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Kathryn's Blog: Technology, Academia, and Dating
This sounds SO ridiculous to me: Getting matched based on your DNA? Come on,now, folks. What does your DNA have to do with love and attraction and long-term relationships? Don’t get sucked into this one.
From the Washington Post:
Ok, We Have Our First DNA-Based Dating Service: GenePartner
Tuesday, July 22, 2008; 1:48 AM
It was only a matter of time before someone launched a dating site that looks for potential matches based on DNA compatibility. That time is apparently today with the launch of GenePartner (ok, it’s not the first, but it’s the cheapest).
The Switzerland-based company says they can use a $199 DNA test (compare to $1,000 for 23andMe) to help you find your perfect match, statistically speaking. They’ve analyzed “hundreds of couples” and have determined the genetic patterns found in successful relationships. Based on their algorithm and your DNA, they’ll determine the probability for a satisfying and long-lasting relationship between two people (color me skeptical).
What about romance? Chemistry? That certain je ne sais quoi when you meet someone and get a tingling sensation in your stomach? Forget it. The future of dating is DNA tests and buccal swabs, so get used to it:
A brush for collecting your DNA sample from your saliva ? called a buccal swab kit ? will be sent to your address. Following the simple instructions included with the kit you will gently collect the DNA from the inside of your cheek. Use the addressed envelope supplied for returning the brushes.
GenePartner is looking to partner with dating sites and have those services encourage users to see if they’re a DNA match.
Will they be able to avoid tough emerging U.S. laws around genetic testing? Well, they’re in Switzerland. My guess is they’re not going to be too worried about California and other state laws prohibiting their service.
From the Roanoke Times:
What your DNA can (and can’t) tell you about you
Mehmet and Mike are happily married. No, not to each other. To two wonderful ladies (one each, of course). But if they weren’t and they lived, say, near Boston, a peculiar dating service might arouse their curiosity.
For $1,995.95, a company called ScientificMatch.-com claims that if you crack open its special kit, rub a cotton swab on the insides of your cheeks and ship the swab to its lab, that the company will use the DNA it collects to find your soul mate.
The company examines the genes that relate to your immune system—technically, the genes in your major histocompatibility complex—to match you with another member of the dating service who has a very different MHC makeup.
Studies suggest that people are more likely to feel that romantic lightning-in-a-bottle called “chemistry” when they have genetically dissimilar immune systems. (One theory suggests that blending diverse genes gives children stronger immune systems, so it’s an evolutionary advantage.)
This matchmaking venture is just one of dozens of consumer-based genetic testing services that have popped up in recent years. Many others promise to look into your DNA and tell you whether you’re susceptible to certain medical disorders. For about $1,000 and up (not covered by health insurance), services such as 23andMe, Navigenics, Genelex, deCODE Genetics and others will scan your DNA for gene markers linked to heart disease, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, certain cancers and more. Other tests claim to identify nutritional deficiencies and then provide diet advice.
Beyond these pricey services, many over-the-counter DNA test kits are now sold in drugstores for as little as $30. Send in your swab and, for an additional $200 and up, they’ll test your DNA for markers of lupus, sickle cell anemia, depression, glaucoma, celiac disease, cystic fibrosis, high blood iron ... the list goes on.
Are they legitimate? In the case of romantic bliss, we have seen the studies linking diverse MHC with sexual attraction in animals and humans.
But we also know that these limited studies—like nearly all research involving genetic testing—probably reveal only a tiny part of a complex process that nobody truly understands yet. So we’d take any advice from ScientificMatch.com (or any other personal DNA-mapping or -matching service) with a grain of salt the size of a Volkswagen.
Gene testing is an amazing tool. Mapping the human genome has yielded powerful new weapons against cancers of the breast, ovaries, colon, prostate and others.
In fact, we have colleagues who refer people for testing for the BRCA 1 and 2 breast-cancer genes every week. For adopted children, gene testing may be the only way to acquire valuable medical information. These tests are conducted by certified laboratories and interpreted by physicians who can help patients decipher and use the findings.
Also, while research has identified genes that contribute to about 1,400 diseases or disorders, so far most of these provide only preliminary clues. And with certain diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, genetic mutations don’t always mean you’ll get a disease. So you really need a counselor help you interpret the results.
The Food and Drug Administration doesn’t regulate the quality of the counseling you get after using one of these consumer DNA tests. These kits could give you helpful information, or leave you feeling falsely safe or needlessly scared. Before trying one, start with these steps:
n Thoroughly discuss your family medical history with your doctor, going back to your grandparents. This can yield vital information. Counselors should ask for this history; if they don’t, you need a different laboratory and counselor.
n If you decide to go ahead, be sure that the company keeps your test results confidential. A recent federal law prohibits job or health insurance discrimination based on genetic tests, but we’re still in uncharted legal territory.
n Review the test results with your doctor or a certified genetic counselor (ask your doc for a referral), not just a rep from the testing company, especially before buying pricey supplements or additional services.
Comment on posting on OnlinePersonalsWatch:
When you take a healthy objective and critical look at these claims of “chemistry” related to DNA matching, one quickly realizes that there’s nothing substantive there to back them up. In fact, some companies have no grasp of the very research they tout to justify their methods.
However, my team has volunteered pro bono to conduct a real-world test of at least one company’s claims. The double-blind experiment would then be submitted for academic publication. It’s disappointing, but not that surprising, that this particular company desperately avoided this offer.
Interested reporters are encouraged to contact me for full details.
As an industry insider and respected compatibility researcher, my professional opinion is that consumers should stay away from DNA dating (and save money on these costly services) until real-world validation studies on their services prove they actually predict relationship quality.
Thanks,
James Houran, Ph.D.
OnlineDatingMagazine.com
Barry Schwartz in “the Paradox of Choice” wrote about the phenomenon the following article describes, the dilemma of having too many choices. Dating sites, the big ones particularly, can overwhelm you with numbers of possible mates. Developing good search techniques is key to keeping overwhelm at bay. What I think the researchers miss here is while getting the numbers of choices down to reasonable is important, having a large pool to draw from is preferable. Particularly when you are older and probably choosier. I’d go for Match or Yahoo! any day. The more to pick from, the more likely a good match.
Online Dating: Where Technology and Evolution Collide
When searching for a soul mate, you might think that the more options, the better. But the rise of technology – notably, the Internet – has thrown a wedge in that perception.
The Internet offers us an abundance of options when selecting everything from bicycles to mates that is unprecedented in human history. Although we may think that the extra options are good, new research has shown that we may be more satisfied when choosing from fewer options – and we may not even be cognitively equipped to correct this misconception.
Throughout most of human history, we’ve had significantly fewer options for choosing a mate, and so we would strongly welcome any additional options when they came along. For instance, when our neocortex was developing, in part to deal with social networks, the average human group consisted of roughly 150 individuals. Healthy group members of reproductive age of the opposite sex would total about 35 – slim pickings, by the Internet’s standards.
Because we developed in this kind of social environment, we have a tendency to desire ever more options. That’s why, for example, people are enticed by dating Web site Match.com’s offer of “millions of possibilities.” But, as a team of researchers has shown in a recent study, this abundance of options may not make the chooser feel or choose any better than a pool of just a half dozen or so options. Psychologist Alison Lenton from the University of Edinburgh, Barbara Fasolo from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and cognitive scientist Peter Todd from Indiana University have presented their findings on this subject in a recent issue of IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication.
As the researchers explain, people tend to anticipate that they’ll feel better about “shopping for a mate” when there is a large number of options. However, in actuality, people feel equally good when faced with few as opposed to many options. The scientists performed two experiments demonstrating this clash between anticipation and experience.
In their first experiment, the researchers asked 88 participants (with an average age of 22) what they thought was the ideal number of potential mates to choose from, with a range between 1 and 5,000 options. Participants judged each set (very small to very large) of potential mates on four criteria: expected difficulty of making a selection, anticipated satisfaction with their decision, anticipated regret after making their decision, and expected enjoyment of the selection process.
On average, participants predicted that they would be overall most satisfied when selecting from about 20-50 possible mates. So, in the second experiment, the researchers investigated how satisfied people were when choosing a mate from this range compared with the less favored fewer options. Interestingly, they found that participants who chose from 20 personal profiles had roughly similar experiences compared with participants who had to pick from just four profiles. Also, participants’ actual experiences when faced with four options were significantly better than anticipated.
