Online Dating As Scientific Research

nytimes.com:

THERE are millions of Americans seeking love on the Internet. Little do they know that teams of scientists are eagerly watching them trying to find it.

Like contemporary Margaret Meads, these scholars have gathered data from dating sites like Match.com, OkCupid and Yahoo! Personals to study attraction, trust, deception -- even the role of race and politics in prospective romance.

They have observed, for instance, that many daters would rather admit to being fat than liberal or conservative, that white people are reluctant to date outside their race and that there are ways to detect liars. Such findings spring from attempts to answer a broader question that has bedeviled humanity since Adam and Eve: how and why do people fall in love?

Read the whole story: nytimes.com

Comments

[nimphy10]

01:17 AM on 01/10/2012

I like your post about Online dating As Scientific Research ..............Assume

[bloomchristina]

04:38 PM on 11/18/2011

I’m the Founder and CEO of a new website called Find Your FaceMate. We use facial
recognition technology to identify partners more likely to ignite real passion. The New York Times article confuses "same" with race....Cosmopolitan also had a recent story about this phenomenon. I have been studying couples for over 20 years and I’m convinced that this is mostly related to the shape of the face.

Studies have shown that people are attracted to others who look similar to themselves. I have seen over and over again that people will fall in love outside their race/ethnicity if they find a partner with similar facial features. It is not about being the same ethnicity or race... "Falling in love" is meeting someone who has similar facial features. Of course values and personality come into play after the chemistry is recognized.
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[AKansasComment]

01:45 PM on 11/17/2011

When I thought I'd try online match ups, all my friends said "Don't bother. They all use old photos." I tried anyway, communicated with someone I thought I really liked, but when I met him I realized his photo was 18 years old. I hardly recognized him. That was the end of that.

[madcityy]

01:37 PM on 11/14/2011

?????????????????????????????????

[SAG10]

12:09 PM on 11/14/2011

It's so difficult to accurately reveal yourself on a dating website, so it's no surprise that people are selective about how they represent themselves. Has anyone used a dating agent from Personal Dating Agent or anywhere else to help with online dating?

[jf12]

09:03 AM on 11/14/2011

I'll condense the results: women lie about a lot more things than men, by a much bigger amount (e.g. weight by 9 lbs compared to 2 lbs), and more often. And women tend to expect to be able to attract a man out of her league (e.g. taller, handsomer, wealthier) more than she really can, and much much more often than men expect out of their league.

[Dede Eagleburger]

11:23 AM on 11/14/2011

As usual I learned a lot just from reading your posts :) I am kinda glad I got out of the online dating thing entirely...the weight thing is no surprise at all, none of us ever want to own our weight, or step on a scale if we can avoid it! As far as the 'out of our league' part, well, why shouldn't you try to do the best you can? I know too many people who settled and now are unhappy and feeling like they are stuck...

[jf12]

11:48 AM on 11/14/2011

I try! Oftentimes numbers tell a better story to me than words, but I can translate well. The other interesting figures were that 21% of new heterosexual couples connected online, compared to three times as many new homosexual couples. I can figure out that
1) the lying women aren't lying believably enough, since they still attract the same moronic bozos they don't want
2) men lying to inflate their league would seem to be a much better strategy than women lying, but men don't do it
3) the differences among most men are smaller than the differences among most women, but men don't really care

[J R M]

08:12 AM on 11/14/2011

There is no point significantly misrepresenting yourself in an on-line ad. Once you meet the misrepresentations will be revealed and if you are going for a long term relationship, utterly obvious. Misrepresentations may increase the number of first contacts, but are unlikely to help with 2d and later contacts.