Comments on: OPW Cupid.com Interview

By: Fernando Ardenghi

Fernando Ardenghi — Mon, 04 Jul 2005 23:14:04 +0000

Dear Mr. John G.:

Please see these two papers.

http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/psp882304.pdf

and

http://web.media.mit.edu/~atf/papers/chi2004_personals_short.pdf

Kindest Regards,

Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
ardenghifer@gmail.com

By: Markus

Markus — Sun, 03 Jul 2005 08:08:19 +0000

Why then, doesn’t the site check in with my in a few months to see how things are going? Where are the 3 and 6-month touchpoints?

Match and Yahoo! have millions of stale profiles. Every time I have approached them about converting inactive members to active members, I’m met with resistance.
**********************

Given that 10-40% of their users were married in the first place, I think they realize that emailing their old member base isn’t a very good idea.

By: Chris Levy

Chris Levy — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 23:51:47 +0000

Take a look into a fast growing dating site that corante should mention and talk about is called – http://www.CozyDating.com

By: John G.

John G. — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 14:06:02 +0000

Scientific Matching, Matching based on Psychological Profiles, Personality Tests… Psychologists talking about compatible mates….I am a little amused by all this…

They might as well choose Astrology for compatibility tests. Using words like “Science” and “Psychology” and “Personality Tests” for Matching implies good theories of mate compatiblity and relationship success, which *we don’t have* at this moment in our understanding of human behavior, especially human mating behavior.

Have you not seen too many “perfect for each other” mates break up in a heartbeat… and too many “uncompatible” people, completely different type of people, do perfectly fine in a marriage lasting for decades? Look closely at the relationships around you.

Compatibility in psychological and scientific circles often is equated to similarity in personality traits (not always, but often). This itself is questionable and is an assumption. Prove it to me that a partner who is very much like me is my ideal mate??? Just because we like snow-boarding, watching movies or doing yoga, and doing 50 other things together, are we compatible?

Love and relationships at this stage of our scientific or psychological understanding of human mating behavior are not much different from trying to understand planetary motion before Newton. We have some empirical data, but very little…. but no sound theories, laws. Any attempt to give it a scientific touch is not right, I believe.

Dating sites are better off sticking to their primary aim of putting single people together. What they call Scientific, Psychologically, or Personality based Matching is an oversimplification of human mating behavior…a very complex phenomenon.

John
http://www.dating-profile.com