As the researchers summarized, “the expected preference for the larger set-size in terms of more enjoyment and satisfaction and less regret did not materialize.” Instead, there is a significant mismatch between what people think they will feel and what they actually feel, the team concluded.
Misjudgment of an optimal number of options has been observed in several other situations besides choosing a mate. Generally, the greatest disadvantages when having more options include being more frustrated by the complexity of the selection process, sometimes not making a selection at all, and experiencing decreased satisfaction and increased regret after making a selection. (When you’re faced with a million possibilities, you have a much smaller chance of picking the “right” one than if you had to pick from just four.)
The study also offers suggestive evidence that people aren’t paying very close attention to all of the various information provided in the profiles when they have many profiles to sift through and, thus, they might be missing out on interesting/suitable potential mates in this choice context.
“The information overload result was well known to consumer researchers since the ‘70s,” Fasolo told PhysOrg.com. “But the context was always consumer – a bit artificial and more ‘novel’ in an evolutionary sense. It was not at all obvious that the same result would occur in the more naturalistic context of mate choice. True, we are examining a more modern mate choice world – not sequential encounters in the jungle, but simultaneous fast-paced encounters with men zooming from one café table to the next – to which humans are relatively less accustomed (though lekking animals are). So, all in all, I would say that the fact that greater variety backfired even in the context of mate choice was non-obvious.”
Researchers have previously tried to explain our misjudgment of option number in evolutionary terms. At the time our brains were evolving to deal with making decisions, humans rarely had too many options to deal with. Therefore, we’re not adapted to deal with the excessive numbers of choices available today. The Internet, which has no physical space limitations, presents us with a problem that never existed for our ancestors. (As the researchers note, about 1% of the 600,000,000 people who use the Internet visit online dating sites.)
After millions of years of seeking more variety under conditions where variety was relatively limited, it may be very difficult to persuade people that more isn’t always better. For one thing, people may not have a point of comparison where they can experience the benefits of fewer options. Also, recognition of the disadvantages may not come until much later on.
Further, even if we do learn from our experiences, it may not matter much. Research has shown that people’s expectations, rather than previous actual experiences, play a larger role in determining whether they will participate in the same event in the future.
In light of these findings, the researchers suggest that Web designers of online dating sites consider this contrast and try to appease people’s desire for more options while making it easier to narrow down large sets. Currently, some sites do the opposite: when a search results yields fewer than 50 (or more, in some cases) profiles, the site encourages users to broaden their search criteria. Instead, the researchers encourage developers to keep in mind that they must balance people’s desire for more choices with the knowledge that giving people such choices may lead them to evaluate potential mates in a more superficial way.
“I find it interesting (and a bit worrying) that the underestimation of the costs of too much choice which we (and other consumer researchers alike) find plagues not just the daters, but the designers of dating Web sites,” Fasolo said. “If we want people to make sensible choices, researchers need to ‘nudge’ (to say it with Thaler and Sunstein) dating Web site designers towards simpler and more manageable Web sites.”
More information: Lenton, Alison P.; Fasolo, Barbara; and Todd, Peter M. “’Shopping’ for a Mate: Expected versus Experienced Preferences in Online Mate Choice.” IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, Vol. 51, No. 2, June 2008.
If you’ve ever thought of using a web cam (come on, now, who hasn’t?) but didn’t know how to start, here’s just the advice you need in the article below. Fess up now, who has used a web cam and kept it clean?
Microsoft and sex expert Tracey Cox’s top tips for hot webcamming action this V-day
By Katherine Hannaford Tech Digest
To support the launch of Microsoft’s new range of webcams - the VX-7000, VX-6000, NX-6000 and NX-3000 - Tracey and her heaving bosoms want you to know that you should always… Check whats in view People will make assumptions about you simply by looking at the things you own, so make sure everything in view sends the signals you want to send. If youre keen to promote a certain image - like be seen as intelligence, for instance, make sure a pile of books are in view. If you want to be seen as artistic, put a painting directly behind you.
Along with…
Be friendly It sounds obvious but there is a temptation to play it cool for fear of appearing too keen. This can (sometimes) work in the flesh but it doesnt translate well on a webcam. The more you smile, the more theyre going to like you. If you insist on using the treat em mean, keep em keen stuff, save it for when youre actually out on a date. We like people who like us. Simple as that.
Make them laugh The joy of being able to see each other as youre chatting means you can use humour, irony and innuendo without fear of it being misinterpreted - which often happens with text or email. Its impossible to take something the wrong way if you can see its delivered with a big, cheeky grin!
Use the camera to reveal the different sides of you Obviously, youll want to look your best the first time you chat via the webcam, but dont be afraid to let them see you looking less than perfect. Revealing different looks gives you dimension.
Look animated and expressive Give good face! Popular people tend to have animated faces and make a steady stream of expressions when theyre talking or listening. Not only do facial expressions liven up our own stories, they also let other people know the effect theirs are having on us. A lot of expressions are infectious - it really is a case of smile and the world smiles with you!
Watch your body language Dont slouch - youll look lazy and uninterested - and if youre nervous, watch what youre doing with your hands. Also be careful about camera angles. Try out your webcam with a trusted friend first, getting them to check its in a flattering position. Practise tilting your chin down and lifting it up, getting them to tell you which is most becoming.
Dont cross your arms Before you jump in with a (defensive) Its comfortable, thats all, let me agree with you. But while some people do in fact cross their arms for comfort, just about all of us adopt this position when we feel defensive, protective, angry, threatened or plain scared. It sends negative signals, so dont chance it. While were on the subject, if youre female and body conscious, resist the urge to hug a pillow. Itll make you look both childish and insecure.
Write down a few ideas of what to talk about before you chat Funny things which have happened that day, something interesting you heard on the newsIf you get suddenly tongue-tied, a quick glance at the list saves you from awkward silences. Keep conversations reasonably light-hearted at the start - its fine to go deeper later but ideally youd save serious topics for when you meet up.
Compliment but not too much When someone tells us were sexy, funny, bright - whatever - it has the optimum effect the first time its said. Keep harping on it and you not only dilute the compliment, you also get the opposite reaction to the one intended: instead of liking you, they find you annoying!
Does he fancy you? Watch to see if hes smoothing or messing up his hair. Guys do this involuntarily if theyre keen, trying to look their best. Also check out how hes sitting. If hes keen, hell tend to sit with his legs open, giving you a crotch display. Its a subliminal Me Tarzan, you Jane gesture, highlighting hes got something you dont Does she fancy you? Women also tend to play with their hair or smooth their clothes, in an effort to look their best. If she tilts her head to the side, its a sign shes interested in what youre saying. Its also good news if she massages her neck or her hands start to glide over her arms and neck. This is called autoerotic touching: shes touching herself where she thinks youd love to!
Use we as soon as you possibly can Were great at this arent we!, or Well have to get used to chatting this way. Linking the two of you conversationally subliminally plants the idea of linking up in other ways. Another great word to use often: you. Instead of Anyway, I was talking about, say Anyway, as I was telling you. Including you makes people feel youre talking to them specifically and it pushes the pride button. The word to use least of all is I. Youll sound selfish if every sentence starts with it.
I just don’t get it. People now complain that Internet dating takes too much time, the process is too slow and time-consuming, too much work, blah blah blah. Man, have we gotten spoiled or what? Internet dating is not even 15 years old yet (Match.com started in 1995), has evolved with breakneck speed, particularly since 9/11/2001, is the greatest thing that has ever happened to romance, EVER, and we bitch? Don’t you remember how hard meeting ANYONE was prior to online dating? People now go from no dates in years to six in a month or even a week! What’s to complain about?
Well, as will happen, when a need is identified, a solution will be invented. Who knew that we needed garbage bags?
Onto the stage comes CrazyBlindDate.com. Looks like it is a branch of OKCupid in beta, and it looks like it helps if you are in Austin, Boston, NYC, or San Francisco, but by going through a bit of a sign up process, you could be on a blind date in 15 minutes. You really should go to CrazyBlindDate.com and go through their sign-up process just to see what is possible. They even set you up with a place to meet! Ah, technology. See the article below for one woman’s experience:
Speeding up love at first site
By MEREDITH BLAKE
Thursday, February 7th 2008, 4:00 AM
Braganti for News
The rigors of Internet dating had always seemed daunting for author Meredith Blake, but here she’s got a ‘crazy blind date’ with destiny.
