We ran an experiment in November 2025–January 2026 where different Matchbox events used different methods of “revealing the matches”. Half of the events distributed their matches via a simultaneous text message, which lit up everyone’s phone at the same time with the name of their match. The other half of events received their matches via a simultaneous countdown timer, which ticked down the seconds until everyone’s matches were revealed all at once.
The results were unambiguous: the countdown method improved match satisfaction by +9% on an absolute scale. No changes had been made to any other part of the experience.
In fact, the countdown didn’t just improve people’s impressions of their matches—it improved every single impression they took away from the experience(!)
From (Not at all <> Definitely!), here’s how switching to countdown affected people’s impressions 1 day later:
| Question | Per guest (abs.) | Per event (abs.) | Event %ile (rel.) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Did you vibe with your match? | +9.3% | +6.0% | +9.9% |
| My match made sense to me | +7.2% | +4.5% | +6.0% |
| I had a lot of fun with Matchbox | +6.5% | +4.9% | +8.2% |
| [guests] I liked the set of questions selected | +6.9% | +5.6% | +7.7% |
| [hosts] Matchbox was really easy to set up and use | +4.0% | +4.0% | +3.8% |
404 reviews of 247 free events, November 20, 2025 to January 5, 2026. Every effect but the hosts’ is significant at p < .01.
The percentage of people who said they’d LOVE to use Matchbox again went up from 38.8% to 45.3%, crossing Superhuman’s 40% threshold for beloved products.
It’s impossible to ascribe these outcomes to just one mechanism. The sleeker design of the countdown compared to the text message may have contributed.
But we believe the primary mechanism was what we call the misattribution of arousal. When your heart rate gets going, and your body becomes physically aroused (no matter the original cause—whether you’re standing on a high suspension bridge, you’re about to talk to your crush, or you’re simply anticipating the end of a countdown), you rationalize these symptoms post-hoc. People don’t realize it, but they end up more excited to meet their match, and they even “vibe with their match” a lot better simply because of the way the product was designed.
This might seem obvious after-the-fact, but it’s a revolutionary outcome. These effects are so powerful they show up with this magnitude a full day after matches were introduced. This is why how matches are introduced gets careful consideration in any product we make.