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.
Looks like the new trend in online dating is finding out what kind of dog you are, your stripper name or your love score. Even PlentyOfFish is getting into the game.
Here at Plentyoffish.com we have gone and hired some of the worlds leading experts in Personality Testing. These experts have built the personality tests you pay $60/month for at paid dating services.
By taking their work to the next level they have now designed and built a compatibility test which will allow Plentyoffish.com to give you matches you will have chemistry with!
Take the test today and start meeting people you have chemistry with!
Markus has never really warmed to the concept of personality tests, but given that he’s at a stalemate about what direction to take PoF in since Facebook has been stealing a good portion of his traffic, it looks as if he has set his sights on eHarmony and Chemistry.com.
Two months ago Markus said:
I’ve looked into personality testing, and from what i’ve heard from sites using it, if tests are not part of the signup process less then 10% of daters are willing to use it.
He goes on to talk about OKCupid not being a dating sites, but more of an Emode testing site with a dating spin. I never thought Markus would add testing to the site, it didn’t make sense before and still doesn’t to me, but I’m sure he will get jillions of people to take the test and then have something else to compare PoF to other dating sites.
The Plentyoffish Compatibility Test (POFCT) measures five broad dimensions of personality that are each essential for building a romantic relationship. It’s not the case that a person must be “high� on each of the personality characteristics to be in a relationship. Instead, what is important is how your personality interacts with the personality of your romantic partner on each dimension. Or what is commonly called “chemistry.� Based on decades of empirical research in psychology, the POFCT captures the five key ingredients that can determine whether or not two people have the “right� chemistry.
Self-Confidence, family orientation, self-control, openess and easygoingness are the five ingredients. I’m not a scientist, and I have strong reservations about the validity of all testing proceedures, but these seem like just about every other test out there. If those questions were developed by the world’s leading experts in personality testing, I’d like to see their credentials and an analysis of their methods.
Most dating sites are too scared people will see the wizard behind the curtain when it comes to serious tests. You can argue one test is better than another, but the test doesn’t make the service what it is, it’s the people.
Here’s the PoF personality test and the FAQ.
Category:Personality Testing Tags: compatibility_test - dimensions_of_personality - personality-testingBlog reactions
13 responses so far ↓
1 Lovin.mobi » PlentyofFish Is Now EChemistry.com // May 15, 2007 at 5:28 pm
[...] Share This [...]
2 I deny the rumor. « The Paradigm Shift // May 15, 2007 at 9:49 pm
[...] deny the rumor. David Set off a firestorm in the industry today by suggesting that I owned Echemistry.com and was launching a direct competitor to Chemistry and [...]
3
Fernando Ardenghi (Check me out!)
// May 15, 2007 at 11:23 pm
I took the test and received only a written report with the sentence
“Search for others based on compatibility/chemistry coming soon. Scroll down for your test results”
“Your Compatibility Test Results
Self-Confidence
As someone with high self-confidence, you feel quite comfortable interacting with other people. Indeed, you find the company of others very stimulating and enjoy meeting new people. Your relaxed demeanor in groups makes people around you comfortable too. Perhaps because you feel comfortable talking about yourself, others tend to enjoy being around you and perceive you as socially competent.
The confidence that helps you feel comfortable talking to people also spills into your own personal beliefs about yourself. Although you have several strengths, it’s likely that you also acknowledge and accept your weaknesses. But unlike some people, you take full responsibility for your actions—you rarely regret things you’ve done in the past and are not embarrassed easily. Perhaps the defining feature that sets you apart from most people is the exceptionally high standards that you set for yourself. Your competence in social gatherings as well as at work should provide ample evidence for this. With these characteristics, it’s very likely that people come to you for advice and generally think of you as someone with leader-like qualities.
Family Orientation
As someone who is oriented to familial matters, you value the company of family-members and domestic life. If you have children already, you enjoy spending time with them very much and work hard to be a good parent. If you don’t have children, you very much desire having children in the future. And your preference for cooking and entertaining guests at home will likely ease the transition into parenthood.
You take pride in maintaining and cultivating a healthy family and work hard to achieve this. This natural tendency is easily illustrated by your preference for doing things around the house as opposed to going out to clubs and restaurants. What really sets you apart from people that are low in family orientation is that you know how to manage your frustrations and work well on your own. This means that you are well-equipped to manage a family without letting all the work that is involved wear you down. However, as someone with strong family values, all the work that is involved in maintaining a tidy home and well-stocked kitchen might occasionally make it difficult for you to finish everything that you need to do.