Twenty minutes was all I had to give.
Okay, technically 40 minutes, but for the sake of my own sanity, I was telling myself it was only 20 minutes. It was a Friday night in the dead of winter, and I had not one but two blind dates to look forward to. Oh, and a photographer would be there to capture my date in all of its awkward glory.
A mere 24 hours earlier, I had logged on to a new dating site, CrazyBlindDate.com. Launched this past November in New York, Austin, Boston and San Francisco, the site is completely free and lets users go on a blind date almost immediately - in as little as 15 minutes. All you have to do is fill out a brief questionnaire and be willing to commit to at least 20 minutes no matter who or what shows up (anything less would be rude, of course).
The brainchild of Sam Yagan, also the CEO and co-founder of OkCupid.com, CrazyBlindDate was designed to address the perceived shortcomings of many other sites.
“When I talk to my friends, they have two complaints about Internet dating,” explains Yagan. “They say it’s too much work - working on the profile, browsing, sending e-mails. And they say that it lacks spontaneity. You can’t go online and set up a profile and get a date that night.”
Unlike other services that offer hours of fruitless distraction, CrazyBlindDate is not a destination for anything other than getting a date as soon as possible. You can’t view profiles of other users, or communicate with them in any way before your date, and there aren’t even any ads.
“With CBD, we want you to spend as little time as possible on the site, all your time out on the dates,” says Yagan.
Once you’ve requested a date, the system tries to find a match for you based on the criteria you request. If a match is found, you get an e-mail with a very brief physical description of your date, and a suggested location chosen from a standing list of bars and coffee shops. Once you accept, there’s no going back.
I had never tried online dating, with the exception of a few quasi-dates way back in the age of Friendster.
On the other hand, I have been on plenty of blind dates before. To ease the pressure, I follow this advice: Treat your date like an interview for a job you don’t want. With that in mind I usually enjoy myself.
So in theory, CrazyBlindDate seemed perfect for me.
“It’s a forced adventure, so I knew there would be something to talk about” says CrazyBlindDate.com veteran, Brianna Klemm, 30, of Astoria, who rationalized her first date as fodder for her blog.
“It’s great because it reminds you that dating is not that big a deal, that really it’s just two people sitting in a bar.”
But while Klemm was dubious about finding a serious relationship on CBD, Richie, 27, of Brooklyn, was more optimistic about its prospects. He recently ended up dating a guy he met through the site. “I tried Match.com a few years back, but never actually went out with anyone because the process is really tedious, “ he says. “But [CrazyBlind Date] is good for anyone.”
So, with these encouraging thoughts in my mind, I headed out on my dating adventure. First up was Michael, “Asian, 31, highlights, carrying an iPhone,” according to his CBD description.
I was the first to arrive at our meeting spot - 71 Irving, a Manhattan bar and cafe. I sat down and immediately started drinking my glass of Cabernet, waiting for Michael to walk through the door.
A few minutes later, an Asian man walked in, with telltale white headphones in his ears. I deliberated for a second about whether the barely noticeable reddish streaks in his hair qualified as highlights, and decided it had to be him. Michael joined me at the little table in the corner, and we both tried to ignore the photographer taking our picture. Not that she wasn’t nice.
Michael was eccentric, funny and totally unfazed by the situation. Even though there wasn’t a romantic connection, he kept me entertained with stories of seducing older women as a teenager and his plans to buy a plasma television for each wall in his bedroom. The only lull in conversation was when he answered a business call on his beloved iPhone, which provided a welcome opportunity to dig into the chocolate macaroons he bought for me. After about an hour at 71 Irving, Michael upped the ante and suggested getting dinner in Chinatown, but I had to decline since I had another date scheduled.
Emboldened by two glasses of wine, I headed for my second date at Greenwich Treehouse, a laid-back bar in a corner of the West Village . I awkwardly made a lap around the crowded bar, not seeing anyone fitting Brian’s description: “27, white, dark hair, clean-shaven.” I got a beer, and took a very conspicuous seat by the door so as not to be missed.
I felt strangely liberated and not self-conscious about the fact that I was a woman in a bar by myself on a Friday. This turned out to be an especially good thing, since 20 minutes passed with no sign of Brian.
To be honest, I was relieved. I’d had a great night, despite being stood up by a total stranger.
LOVE ME, LOVE MY PET. Heavy petting prevents singles from finding love.
• Nearly half of Britain’s singles now own a pet – 6.1 million people
• Singles spend £5.6 billion each year pampering their pets
• Owning a pet can reduce your chances of finding love by as much as 40%
• One in four men wouldn’t date a woman with two or more cats
• A third of women won’t date a man who shares his pillow with a pet
• If push came to shove 25% of singles would choose their pet over a new partner
• Nearly two thirds of singles say they really love their pet and think of him/her as a member of the family
According to new research from PARSHIP, the UK’s largest serious online dating service, more singles than ever before are turning to pets for companionship. Nearly half (47%) of Britain’s 13 million singles now own a pet, spending an average of £928 and dedicating 21 days a year to their animal’s wellbeing and upkeep. However, PARSHIP advises that single pet-owners could be putting romance at serious risk: owning a pet could reduce your chances of finding love by as much as 40%.
Treating pets as children (12% of respondents), sharing your bed with your pet (33%), over-indulging your pooch with the latest designer accessories (40%), or simply owning two cats or more (23%) – these were just some of the factors that influenced other singles against dating a pet-owner. What’s more, if push came to shove 25% of singles would favour their pet over a new partner.
The implications of this could be serious, considering Britain’s singles own 1.24 million cats, 1.18 million dogs, 624,000 fish, 436,800 hamsters, rats and gerbils, 187,200 birds, 124,000 horses, donkeys and pigs, 64,000 snakes, and 120,000 exotic animals as pets – which includes spiders and insects. That’s a lot of two-, four-, six- and eight-legged creatures edging their way between Britain’s singles and their potential happiness with another human being.
• The puss on the pillow reduces your chances of finding love by a third
In conjunction with YouGov, and covering 2,000 singles, PARSHIP conducted a wide-ranging study exploring singles’ relationships with their pets. A third of singles say they wouldn’t date someone who shares their bed with their pet, (29% of men/36% of women), 23% are turned off by owners of two or more cats (26% of men/21% of women), and 22% are repelled by owners of snakes (18% of men/26% of women) and spiders 40% (33% of men/48% of women). 40% wouldn’t date people who overindulge their pets by spending £100 or more a week on animal upkeep (44% of men/37% of women), while going as far as treating a pet as a member of your family will alienate you from 13% of men or 11% of women; on the other hand, NOT doing so will alienate you from 11% of men or 12% of women
• The animal attraction
So what’s driving this animal love affair? Nearly two thirds (58%) say they love their pet and think of him/her as a member of the family, compared to just 27% who love their pet as an animal, but not as a surrogate human. In fact, singles love their pets so much that in some instances they would put their pet’s feelings above their own.
• Pets over partners
Sometimes they will even put their pet’s feelings above their lover’s. One quarter (25%) of men and women say that if their live-in partner developed an allergic reaction to their pet, under no circumstances would they put their boyfriend or girlfriend before the animal: Mr or Ms Right would just have to find somewhere else to live. More encouragingly, 15% of men and 22% of women said they’d visit a top Harley Street specialist – no matter what it cost – in the hope of finding an effective treatment for the allergy, while 32% of men and 19% of women said they’d find a loving new home for the problem-causing pet.
Dr Victoria Lukats, psychiatrist and PARSHIP’s dating and relationship expert commented:
“People invest a lot in their pets emotionally, but whilst some singles may see their pets as surrogate partners or children, this research shows that these people are in the small minority. Rather than the stereotype of a spinster with several cats, the reality is that many singles simply enjoy owning a pet but they would probably put their human relationships first.”
“Provided the balance is there and pet owners don’t avoid socialising or dating and that they maintain a healthy attitude to their pet then it shouldn’t interfere with their love life. But perhaps single pet owners would be wise to take note of this research: if there’s seems to be potential for a long-term relationship developing then it might be best not to boast about how much you indulge your pet and avoid making harsh statements about how your pet comes first, especially on the first few dates.”
