Welcome!
Online Dating Insider delivers cutting-edge insight and commentary on all aspects of the online dating industry. Topics include industry news, site reviews, emerging trends, analysis of dating site features, discussion about safety safety, finance and other issues important to the online dating market. Don't miss our Tools & Services directory, useful to anyone running dating or social networking sites. Subscribe to the RSS feed (you can subscribe via email as well). Your comments and suggestions for stories are welcomed.
San Jose Mercury News has done an unscientific review of several popular dating site personality tests:
Category:Dating Sites, Technology Tags: Dating-Site - TechnologyWe let four married couples try the tests at eHarmony, Yahoo Personals, Tickle and True. Each partner took the online personality tests designed to probe their psyches (fibbing a little to indicate they were single) and checked out whether the system matched them with their real mates. The results suggest that “science” isn’t always the last word when it comes to true romance.
Blog reactions
7 responses so far ↓
1
Fernando Ardenghi (Check me out!)
// Feb 15, 2005 at 2:38 pm
Of course it is an unscientific review.
Perhaps with only a review of 4 cases, the conclusions, if any, are not valid. (The article says: the results suggest that “science” isn’t always the last word when it comes to true romance)
I think that Personality Test (like 16PF5 or CPpro) are very valuable:
First, to know oneself.
Second, to know the other person. -if you are authorized to access his/her report-
and
I think that a “Personality Test Matching / Dating Method”
is a great way to start! It is more scientific than searching a database.
Kindest Regards
Fernando Ardenghi
ardenghifer@argentina.com
2
Fernando Ardenghi (Check me out!)
// Feb 15, 2005 at 3:34 pm
An excellent article to read about this topic:
http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/psp882304.pdf
“Journal of Personality and Social Psychology”
Change Assortative Mating and Marital Quality in Newlyweds: A Couple-Centered Approach, February 2005 (PDF: 225KB)
(c) Shangon Luo and Eva C. Klohnen
Kindest Regards,
Fernando Ardenghi
ardenghifer@argentina.com
3
James Houran, Ph.D. (Check me out!)
// Feb 16, 2005 at 12:33 pm
Indeed, the spirit of this exercise was correct, but it is an understatement to say that the review was “unscientific.” Also, there is some inaccurate/misunderstood information passed along in the article regarding results of such tests. However, articles like this and the recent expose in L.A. City Beat, are starting to highlight a major controversy in the industry: “Do these tests have ANY science behind them and is there evidence to this effect that is freely available to the public?”
Selectively reporting positive or negative testimonials is a popular marketing ploy (and is effective) but it is not scientific evidence. I think the public will start to realize this. I think you will agree, Fernando, that a test must be shown to meet professional testing standards — it must be proven in a scientific research design to be a reliable and valid test.
Thanks!
4
Nelson Rodriguez (Check me out!)
// Feb 18, 2005 at 1:57 pm
What?!?!? They signed up on true.com and they were married?!?!?!?! They are going to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law!
5
Fernando Ardenghi (Check me out!)
// Feb 19, 2005 at 5:39 pm
I think that Online Dating and Social Networking Market will require a collaborative environment to develop innovations (eg: a group of engineers, psychologists, marketing consultants working togheter) in next 5 years. The future will be in applying border studies (frontier studies, a combination of different knowledge from different sciences)
Kindest Regards,
Fernando Ardenghi.
ardenghifer@argentina.com
6
James Houran, Ph.D. (Check me out!)
// Feb 20, 2005 at 10:19 am
Nelson’s tongue-in-cheek comment above deserves a response. No, they are not going to be prosecuted — we knew about the story and the fact that the reporter was married. We allowed them to set up a temporary account so they could take our TRUE Compatibility Test and report on it.
It would have been a different story had that reporter or anyone tried to become an actual member and use our site for online dating while still married. The industry needs a wake up call, and I would have thought that the recent industry survey (showing a significant percentage of online dating customers want safety measures as used by TRUE.com) would have been that call.
Thanks
7
unknown (Check me out!)
// Feb 23, 2005 at 2:23 am
true.com is a bunch of crap… they just brag their stuff but it doesnt actually work. you can join thier system as charles manson and get away with it… cmon… charles manson .. if you cant stop charles manson from joining your site how do you plan on stoping the more dangerous rapists out there. somebody should step up and make true.com stop creating a false sense of security on their site.