them the next morning, or text them two days later. (The actual content of the text messages remained hidden to isolate timing effects).
Study participants then reported their relationship intentions for that date (“I intend to form a long-term relationship with my date”), the degree of compatibility they felt, and how motivated they were to get back in touch with that date.
They also reported on their own perceptions of relative mate value (“Overall, how would the opposite sex rate your likeability as a partner compared to your date?”), need for dating, reciprocity (“My date really liked me”), and dating reliability. Finally, participants completed ratings of their own attachment style and uncertainty avoidance.
The results support the researchers’ “inverted U” hypothesis, which found that sending text messages the morning after a date was associated with the highest levels of relationship intent. Those who received a text message immediately after the date reported slightly lower relationship intentions, while those who received a text message two days later reported the lowest overall relationship intention.
Regarding perceived compatibility and actual motivation to meet again, the results showed a negative linear trend. Participants who received text messages immediately or the next morning felt higher levels of compatibility and motivation, but waiting two days significantly lost the romantic atmosphere.
By analyzing psychological mechanisms, researchers discovered why the next morning is most effective. Sending a text early in the day (immediately or the next morning) indicates higher reciprocity (shows that the person likes you) and higher trustworthiness. On the contrary, the strategy of “trying to get it” has completely failed. Waiting two days did not increase the sender’s value or make the receiver think more about the sender. It just made them look untrustworthy and uncaring.
As expected, dates who texted immediately were perceived as extremely needy. But while this straitjacket prevented me from hitting that optimal “sweet spot” the next morning, it didn’t completely ruin my chances.
Overall, men had a higher underlying motivation to reconnect and build a relationship than women, and men were far less affected by the timing of their text messages. However, women are very sensitive to timing. Interestingly, although gender played a large role in how the timing of the text was perceived, the researchers found that the participants’ attachment style and uncertainty avoidance had no effect on the results at all.
“Our data suggest that while texting early is beneficial, delaying texting until the next morning not only maintains the positive effects of being perceived as interesting and trustworthy, but also strengthens the target’s relationship intentions. However, waiting too long can have harmful backfire effects,” the study authors conclude.
This study contributes to scientific understanding of the psychological dynamics of dating. However, it should be noted that participants were responding to a hypothetical scenario. Behavior in real-world situations where the actual content of text messages, tone, and use of emojis are visible can change these dynamics. Additionally, dating behavior is highly dependent on cultural norms, so findings in non-Western cultures may be different.
The paper, “How text message timing sparks romantic interest after the first date: The curvilinear U-shaped effect and its underlying mechanisms,” was authored by Lars Teichmann, Hannes M. Petrovsky, Lee Bocker, Maykel Soliman, and David D. Roschelder.