• Is it time to put the cat out?
25% of singles wouldn’t date someone with two or more cats. In most cases this is attributable to an allergy, with 26% of adults suffering from sneezes and discomfort when close to a feline. There are very few treatments available to counter the allergic reaction. However, there’s good news for the 40% of singles who wouldn’t date someone who owned a pet spider: Even a single session of real-life exposure based therapy can be effective for up to 90% of phobic individuals. (Ost, Brandberg and Alm, 1997, Ost, Salkovskis and Helstrom, 1991)), so you really could learn to love your partner’s little (or not so little) eight-legged friend ….
PARSHIP is Europe’s largest and most successful serious online matchmaking service, with over 2.4 million members, PARSHIP draws its strength from its unique psychometric compatibility test and a methodology which ensures that its members are only matched with people who are genuinely right for them.
Dr Victoria Lukats, explains how the test works:
“The factors that make two people a good romantic match are highly complex. Common interests such as a love of animals can help but the importance of complimentary personality traits in determining the long-term success of a relationship cannot be underestimated.”
“PARSHIP uses a unique psychometric test to match members with similar and complimentary characteristics. Many people believe that opposites attract, whereas others believe that similar personalities are compatible with one another. In fact, both these points of view can be valid, as research conducted over many years by leading psychologists has demonstrated. “
“For example, if an individual highly values domesticity or has a high need for emotional intimacy, then he or she would be well matched with a partner with similar values.”
“For other characteristics, differing scores on the test can be acceptable, even desirable, although wildly opposing scores could spell disaster. A member who is extremely assertive in their communication style would not be well matched with someone who was similarly assertive as this could lead to a major clash of personalities. Likewise, an individual who is slightly shy might be drawn out of themselves by someone who is slightly more outgoing, whereas a complete introvert is less likely to be successfully matched with someone who is the complete opposite.”
In addition to matching members through their personality profiles, members can also choose to specify what they are looking in a potential partner including age, height, location, whether they prefer a non-smoker and whether a potential partner has a pet.
Overall the PARSHIP test has been shown to be an accurate reflection of an individual’s personality and furthermore it has proven to be a highly successful method to help people find the love of their life.
For Further information or case studies please contact Penny Conway on 020 7014 4046, 07775 992350 or email
The research was conducted by YouGov between 30th June and 4th July 2007 questioned 2,353 adults over the age of 18 and by PARSHIP questioning 200,000 singles from its UK database.
About Dr Victoria Lukats (http://www.drlukats.com)
Dr Victoria Lukats, MBBS MRCPsych MSc is a psychiatrist, agony aunt and dating and relationship expert. As well as working as a relationship and dating expert for PARSHIP Dr Lukats is a Specialist Registrar in Psychiatry at Sussex Partnership NHS Trust in Brighton
References:
Ost LG, Salkovskis P M and Hellstrom K (1991) One-session therapist directed exposure vs. self-exposure in the treatment of spider phobia. Behaviour Therapy. 22: 407-422
Ost L G, Brandberg M and Alm T (1997) One versus five sessions of exposure in the treatment of flying phobia. Behaviour research and Therapy. 35: 987-996
I first heard of Pepper Schwartz years and years ago (well, it was published in 1985) when I read her book with Philip Blumstein “American Couples.” It was a heavy tome filled with eye-popping charts and graphs of their work with couples, gay and straight. I loved it and it heavily influenced my thinking about couples and how they relate.
Schwartz writes prolifically (just go to Amazon and type in her name), but she is most relevant to my work with helping singles find love in her incarnation as the expert behind the matching system at PerfectMatch.com. She just came out with a new book Prime: Adventures and Advice on Sex, Love, and the Sensual Years which sounds right up my alley, right? I thought so too, and ordered and read it.
Eeeesh. I wish I could say I liked it, but I didn’t. Sprinkled in amongst her own pretty exhibitionistic stories about having lots of great sex with lots of great guys in lots of great places was some sound advice about online dating, but nothing extraordinary, frankly. That advice is just about all contained in the article below that appeared in the Seattle Times where she lives. I’ll underline it in the article so that you can see what I really did like about what she wrote. But frankly, you can skip the book, unless you want to torture yourself by reading some over-the-top sex pieces that strain credulity, or if they are true, are out of reach of 99.99% of women over 60. I found it pretty embarrassing, actually. I’d prefer the more academic Pepper Schwartz.
Relationship expert finds herself dating again
By Pepper Schwartz
Special to The Seattle Times
Pepper Schwartz
Schwartz is a sociology professor at the University of Washington and author of 15 books, including her latest, “Prime: Adventures and Advice on Sex, Love, and the Sensual Years” (Collins, 2007; $24.95), a personal account of re-entering the dating world after divorce. Schwartz, a Ph.D., is also the relationship expert for Perfectmatch.com, where she co-developed the Duet personality profile matching system.
There is nothing quite as disconcerting as having to follow your own advice. After 30 years of answering people’s questions about their emotional, sexual and romantic lives, I found myself in the somewhat ironic situation of having to pose, and answer, some of these same questions for myself.
At first, like most people who have just gotten a divorce, I wanted to stay home, do some soul searching, figure out what went wrong and what part I had in it.
But soon there is that familiar itch: the desire for intimacy, connection, sex and, in my case, adventure. Love would be nice, too, but honestly, when you have just disconnected from a 23-year marriage, sex and companionship seem a lot less complicated than love and commitment do, and therefore a lot more imaginable.
As a relationship expert, finding that connection should have been a piece of cake, right?
Wrong. As every doctor knows, it’s different when you’re the patient. I had many of the qualms of re-entry that everyone does. So I had to embark on a fix-up campaign to get myself date-ready — and think about what I actually wanted and who I was looking for.
One thing I knew: I was starting over again at 55.
I started out by creating a new philosophy about sex and love. I decided that the only way I would figure out who and what I wanted was by meeting a wide range of men — cowboys, poets, fishermen, chefs, CEOs, or whoever else crossed my path. The “how” of it was pretty easy — I knew the online dating scene as the relationship expert for Perfectmatch.com — now I just had to go explore dating online myself.
That the dating expert would be looking for a date was a little embarrassing, so I didn’t put my picture on the site. Instead, I looked at men’s profiles, and if they were intriguing, I’d invite them to look at a description of me. If they liked that, I promised to send a picture.
Thus started a chain of “coffee dates” that online daters know only too well. These short encounters exist for a reason; a quick in, then out if the guy’s not OK. I learned this the hard way when a guy who said he had always admired me wanted to take me out to a really nice dinner. I relented when he suggested Canlis, one of my favorite places in Seattle.
Once we got there, however, I might as well have gone alone. He talked so fast and so much that all I could do was sit there and time him, thinking maybe I was witnessing some kind of world’s record for self-absorption. At 45 minutes, he looked up, a little dazed with his own chatter and said, “Am I talking too much?” I said, “Yes, actually you are.”
He looked abashed and then, I kid you not, talked on for another 20 minutes. I had time to listen, chew my food very carefully, and learn not to allow more than a half-hour for a first meeting.
There were other colorful characters, some so unusual that I learned to think of dating as anthropological fieldwork. I decided each person would have something to teach me, no matter how dreadful a match we might be for each other.
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My favorite oddity was a man who was handsome, smart, nice and accomplished. He seemed like a perfectly fine bet for a relationship. There was only one problem: he could not pass a beast without making that animal’s noises. We decided to go hiking in the Methow Valley and stay over at Sun Mountain Lodge. But the ride there killed the possibility of anything more physical than climbing up a few hills. If we saw a horse, he neighed, a dog, he produced a bark, a cat — well, you know. I was afraid to order a steak.
Of course not all of these dates produced a humorous or strange story. Some produced all kinds of satisfaction: intellectual, emotional and sexual.
Dating, though difficult and disappointing when love didn’t last, was clearly possible and often fabulous, no matter that my 20s and 30s were distant memories. I have come to believe that love is possible at any age, that romance and passion are no less intense at middle or old age than they were when we were barely out of our teens, and that all of this can be ours if we put ourselves out there, learn how to handle loss or rejection, and have the resilience to pick ourselves up and start the process all over again.
