ONE2ONE MAGAZINE -- Sept 15 -- ARTICLE BY MARK BROOKS, ONLINE PERSONALS WATCH EDITOR/BLOGGER -- Which of these people would you trust with probably the most important decision you'll ever make? Dr Warren of eHarmony is a clinical psychologist with a theology background and 30 years of counseling experience. Dr Houran of TRUE is a young clinical psychologist with 15 years counseling experience and many journal papers to his name. Then we have the sociologist Dr Pepper Schwartz of PerfectMatch.
SIMILAR/COMPLEMENTARY: eHarmony matches on similarities whilst PerfectMatch offers you a choice. You can see people who are similar to you, and also people who are complementary to you. TRUE is mainly focused on matching you with people who have complementary traits.
MAGIC BOX: eHarmony does the searching for you. PerfectMatch and TRUE take alternative approaches. You have more visibility and control over the way you are matched and the speed at which you can get out on a date. PerfectMatch and TRUE also offer instant messaging which eHarmony doesn't favor. Both TRUE and PerfectMatch are less decisive, and more open box rather than magic box. Dr Pepper Schwartz of PerfectMatch commented, "I'm a sociologist, not a deity."
ON CHEMISTRY: Cupid.com CEO, Eric Straus argues that chemistry can only be gauged in the real world, by meeting and getting eyeball to eyeball. "There's no mathematical formula to love," affirms Abe Smilowitz, CEO of WebDate.com. "You can't qualify love by doing a profile analysis. Love is about feelings and a persons emotions." On the other hand Pat Dines, CEO of Mary.com argues, "chemistry works in unison with long term compatibility. Compatibility tests simply identify who you are compatible to be friends with. You need to meet many 'compatible' people to find chemistry." Dr Glenn Wilson is one of the fathers of compatibility testing and states, "[Compatibility testing] will not tell you whether or not you are going to fall in love with another person in a compulsive, 'chemical' way, just whether or not it is a good idea if you do."
Imagine, you walk into your favorite coffee shop, bar or club and meet someone that you click with. You spend the next six months with them, only to find you're COMPLETELY incompatible. Would you have had a better time with someone who was a 'good match.' How about the perfect match? Relationship based online personals sites hold high promise. They are new. They are still experimenting. Dr Houran confirmed, "we're in the infancy of compatibility testing." FULL ARTICLE @ ONE2ONE MAGAZINE
Mark Brooks: ONE2ONE Living (available on Amazon) is a magazine for the singles lifestyle...'Fuel for the single life: entertainment, travel, culture, events, style, dating.' I thought Halle Berry's quote in the latest magazine was fascinating. "I'll never get married again, and I always hate to say never to anything, but I will never marry again... I want love and I'll find it hopefully and have a committed relationship, but no more marriages." These attitude is fueling the decline in number of people getting married... and the future success and growth of the online personals industry.
At the United States there are many Psychologists (PhD) researching on
THEORIES OF ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS DEVELOPMENT
You could see
"Personality, Family History, and Competence in Early Adult Romantic Relationships"
http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp883562.pdf
and
"The Big Five and Enduring Marriages"
Journal of Research in Personality, 38, 481-504.
http://athens.pop.psu.edu/allen/FacPubsByFac.cfm
also
http://www.uwsp.edu/news/pr/chFraniuk.htm
http://www.tcnj.edu/~bethpaul/srcd/index.htm
http://www.uky.edu/~drlane/capstone/interpersonal/reldev.html
http://www.publicpolicyresearch.net/documents/internet_romance.pdf
Unfortunately, NOT ALL Psychologists (PhD) agree between themselves!!!
Actually, I noticed that many users / subscribers (to sites that use proprietary tests or models) complaint about an actual big problem in "scientific dating and matchmaking": lack of precision / low precision / low successful matching rates. It seems that proprietary tests or models have great precision in measuring different psychological variables but the matching algorithm has low precision when comparing one psycho-pattern to others.
The MEDICINE: more power calculation and better matching algorithms to increase successful matching rates (will require ADVANCED MATH & STATISTICAL EQUATIONS, NOT only multiple/simple linear regression equations, root-mean-square error of approximation (RMSEA), comparative fit index (CFI) etc.).
OnLine Dating Sites and their Big Databases are NEW sources for scientific research.
New Knowledge is waiting to be discovered inside these Big Databases!!!
Kindest Regards,
Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
[email protected]
Posted by: Fernando Ardenghi | Sep 16, 2005 at 04:57 PM
Other links to papers that could be of great interest!!!
"Psychopathology and Marital Satisfaction: The Importance of Evaluating Both Partners"
http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/ccp725830.pdf
"Seventy Years of Research on Personality ........"
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/content/BPL_Images/Journal_Samples/JOPY0022-3506~70~6~203/203.pdf
"Two Personalities, One Relationship: Both Partners' Personality Traits Shape the Quality of Their Relationship"
http://psyweb2.ucdavis.edu/experimetrix/robins.pdf
This last; nearly 1.5 Megabytes, takes about 20 minutes to download
Regards,
Fernando Ardenghi
Buenos Aires
Argentina
[email protected]
Posted by: Fernando Ardenghi | Sep 20, 2005 at 03:37 PM