More from the NYT about eHarmony
John Tierney from the NYT is doing a series of articles about Internet dating. I wrote about it here in late January. Tierney focused on the sites like Chemistry.com and eHarmony that do the matchmaking for you. Here he describes going onto eHarmony with his wife to see if they get paired by the matchmaking. They had to fudge a little (eHarmony rejects those who tell the truth that they are married), but who cares about lying online, right? (That’s sarcasm from me. Lying in your online dating profile and communications is short-sited and perhaps disastrous. You can read more of what I have to say about it here).
As with the other Tierney articles, the comments that follow are at least as interesting as the article. If you can still see them on the NYT’s site, scan down and take a look.
And what do you think about the point that several commenters made, that Tierney was unethical in lying on the eHarmony sites, particularly since the site immediately started providing him with matches that he was clearly not going to pursue?
My eHarmony Experiment: Can This Marriage Be Matched?
By John Tierney
Now that a couple of hundred Lab readers have told their online matchmaking stories, let me tell you mine. After visiting the eHarmony Labs for my Findings column on matchmaking, I wondered if its algorithm would match me and my wife of 12 years, Dana. So we each registered separately with eHarmony and answered the 258 questions. We falsely said we were each divorced (because eHarmony doesn’t offer its service to people already married) and each childless, but otherwise we told the truth.
After we filled out the questions, we each were given a personality profile. It was pretty general — and tactfully written so that it emphasized the good aspects of each trait — but it seemed reasonably accurate to each of us. There were five general categories. We got identical ratings for extraversion and emotional stability. We got pretty similar ratings for conscientiousness (I was “flexible”; Dana was “very flexible”) and openness (I was “curious”; she was “very curious”). Our biggest difference was in the category of agreeableness: Dana was rated as consistently taking care of others, while I was consistently taking care of myself. EHarmony tried to put the best spin on my selfishness by explaining: “You believe that compassion has a role to play in your life, in a structure of values that encourages people to take care of themselves. Uncritical tenderheartedness does as much harm as good. . . . Fostering such independence is the best way you find there is to love and care for others.”
Then, presto, eHarmony started providing matches. Dana got more — understandably! — but even selfish me got several dozen over the course of the next week. Unlike some of the Lab readers who complained about the abundance of devout Christians on eHarmony, we weren’t overwhelmed with evangelical partners. There were, though, many people passionately devoted to walks on the beach.
We got a lot of matches in the New York area, and some farflung ones, too, but not the match that we wanted. Even though we’d said we wanted nearby matches and had entered the same ZIP code, eHarmony didn’t match us. Does this mean that there’s something wrong with eHarmony, or with our marriage?
I sought counsel from the wizard behind the eHarmony curtain, Galen Buckwalter, the psychologist who serves as the company’s vice president for research and development. (You might have seen him in a documentary that’s been airing on public television stations recently, “Rolling,” which profiles him and two other people who use wheelchairs. He became a paraplegic after breaking his neck when he was a teenager.) Dr. Buckwalter created the algorithm a decade ago by testing questions on 5,000 married couples and focusing on the answers of the happiest couples (the ones who scored in the upper quartile of a measure called the dyadic adjustment scale).
Dr. Buckwalter reassured me, after I summarized our general personality profiles, that there was hope for the marriage. “Your personality profiles do suggest a good overall degree of compatibility,” he said. “However, I cannot from this information know if you and your wife meet our models’ criteria for matching.” He explained that the “matching models include more specific constructs than are used in the personality profile.” He wondered if some of the preferences we’d indicated — like our tolerance for drinkers and smokers — might have ruled out a match. I checked and told him that we’d marked mostly the same preferences except for the smoking category. Although neither of us smokes, my wife had said that she was open to a match with a smoker, whereas I’d said I wasn’t open.
“Voila,” Dr. Buckwalter said. ” The smoking likely did it. We find much higher user satisfaction when we keep those who don’t want smokers with similar persons.”
That was encouraging — briefly. Dana went back and changed her preferences to rule out smokers, and we both asked for new matches. We each got a few more matches over the next couple of days, but not each other.
Dr. Buckwalter encouraged me to look at the bright side. “You both have gotten a good number of matches within a relatively short period of time,” he wrote in an e-mail. “This does suggest there are additional matches in both of your pools of compatible matches. Do these additional matches include each other? Given the widespread use of the Tierneys as the definition of marital bliss in relationship science, I can only assume so!”
Well, we appreciate his good humor, and we’re trying to hold the marriage together. Maybe eHarmony will match us yet. Maybe we’ll find another matchmaking site to see if we find each other — although I do feel a little guilty doing this kind of experiment, because it wastes the time of all the partners who were matched with us during the past week.
I hereby apologize to all the women I rejected, usually by checking off the same lame excuse: “I don’t feel that the chemistry is there.” Really, it’s not you. It’s my wife.
UPDATE [Monday, Feb. 4, 5 p.m.]: Some readers criticized me for doing this experiment, so I should explain it a little more. I didn’t actually contact any of the women with whom I was matched; nor did I know their identities. I merely saw the profiles that they provided to eHarmony, which listed some some basic facts (like their first name and home town, their age and occupation) and some answers they gave to standard questions (like their favorite activities). I couldn’t see their pictures because eHarmony won’t show you a photo of your match unless you’ve provided your own photo, and I hadn’t done so.
I could have contacted any of the women by going through eHarmony, but instead I chose to close the matches. I told eHarmony I wasn’t interested and checked the “no chemistry” box in explaining why. I realize I wasted a little of the women’s time, since they looked at my profile when we were matched, but I hope it didn’t take long.
I’m not easy to predict so I don’t think someone can find me a match using my profile. What I wrote the day before might expire in a week. I tend to never do the same things twice.
Posted by marriage therapy on 08/14 at 01:06 PM