Your dealbreakers do more work than your wish list

People spend hours specifying a person they have not met. Across six studies and more than 6,500 participants, the traits they wanted to avoid weighed more than the traits they hoped to find.

The wish list feels like the serious document. The research says the stop-rules are doing more of the deciding.

What the paper actually measured

In 2015, Jonason, Garcia, Webster, Li, and Fisher published Relationship dealbreakers: traits people avoid in potential mates in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (volume 41, pages 1697 to 1711). PubMed: 26445853. A PDF of the paper is posted on Li's faculty page.

Mate-preference research, they argued, had spent most of its time on dealmakers: the traits people say they want. They asked about the other end. Dealbreakers were bits of information that might make you lose interest in a potential partner.

They ran six studies. College samples listed and then rated dealbreakers for short-term and long-term contexts. A nationally representative sample of U.S. singles chose from a fixed list. Later studies tested how interest moved when people learned something negative, and how interest moved when the mix of pluses and minuses changed.

The content clustered. Undesirable personality, unhealthy lifestyle, and a mating strategy that did not match yours showed up as the load-bearing kinds of no. Those clusters were stronger when people were considering a long-term relationship than a short-term one. People who rated themselves as more desirable as a partner reported more dealbreakers. People more open to uncommitted sex reported fewer, especially in a short-term context.

Women rated dealbreakers more strongly than men, mostly for short-term partners, and in the national sample below they listed more of them. The differences were modest.

The traits people wanted to avoid pulled harder than the traits they hoped to find.

Losses pulled harder than gains

When people learned something negative about a potential partner, interest dropped more than it rose when they learned something positive. In the last study, the researchers varied the mix of pluses and minuses a person was described as having. People were more willing to start something as the pluses rose, which is unsurprising. But each added negative moved the rating more than each added positive. The authors read that as prospect theory (losses loom larger than gains) and as error management (taking on a bad partner is treated as costlier than passing up a good one).

That effect was stronger for women than for men, and stronger for people already in a committed relationship than for people who were not. If you already have a partner, you can afford a harder no. If you do not, the paper's own reading is that you can afford less pickiness. Across all six studies, the average dealbreaker hurt more than the average dealmaker helped.

What singles actually marked

Study 3 is the one with a broad adult sample. The data came from the 2011 Singles in America survey, sponsored by Match.com and not drawn from Match members. MarketTools recruited a nationally representative panel of singles, including people who were separated, divorced, or widowed. 5,541 people, aged 21 to 76 and older, were asked which items from a list of 17 would be dealbreakers in a committed relationship. They could mark as many as they wanted.

The most-selected items included a disheveled or unclean appearance (67 percent), being lazy (66 percent), and being too needy (63 percent). People marked about six items on average. Women marked more than men.

That is what people ticked on a form they were handed, and "choose all that apply" surfaces the vivid, easy nos. It cannot tell you which of them would still be a no after a good third date. Some answers in the earlier studies are serious on their own: already married, currently dating several people, a health issue such as an STI, abuse. Some of the Study 3 list is preference noise. Only you can sort those.

Nobody in these studies was followed into a real relationship. They measured how people rated hypothetical partners, mostly in college samples, not who people dated or stayed with. A person can tick "lazy" on a survey and later fall for someone who leaves dishes in the sink.

Where the wish list fails you

If negatives already outweigh positives, the expensive habit is not "having dealbreakers." It is spending your attention on a portrait of a person who does not exist.

The wish list is usually a pile of dealmakers: funny, ambitious, the right height, the right hobbies. That pile is soothing to write. The 2015 paper says it is the weaker instrument. The stronger instrument is the short list of things that would actually end it.

Most of those are not vibe. They are structure. Whether you want children. Whether you want monogamy. Whether faith is part of a shared life. Whether you can live in the same place. You can add a personal no that you have already watched ruin a relationship: contempt, or a relationship with alcohol you cannot live beside. Past that, you are specifying a stranger.

A long trait list also pretends you can predict chemistry in advance. Researchers have been trying to do that from self-reported traits and preferences, and the pairing they could not predict was the one you care about. You are better at knowing what would stop you than at knowing who you will want.

A sudden turn-off over a mannerism is a different object again. We wrote about that split in what the first study on the ick actually found. An ick can feel like a dealbreaker in the body. It is not automatically one on paper.

How to use a short list

Write the handful that would actually end it. Children, monogamy, faith, and location cover most of the structural ones. If something else has already ended a relationship for you, it can go on the list. If you cannot name it as a reason you would leave, it is a preference, and it can wait until you have met the person.

Stop adding traits. "Kind" and "funny" are fine as hopes. They are a poor filter. They are also the side of the ledger the paper says does less work.

Do not outsource the list to a mood. A bad week will expand your nos. A lonely week will shrink them. The useful list is the one you would still defend after a good night of sleep.

Believe a real stop-rule when it shows up. If they want children and you do not, that is the 2015 finding doing its job. Staying to see whether the wish-list traits can outvote it is the mistake the asymmetry warns you about.

On Bloom, every preference filter is free, so the short list costs nothing to apply.

Write the shorter list

The wish list will keep growing because it is pleasant to edit. The dealbreaker list is shorter, less flattering, and, in these studies, the one that moved the decision. Write that one, and let the rest of the person show up in person.