This is the very cycle that many women and men just can’t bear to face, but I have to say, the happy moments justify having to deal with the sad ones. Love is life-giving, passion helps sustain our youthfulness, and relationships help us to grow and develop heart and character. All of that is just too good to miss.
I met the man I am dating now online. Honestly I don’t remember why I picked him out except that he was attractive, wrote well and sounded like a sincere, bright, athletic, nice person. I contacted him and said I was interested. He replied that he thought he knew who I was, and he was a little put off about meeting another ambitious, busy, Type-A woman. He had gone that route before and wasn’t sure it was a good fit.
I wrote him back that yes, he had guessed who I was and what I was like. But I thought we should meet anyway. I mentioned the scene in “Notting Hill” where Julia Roberts has to convince Hugh Grant that her world isn’t all she is. She says something like, “I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy… .”
He replied, “OK, you got me with that one.” We met for coffee. He was even more handsome in person than in his picture, and a genuinely nice and witty man. This was last autumn, and we have been dating ever since.
The Internet is your friend
The Internet is one of the most efficient and safe ways to find romance. I still hear women and men voicing fears of who’s on there, but believe me, it’s a godsend to older people who aren’t meeting loads of eligible partners.
You get a lot more information about someone you’ve met in cyberspace than you do in other kinds of one-time contact. There are bad dates everywhere, but the Internet has no more than other parts of the dating world do — and probably less.
Writing a profile
Put out your best stuff. Don’t lie, but you can omit your flaws. Everyone has them and they don’t need to be in your first sentence. Leave out anything but a brief mention of children — you are looking for a partner, not a father or mother. If they are partner material, then you can see if they will fit into your family or vice versa.
Use a good picture, but make sure it’s yours and wasn’t taken for your high school graduation. Avoid anyone who has a blurry picture, sunglasses or won’t show you a picture on request.
Talking on the phone
Don’t wait too long before making this relationship aural. If you like each other online, then relatively quickly transfer it to the phone. (Use a non-traceable number just in case you do meet Mr./Ms. Wrong and don’t want them to know your phone number.)
If you let the e-mail relationship go on too long, you may be caught in a fantasy perception of this person that gets you way too attached before you have a better sense of who she or he really is. Hearing their voice and talking is the first test of finding out who they really are.
Meeting someone
Likewise, once you’ve talked, arrange to meet fairly soon. I’ve known people who were just about saying “I love you” because of the intimacy and beauty of what they wrote to each other — until they met in person and one of them realized there was no chemistry.
Use the half-hour meeting rule (you can always extend it). If it’s really a great match, there will be a second date.
Remember to listen and ask questions — both of you are being interviewed — each of you should know more about the other than when you started. Do not complain even if your day was a horror and your kids robbed a bank.
Don’t dump on your ex even though you are sorely tempted. Everyone will always be thinking, “… and what would he/she be saying about me?” Try to see if there is any reason you two should know each other that is not readily apparent — i.e., explore hobbies, values, lifestyle, talents, passions.
Don’t give up
I don’t care if the first 15 dates are duds. There is someone out there for you.
If you are a “Just give me the facts, M’am” kind of person and you want to know just what is going on in the Internet dating world these days, this article below is for you. Yeah, I know it is long, but it is CRAMMED full of info that curious online daters love.
The secret world of online dating
by Jennifer Litz
Google bought YouTube last fall for 1.65 billion, according to its press center; Time magazine’s last person of the year was “You,” for all “your” participation in online communities—from the MySpace juggernaut, to its many niche offspin communities, like the new “Eons” community targeted to 50-plus-somethings.
A majority of online daters is younger, employed and slightly more liberal than the rest of the population.
People are spending a lot of time online. But more specifically, people aren’t just paying bills, researching papers, and buying books or clothes there. People spend a lot of time as online voyeurs, looking, laughing at, and talking to people they may or may not even know.
Online dating is a natural in this sociological climate. According to a March 2006 report on Online Dating from the Pew Internet and American Life Project in 2004, “dating Web sites created more revenue than any other paid online content category, as they netted roughly $470 million in consumer spending, up from about $40 million in 2001.”A flurry of institute research confirms that online dating emerged as a viable dating alternative several years ago.
In full disclosure, I will tell you that I have had a taste of online dating, but it took me a while to accept the “online dater” label. (A Pew report has spelled out the criteria of an online dater: “Looking at the total Internet population, 11 percent of all American Internet-using adults—about 16 million people—say they have gone to an online dating Web site or [a site] where they can meet people online. We call them online daters in this report.”) As the former resident blogger for an online dating site who met a guy by perusing user profiles, even I am considered an online dater—even though my examination of his user profile was part of my research to write those blogs.
Who Dates Online?
A majority of online daters is younger, employed and slightly more liberal than the rest of the population, but older people are online daters too. A February 2006 paper from the MIT Sloan School of Management called “What Makes You Click? – Mate Preferences and Matching Outcomes in Online Dating” surveyed 22,000 users of an unnamed “major” online dating service; users were located in the Boston and San Diego areas. The study involved observing the daters’ activities for three months, including introductory “profiling” information the users supplied to the sites, such as age, height, income, and other demographic and physical characteristics.
The MIT report found that online daters tended to be younger than their “general population” counterparts; the median age for a site user was 26-35, while the general populations of Boston and San Diego’s median age ranges were in the 36-45 range. The study also found that site users tended to be more educated and have slightly higher incomes than the general population and online users who did not go on dating sites.
The Pew study confirms these findings—to an extent. Surveying a “representative sample” of 3,215 phone-owning Americans in the continental United States, among the results found was that the online daters tended to be younger and employed. No reports of higher education or income levels were reported. Rather, since the largest segment—18 percent—of online daters were determined to be in the 18 – 29 range, those earning slightly lower incomes were determined to be online daters. Age breakdowns for the rest of site users were as follows: 11 percent in the 30–49 year age-range, and nine percent in the 50- plus range.
That study also found online daters were more likely than the general population to support gay marriage and women’s rights; less likely than the general population to be religious.
As mentioned earlier, about one in 10 Internet users have gone to a dating Web site; more specifically, 37 percent of a group who said they were single and looking to “meet a romantic partner” claimed having gone to a dating Web site, which represents about four million people.
But what is the perception among Internet users about those who used online dating services?
According to the Pew study, 61 percent of adults online do not think that online daters are “desperate”; 29 percent believe that online daters are in “dire straits,” and 20 percent think that online daters are “losers.” The Pew study says that the latter group has less experience online and tends to be less trusting of people in general.
What about the physical characteristics of online daters? It’s hard to ascertain physical attractiveness of online daters, as not everyone posts the optional picture with their profiles—though according to practically every “how-to” online dater’s guide, those with pictures posted get more messages and responses than those who don’t. Liz Edelbrock, a spokesperson for Match.com, says that Match.com members who post pictures get 15 times more attention, in the form of views, correspondence, or “winks,” an acknowledgment feature their site has.
There is, however, the “Reported Physical Characteristics of the Users.” According to the MIT report, 27.5 percent of assessed online daters posted their pictures. For the rest of the non-picture posting users, a survey was used for online daters to rate their own looks. According to the report, 19 percent of men and 24 percent of women reported possessing “very good looks,” while 49 percent of men and 48 percent of women reported having “above average looks.” Those who selected “looking like anyone else walking down the street” included 29 percent of men and 26 percent of women. Less than one percent of users claimed “less than average looks”; a few joked, “bring your bag in case mine tears.”
But are they being honest? According to the MIT report, there is a discrepancy between certain physical characteristics survey respondents supplied and those corresponding to national averages. For example, the average survey-stated weight of women tends to be six pounds less than the national average, while the stated height of men is 1.3 inches taller in the online survey than in national averages. Either online daters are a skinnier, taller, more attractive bunch than the rest of us, or they may be stretching the truth.
One thing certainly rings true in both real and online dating, according to the MIT report: physical attraction is the biggest predictor of dating proliferation.
What do Online Daters Want?
The MIT report found that online daters tended to be younger than their “general population” counterparts; the median age for a site user was 26-35, while the general populations of Boston and San Diego’s median age ranges were in the 36-45 range.
