UST Study Determines Average Time You Spend in the Bathroom Before Your Date Starts to Think That You Took a Dump

(Manila, Philippines) – A recent study conducted by the University of Santo Tomas (UST) School of Behavioral Science researchers determined that the average time you spend in the bathroom before your date starts to think that you took a dump is 6 minutes and 37 seconds.

Photo: University of Santo Tomas Main Building

The study, led by UST graduate students Crispin Manalastas and Evelyn Castro and published in the latest issue of Trends in Cognitive Sciences, involved a blind test of 487 male and 518 female university students from around Metro Manila, the largest of its kind to study behavioral patterns concerning the subject of taking a shit during a date.

The researchers strived to understand how members of both sexes perceive the time their dates excuse themselves to answer the call of nature. “We believe that this issue has vexed both male and female participants in the dating scene,” said Castro. “We have also wondered ourselves, and now we have a definite answer.”

The study is particularly unique due to its large data set, according to Manalastas. The researchers used two existing data sets of time spent sitting on the toilet seat and combined them using artificial intelligence (AI), allowing them to gain valuable insights about the undesirability of moving your bowels while on a date, noted Ruth Villanueva, professor of behavioral science in UST and adviser to the project.

“Many people usually do not think that the length of time we spend in the bathroom matters about how our date judge our attractiveness,” Castro said.

“We believe this perception is inaccurate because the length of time we spend away from our object of interest–especially if it was spent taking a crap–decreases our perceived ability to procreate, reliability to protect our love interest and over-all desirability.”

The study also highlights the difference between how men and women perceive the length of time their dates were away. Men need only be gone for 5 minutes 4 seconds before their date starts to think they evacuated their bowels, while it took longer–7 minutes 53 seconds–for women.

This difference comes from the female sex perceiving more danger the longer her suitor-protector is away, opines Manalastas.

Also, human evolutionary instinct that evolved from our hunter-gatherer past insinuates that members of the male sex who cannot help answering nature’s call in the most inconvenient situations are comparatively less reliable because they could easily be killed by a predator while in the process of dropping their load, according to Castro.

The study further determined that for men on their first date, when their date thinks that they moved their bowels while they were away, their probability of securing a second date decreases by an average of 72 percent.

Given this clearer understanding of the correlation between the act of crapping and unattractiveness, Castro believes the choice of food and beverage during a date should be treated with utmost importance. She recommends consuming dishes that are well cooked, and avoiding raw or spicy food. Asians in particular, who are more likely to be lactose intolerant, should eschew milk, and those with highly irritable stomach should avoid caffeinated beverages.

Manalastas and Castro further recommend that in case answering nature’s call is imperative, wait until the very last moment to excuse yourself, drop your load in the most inconspicuous and expeditious way possible, and be back at the table no later than five minutes, just to be on the safe side of the evolutionary tree.

This study was co-authored by Mark Francis Mañoso, faculty member at Polytechnic University of the Philippines; Jennylyn Lopez, a researcher at the Advanced Science and Technology Institute; and Sarah Jane Dimagiba, department chair of Biological Sciences at the University of the Philippines Los Baños campus.