Much like the real world, physical attraction is the biggest predictor of having a prolific online dating experience. Those men and women in the lowest “looks” decile, according to the MIT report, received only half as many e-mails from other online daters as members whose rating were in the fourth decile; users in the top decile were contacted twice as often. Echoing what Edelbrock said about pictureposting daters being more active, the MIT study showed that women with photos received at least twice as many e-mails as those without, and men received 60 percent more e-mails than those without who described themselves as having “average looks.”
The data goes on to confirm that men in the 6’3” – 6’4” range receive more messages from users than those in the 5’7” – 5’8” range, while women from 5’3” – 5’8” fare better than their counterparts. The report even pinpoints the optimal BMI for men and women to receive optimal email messages from online daters: for men, it’s the slightly overweight BMI of 27; for women, it’s the underweight BMI of 17. That latter figure corresponds with that of a supermodel. According to the report, a woman with a BMI of 17 received 90 percent more first-contact emails than a woman with a BMI of 25, which is considered healthy by the American Heart Association. These sorts of physical preferences bear themselves out even in hair length; men with long, curly hair and red hair fared worse than their counterparts with “medium straight hair”; women with long, straight hair faired better than their shorter-hair contemporaries.
Conclusion? Online daters are a picky bunch. What they are, according to many, is serious about finding a mate. “I think Match.com is generally for the serious dater,” Edelbrock says. “We have 400,000 people a year resigning, saying they met the person they were seeking on Match; once they find that person they’re not staying online. People who put themselves ‘out there’ online are saying, ‘I really want to meet someone’—if not for marriage, then at least a serious or long-term commitment.” The MIT’s study corroborates that statement.
How Does Online Dating Work?
Usually, there’s a physical/demographic portion to fill out, followed by a variety of “compatibility tests” to help with member pair-ups. And there’s usually a charge, too—with a cheaper monthly rate afforded to those who sign up for multiple months.
According to comScore Media Metrix, Match.com was only second to Yahoo! Personals as of January 2006 in attracting the most users. It won that distinction with 3,893 unique users that month. Match.com capitalized on its popularity last February by launching Chemistry.com.
According to Chemistry.com press releases, this site is for serious daters who want to be matched with someone compatible, instead of having to search for matches. The “Chemistry Profile,” a lengthy survey the potential site member fills out about his or her personality, likes and dislikes, is common among online dating sign-up protocol. It may be different from other online dating surveys in that “renowned biological anthropologist, author and expert in the science of human attraction” Helen Fisher, PhD, created this particular survey.
Who else but such an “expert” could compile dating questions dealing with the comparative lengths of one’s ring and index fingers? Or have a “sensory perception” interlude that has respondents match figure shapes and sizes…
Then there’s the question in which survey takers are asked, after seeing a book cover with a man and woman— one backgrounded, one in the foreground, and both looking off over the sea—to label it with one of the following titles: “Adventures on the Rhein”; “Anatomy of Friendship”; “Power Plays”; or “Things Left Unsaid.”
Despite questions like this—which some men and women may find off-putting—many people who sign up to find love on the Web do get their wish. According to the people polled for the Pew study, “Three percent of the Internet users who are married or in long-term committed relationships say they met their partners online. That represents about three million people.”
If three percent sounds small, realize that in the Pew’s “representative” study of thousands of Americans, less people reported having met their spouses at church, at a “recreational facility” like a gym, or through a blind date or dating service, to name a few traditional meeting venues.
Of course, online dating is not for everyone. Three years ago, Christine, a Texas-based art director, logged onto eHarmony®. She had just broken up with her off-and-on boyfriend of six years, and was ready to meet the “love of her life” the Web site promised to find. She completed the elaborate entry questionnaire that had asked about her beliefs, ideals, characteristics and upbringing. She then pressed the button that asked if she was ready to find her ideal mate, and waited patiently for twenty minutes while the site combed through its thousands of user profiles to deliver her perfect match.
“We have no matches for you. Try expanding your search area,” the result said. She had already put the whole world. She married her ex-boyfriend.
Here’ s a turn from an Australian scholar about Internet dating....
The commodification of intimacy
By Millsom Henry-Waring - posted Monday, 9 July 2007
The increasing popularity of online dating is self-evident. We live in a global consumer-oriented world. We appear to be comfortable with the idea of effectively shopping online for love. Yet something remains missing.
Instead of offering radically new options for connecting, online dating merely reinforces traditional forms of intimacy, where “man still meets woman” according to explicit and implicit social criteria. Some innovative online dating technologies can offer us a real opportunity to reshape the ways in which we connect intimately, but so far, any developments have been curbed primarily by the commercial interests of the online dating and to a lesser extent, technology industries. And this is a real failing.
We all know someone who has dated someone they have met online. Yes, we do. It is OK to own up - really. Everybody’s doing it. Online dating 21st century style might create an occasional titter or a knowing look, but there is no longer a deep-rooted social stigma attached to finding a partner online.
Unlike traditional forms of dating via newspaper ads, or introduction agencies, online dating is no longer viewed as an activity of sad, lonely, or desperate people. Such unflattering perceptions are firmly a thing of the past. More often than not, the image today is more likely to be a professional, mobile, technologically literate person who may be time and “intimate network” poor, but who has a thoroughly postmodern, consumer, criteria-driven idea of what to look for in a partner.
As a consequence, there has been an exponential rise in the number and type of online dating sites to meet and connect individuals with each other, both locally and globally. Today, most people meet and connect with someone through specific online dating sites such as RSVP, Matchmaker.com and LavaLife.
Many of these online dating sites charge an average monthly subscription of between $40-$50 for members. Members have to place a brief written profile (usually with a photo) of themselves online, based on a prescribed set criteria such as age, gender, “racial” heritage and occupational status. Members can then browse and search through the site to find likely matches. In addition, members can then contact each other via the sites’ many interactive communication tools such as email, chat and SMS services.
This is where online dating sites make money. It is big business. The online dating industry is a major global commercial enterprise. According to Jupiter Research in 2006, the online dating industry had a turnover over US$649 million.
As with most market-driven enterprises, the online dating industry has responded to demands from people with a diverse range of needs. There are now a plethora of niche or speciality sites, which attempt to cater for a wide range of preferences such as “race”, religion, sexuality and disability - such as Blacksingles.com, CatholicMatch.com, Gaydar.com.au, Planet Sappho or CupidCalls.
In addition, a number of online dating sites which claim to be more selective have emerged. These include sites such as eHarmony which aims to attract singles who are serious about finding a long-term partner based on highly selective and detailed compatibility measurements. And the True.com site which endeavours to ensure that members are bona fide single people of good repute, with warnings about being sued if they are not. And more recently, the rise of online dating sites like Meet People With Herpes (MPWH), or Prescription4Love for people facing the stigma of special conditions, such as HIV or Herpes.
While all of these sites appear to be responding to demand and supply in the marketplace, they do raise more serious questions about the lack of any liberating or emancipatory vision for online dating. More on this in a moment.
Recently a number of economic commentators have claimed that the online dating industry has reached its financial peak. This is linked to the variable nature and quality of dating online and the unwillingness of singles to pay to remain online for the long-term. In addition, the emergence of social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Udate, Club Intimate have enabled people to find, meet and connect, intimately or not, for free.
So what are the factors that have led to this change in perception and behaviour? They are many, but the key drivers are the developments in new technologies alongside fundamental global changes in our economy which are impacting not only on the ways we trade, but also more crucially on the ways in which we live. Sociologists such as Ulrich Beck, Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim and Anthony Giddens, have pointed out that there are now many more risks and far less certainties, in both our public and personal lives.
We live in a time which sociologists describe as characteristic of the post-modern global society, where there is a decline in traditional norms and values that used to guide society and individuals - moving from one which was more collectivist in nature to a focus which is now more individualistic.
For those of us fortunate to live in a country like Australia, we know that we have greater prosperity than in the past and compared to some parts of the globe. We know that our standards of living and health are higher. And like other affluent countries, we also enjoy and demand the right to consume.
Yet, we also know that despite this material wealth, we are more likely to face uncertainties in our careers. We are more likely to move several times for work across towns, regions, the nation or the globe. We are also more likely to be in and out of intimate relationships. It should not be a surprise to find that people are actively seeking different ways to meet, to connect, to date and ultimately to form intimate and other relationships with.
While there are some positives to this social shift, such as more personal forms of freedoms and choices, there are also some negative consequences, particularly in the ways in which we connect intimately and otherwise.
Leading sociologist Zygmunt Bauman for example, laments the type of intimate relationships that now exist. Bauman talks negatively about love in postmodern societies - love has become so fluid that it is “liquid”, devoid of real shape and meaning.
Another prominent sociologist, Anthony Giddens takes a slightly modified view of relationships in the 21st century, by explaining how we now enter relationships no longer out of obligation or duty, but out of a demand for reciprocal partnership as an end in itself. Thus, if relationships do not work out, we simply leave. Both regard the rise of online dating sites as evidence of the commodification and ultimately, the disposability of intimacy.
This commodification of intimacy has been aided by the commercial nature of the online dating and technology industry, which inevitably regards dating as a type of commodity in which individuals can consume each other. The market is therefore a key influence shaping online dating. Unfortunately, this has meant that any liberating or radical changes to conventional forms of dating have been neglected. As a result, the online dating and technology industry has been a major obstacle to truly altering the ways in which people can connect intimately.
For example, most features of online dating sites tend to reinforce existing norms about dating, especially from a gendered or racialised perspective.
Often the act of dating online involves browsing and filtering the visual cues of photos, which tends to prize beauty and attractiveness through a largely exclusive western, Anglocentric lens. You do not have to go far to read from the front pages on, whom or what is rated as an attractive male or female.
Further, on some of the online dating sites, the assumption remains that men do most of the courting or chasing via “kisses” and “smiles”. In a collaborative study on online dating in Australia, a colleague (Dr Jo Barraket) and I found that while the possibilities offered by new technologies should enable individuals to meet others regardless of geography or conventional social criteria - people are still focused on finding people whom they would otherwise meet in a conventional sense.
Despite the opportunity to shop for love then, it appears we are still looking at the same labels or brands, with only a few of us willing to take the risk of trying on a new label.
The online dating industry at the moment reinforces the status quo of how “man meets woman” (or woman meets woman and man meets man). A key example can be found on almost all online dating sites as they focus on conventional forms of beauty, age and attractiveness - some are more explicit such as BeautifulPeople.net, GorgeousNetworks.com and MillionaireMatcher.com. Or sites like WildMatch.com or IwantU.com who draw a fine line between dating, sex and soft pornography. Even those which appeal to singles who want to meet others from different cultures are problematic, as they often stereotype groups of people as the exotic, submissive Other. These include sites such as InterracialSingles.net or InterracialMatch.com, AsianSinglesConnection and CherryBlossoms.
What I find disappointing and frustrating is that although there is a huge potential for technologies to connect people more innovatively, online dating sites have largely ignored any efforts to challenge the very ways in which we date. This neglect has been detrimental. So the status quo remains. Men still look in a certain way. Women still are objectified. Businesses make money as people consume.
Key questions remain - what about finding viable alternative ways of really connecting with people outside the square? Why don’t we demand more positive ways of connecting, intimately and otherwise?
Connecting to each other is a key human activity in the 21st century. We just all need to work much harder at connecting in the real world. It is too easy to shift tack and forget the real world in favour of alternative worlds offered by SecondLife and others. We know that humans desire and actually need to meet others physically to connect, especially in an intimate way. Despite all the promises of cybersex, there is something very false, alienating and artificial about it. Nothing can replace skin-skin contact. Anything else will always be second or third-best.
Online dating via deliberate or social networking sites looks set to continue to be a way in which people connect. Online technologies still have the potential to offer new ways of connecting. I believe that we just need to find much more radical and inspiring ways in which we can break free from traditional stereotypes about dating which particularly continue to place women and Others as objects and commodities rather than as equal, active partners.
In order to be viable in the long-term, the online dating (and the technology) industry will have no choice but find more innovative ways of encouraging us all to connect. Until then, maybe some of the answers lie firmly with all of us to find practical, creative and transformative ways of truly connecting with each other, intimately or otherwise.
Dr Millsom S Henry-Waring is a Lecturer in Sociology in the School of Political Science, Criminology and Sociology at the University of Melbourne. She has conducted a small study on online dating entitled “Virtual Connections” with a colleague Dr Jo Barraket also from the University of Melbourne.
I just stumbled across the greatest site: It’s a blog where secrets get posted. What a great way to deal with something embarrassing in your past: Make a postcard with your secret on it and send it in. Every week, new ones get posted. The blogger Frank Warren is an artist and has complied the postcards into book. See them here on Amazon.
Here’s another, more effortless and less arty way to confess your flaws: grouphug.us Here’s another one, though the “confessions” are a bit raw: onlineconfessional.com
I’ve written quite a bit about secrets, their power to keep us from getting close to someone else, and what to do about that. You can get a copy of my article “Do You Have a Secret? How to Tell Your Sweetheart Your Worst” for free by subscribing to my enewsletter *eMAIL to eMATE* or you can buy it at Your Sweetheart Store
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Trufina.com: Prove you are you with a free Trufina ID Card Share your Trufina ID anytime you need to prove your identity online
Here’s how the Trufina site says you can use it’s services for online dating.
Intelius.com: Background Check By Social Security Number
Background Check Includes: Criminal report, sex offender check, lawsuits, judgments, liens, bankruptcies, home value & property ownership, 30 year address history, relatives & associates, neighbors, marriage records, and more.
You can view a sample report by clicking a link on the Intelius site.
The Corra Group This service does background checks for businesses, but will also do searches for individual uses.
Also, don’t forget to Google your date’s name, or do a search on MySpace, remembering that many people may share the same name. I just searched my name on MySpace and got five girlie’s, some of them pretty young.
If you live in the Pittsburg, PA, area, you can check out the website maintained by the Allegheny County Sheriff’s Department to catch dead-beat parents.
Via an article on Time.com:
..thanks to Vumber you can get many numbers with only one phone — and even numbers from more desirable area codes. You can be reached at a New York City number one minute and L.A. the next, or small-town Alabama, where you really live. If the person dialing one of the numbers turns out to be a less than desirable caller, poof! the number disappears with a few keystrokes. “You can vanish without a trace,” said Geoff Schneider, executive vice president of Vumber.
Vumber is free for the first 100 minutes, then $4.95 for the first month. then $9.95. You can also buy packages of minutes, but with the way singles tend to talk on the phone, a monthly plan sounds best to me.
I have a client who lives in New Jersey but would like to date women in Manhattan. This could give him a Manhattan phone number, though the cheat wouldn’t work forever.
Match.com offers Matchtalk, which uses Jangl’s technology. MatchTalk was offered for free, but will soon be a $6.99 per month add-on to a Match.com membership.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
I found this comment below on Mark Brooks’ Online Personals Watch. It’s from James Houran, Ph. D. who used to be associated with True.com and now is not. I don’t know the “why’s” of either. Regular readers of my blog know that I don’t think much of True.com. But Dr. Houran does sound like he knows what he is talking about, and if you are interesting in compatibility testing or have taken them (a la eHarmony, True.com, PerrfectMatch, etc) you should read his comments here and the article he sites at the end “The Truth About Compatibility Testing.”
Despite their potential power and value, all assessments have limitations. Both online dating sites and their customers need to have realistic expectations about what types of information assessments can and cannot deliver. The strengths and limitations of a given assessment are based on its technical and theoretical underpinnings.
Below are some important points to remember in this respect:
1). Assessment feedback is derived from mathematical extrapolations of behavioral data. As such, feedback reports describe statistical predictions of what attitudes and behaviors a given test taker will likely exhibit. Mathematical models are consistently more valid than subjective observations, but even the finest assessments are never 100% percent accurate 100% of the time.
2). The validity of a report is limited by the reliability of the test taker’s responses. Test-takers may answer assessments unreliably for a myriad of reasons: lack of motivation or interest due to less than ideal testing conditions or test taker’s mood, fatigue from answering a long set of questions, an attempt to answer questions in a socially-desirable way or difficulty understanding particular questions for linguistic reasons (e.g., when English is not the test taker’s first language).
3). All test scores are statistical estimates. Thus, each score is accompanied by its margin of error [also called a confidence interval or standard of error (SE)]. However, properly constructed employee assessments provide information on the statistical reliability of a particular test taker’s test scores, as well as measure the degree to which a test taker seems to be answering the assessment truthfully.
4). Finally, the quality of an assessment (and hence its feedback) is associated with its methodological and statistical principles:
Self-referential vs. normative instruments: Some assessments provide feedback based simply on how a test taker perceives him or herself. In other words, these instruments describe individuals only in a self-referential way, i.e., against themselves. Examples of self-referential instruments are the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (the inspiration for PerfectMatch.com’s test) and the DISC assessment (offered by Thomas Technologies). By contrast, normative instruments are inter-individual because they describe test takers against a reference group. This approach is significantly more valid than the self-referential approach.
Classical test theory vs. modern test theory: Most assessments on the market today are constructed and validated using classical test theory, which essentially treats all assessment questions as equally weighted “points.” A great example is the assessment offered by eHarmony.com. Such assessments consequently provide a total score that is the sum of those points. This approach has been outdated since 1960. Today, test and measurements experts rely on modern test theory (Item Response Theory and Rasch scaling), which yields unbiased, scaled scores for test takers. Modern test theory is the same gold standard statistics used in such well-known assessments like the GRE, MCAT and LSAT. This approach can identify and remove response biases related to age, gender, cultural background and employment level of the test taker. Besides greater technical precision and the protection of meeting legal requirements, modern test theory also yields richer information that traditional approaches miss.
For detailed scientific information on the realities behind compatibility testing, see:
Houran, J., Lange, R., Rentfrow, P. J., & Bruckner, K. H. (2004). Do online matchmaking tests work? An assessment of preliminary evidence for a publicized ‘predictive model of marital success.’ North American Journal of Psychology, 6, 507-526.
For a lay-person’s guide to the subject, see:
http://www.onlinedatingmagazine.com/features/compatibilitytesting.html
Thanks,
James Houran, Ph.D.
Online Dating Magazine
From my January 1, 2007, *eMAIL to eMATE*:
Internet dating is LOOKING GOOD!
My, how things have changed since I first tried online dating on
Match.com in 1997. Looking for love on the Net was brandy new
then and quite suspect. A few brave souls were tip-toeing onto
the sites and trying out the medium, but, land sakes, was it
scary or what? And no help anywhere. I know, because I looked.
For you newbies to the Internet dating scene, matters took a
dramatic turn after 9/11. The tragedy suddenly refocused the
country: Everyone now ached for connection and family. Singles
started signing up on dating sites by the hundreds of thousands.
Listing on a dating site became okay, even mainstream. No longer
is it unusual to hear that a couple met online. Now, your
computer is second only to friends and family as a way to connect
with possible mate candidates.
The influx was heady. Online dating sites experienced mammoth
growth for several years as folks signed up and plunked down
their credit cards. Growth has slowed to single digits, but that
does not mean that Internet dating is a fading fad. Far from it.
Did you know that online dating is one of the top money makers
online? “After nearly a decade of double-digit growth, online
dating revenue rose 7% last year to slightly more than $515
million, per Jupiter Media. (Match’s share is about $250
million.)”
Remember that there is only a somewhat finite number of singles,
so at some point the growth would have to stop as the percentage
got close to 100. At present, the estimates are 1/3 of singles
have visited online dating sites. Also, people come on and off
the sites every day. Taking your profile down off the dating
site where you and your Sweetie met has become a sign of
increasing commitment with cyber couples.
My buddy Mark Brooks recently posted some interesting info on his
OnlinePersonalsWatch.com blog: Here’s a summary and link to an
article on dating site usage in 2006.
Interestingly, Yahoo! Personals is pulling way ahead of
the crowd in membership and visits. Since I write for Yahoo!
Personals, I’ll take a little credit for their #1 position.
True.com’s stats are deceptive, as comparing the two charts show.
(I cannot recommend True.com—if you wonder why, look at my
http://www.find-a-sweetheart.com/blog/C37/ “ title="many blog posts">many blog posts:.
Match.com (my personal favorite, since that’s where I met hubby
Drew) is stumbling on in 3rd and 4th place on the two charts.
Another of Mark’s postings led me to “Market Spotlight: Online
Distilling the verbiage, it looks like number of visits
to dating sites are down, but revenue is nicely up. To me, that
says daters are getting serious and paying up, and fewer people
are visiting sites to snoop. Good.
Interestingly, the article also points to what I have sensed:
Singles get busy after Christmas, and particularly after New
Year’s. Online dating sites’ business soars then (and so does
mine). Seems as if the loneliness of the holiday coupled with
New Year’s as a time to start new habits gets folks off the
stick.
Tip: That means new people are signing up, right now! This is a
particularly good time of year to be active and looking on your
favorite site. Remember, new people come on every day—and
others drop off as they find partners. Be ready with your spick
and span profile. Be proactive: Contact others. Don’t wait,
because you don’t know how much longer this new Cutie might be
available.
A third posting on OnlinePersonalsWatch is an interview with
Match.com’s CEO Jim Safka. Looks like Match is going stylish and
pursuing a more upscale market: a new look to its site (adding
lots of snazzy black), offering a stylist to help with photos
Lots of
black and white there, too. And Match is piloting a real
matchmaking program with what looks like real matchmakers:
Platinum.Match.com It’ll probably be
pricey, sounds like perhaps around $1000 per year. Still less
that a tractional matchmaker, though.
Yahoo! Personals still looks about the same, and I think is a bit
more unwieldy to maneuver than Match.com. But they are doing
something right at Yahoo! You can’t argue with #1.
So I will stick with Match.com and Yahoo! Personals. Why go
elsewhere, except for a special niche site like JDate? Stay
where the numbers are.
From YOur Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
From my October 1, 2006, newsletter, too good not to reprint here:
We really know that Internet dating has made it solidly when
academics start studying it. What could be more impressive that
MIT’s Sloan School of Management? Gunter J. Hitsch, Ali
Hortacsu, and Dan Ariely have written “What Makes You Click? --
Mate Preferences and Matching Outcomes in Online Dating,” a
working paper on their study.
At 62 pages long, almost half of which are graphs and charts,
this is not an easy read. And there are formulas: here’s a short
example— Um(m,w)>- vm(m) (not written here exactly right, but
you get the idea).
Lucky you: I’ve managed to digest most of it and pull out what is
really interesting, so here goes. Keep in mind, this study is
reporting on singles’ actual data and behavior—this is not as
things “should be,” but as things “really are.”
The authors used data supplied by an Internet dating company for
22,000 users in the Boston and San Diego area. While they did
not have access to the actual identities of the users, the
researchers did have just about everything else: Profiles,
photos, and preference data, as well as records of who browsed
who, when and if contact was made and reciprocated or not, and if
a meeting was requested or planned. Yikes.
Here are some of the conclusions they reached from their well-
massaged data:
Motivation for using the dating service: Singles interested in a
long term relationship generated the most activity. While 36% of
men and 39% of women declared that a relationship was what they
were looking for, 55% of all emails sent by men were from this
group, and 52% of all emails sent by women. Those “just
looking/curious” (26% of men, 27% of women) did 22% of the
mailing (men) and 21% (women). Only a small percentage of the
email generated was from those seeking casual relationships
or sex: 3.6% for men and 2.8% for women.
The authors thought it was likely that those who indicated they
were “just looking” were actually seriously looking, and
therefore the percentage of emails generated by people looking
seriously was closer to 75%.
Kathryn’s comments: You can probably assume, at least on the
mainstream sites like Match.com and Yahoo! Personals, that
nowadays, most folks posting are seriously looking for a
relationship. Sites like AdultFriendFinder.com have siphoned off
most of those just looking for sex, and AshelyMadison.com and the
like have gotten noticed by married folks looking to cheat.
Demographics: Men dominated the site in both cities: 54.7% in
Boston. 56.1% in San Diego. Age concentration was in the 26-35
year old range. 2/3’s were never married (sounds right, given the
age concentration). Education and income levels were slightly
higher than national averages, but about right for Internet
users. The authors conclude that “during recent years, online
dating has become an accepted and widespread means of partner
search.”
Reported physical characteristics: I love this part.
The site asked users to rate their looks on a subjective scale:
19% of men and 24% of women rated themselves having “very good
looks.” 49% of men and 48% of women described themselves as
“above average.” 29% of men and 26 |