Self-Control
The self-control personality dimension captures the way in which a person regulates and directs him or herself. Being moderate in self-control can be both good and bad. People may be compelled to follow their intuitions and give in to their temptations, and your degree of self-control means that this may happen occasionally. This can be good in situations where focus and control are very important.
However, on certain occasions being able to give in to one’s temptations can be fun and even healthy (as long as it’s in moderation).
As someone who exerts a moderate amount of control of your actions, you may find that you exert too much stress on yourself sometimes. For example, you may be inclined to take more responsibility on projects, which may not always be necessary. This might be because you have a slight tendency to focus on the details and feel as though others may not be able to do as good of a job noticing such details as yourself. You might find it difficult to let others do certain jobs, and as a result, increase your own workload and stress level. Having moderate self-control is generally a good thing. Although you have good control over your impulses, you also take notice of your emotions and sometimes take them into account while making decisions. This can be good when making important decisions because you acknowledge that your underlying feelings may be trying to tell you something important.
Openness
As someone high in openness, you have a strong appreciation for beauty, both in art and nature. Indeed, it’s likely that you are easily absorbed in music and art, as well as natural phenomena. Another aspect of your openness is your emotional insight; that is, you probably have good access to and awareness of your own emotions. Another aspect of the openness dimension is the tendency to think about abstract concepts and ideas. This thinking style may take the form of artistic and metaphorical use of language, and/or music composition or performance. Thus, it is likely that, either in your work or spare time, you enjoy activities that get your “creative juices” flowing.
Your tendency to be open-minded can have advantages and disadvantages. For instance, when there are no clear rules about how to approach a particular problem, your openness makes it easier for you to identify new ways to solve problems that might not be very obvious to people that are not as open as you are. In contrast, you may be bored easily in situations that lack high amounts of intellectual stimulation. In such cases, you might have difficulty excelling on projects that do not provide much stimulation or require much creative thinking.
Easygoingness
Easygoingness refers to one’s ability to relax. Based on your score, you appear to “take things as they come” and enjoy having a good time. However, being high in easygoingness also has the potential to produce stress in a number of ways. For example, you may find it difficult to complete tasks thoroughly and efficiently. In this way, being high in easygoingness cannot only make your life difficult, but also the lives of the people around you. Another potential problem with being too high in easygoingness is that it can provide you with gratification in the short-term, but in the long-term provide undesirable consequences. High easygoingness, even when not seriously destructive, may also diminish your effectiveness at work, for example. You may find it aversive and difficult to put in all the effort that may sometimes be needed to effectively accomplish certain tasks. For this reason, your colleagues might view you as forgetful and unfocused. “
4
Fernando Ardenghi (Check me out!)
// May 15, 2007 at 11:41 pm
From
http://www.plentyoffish.com/personality_faq.aspx
“the Plenty of Fish Compatibility Predictor (POFCP) – the only tool of its kind to match you to people worldwide. “
They must be joking: “match you to people worldwide” I suppose it is only for USA and Canada, but they should use different test versions for different countries!
“non-native English speakers to understand” ???
Uhhhhh, see for example http://www.16pfworld.com/languages.html
Languages and Norms
English for Australia and the Norm for Australia.
English for Canada and the Norm for Canada.
English for India and the Norm for India.
English for South Africa and the Norm for South Africa.
English for the United Kingdom and the Norm for the United Kingdom.
English for the United States and the Norm for the United States.
Portuguese (European and New World) and the Norm for Portugal.
Portuguese of Brazil and the Norm for Brazil.
“Validation of the POFCP was done using a national sample of individuals with the same demographic characteristics as members of the Plenty of Fish community.”
Uhhhhh, shouldn’t they had used a stratified random sampling procedure using sex, race, and age variables that reflect the 2000 U.S. Census figures for the U.S. test version?
and another stratified random sampling procedure using sex, race, and age variables that reflect the 2000 Canadian Census figures for the Canadian test version?
and so on, so on
like http://www.16pfworld.com/keyinfo.html
“This is the only known relationship test where the test scoring and matching algorithm are based in the statistical gold standard of modern test theory”
????? and the test used by True.com ??
“4. Why is the feedback sometimes very different from how I see myself?
The feedback is not meant to suggest that that everyone who is high or low on a personality dimension is exactly the way described. Indeed, the feedback was based on AVERAGE scores for people high, moderate, and low on each personality dimension. This means that the feedback could be less accurate for individuals whose scores are in between the moderate and high, or moderate and low scores. If you feel the feedback did not match you very well, this could be one reason why.”
Oh!, what does that mean? They are saying the whole precision is less than you could had achieved searching by your own?.
“5. Why does the feedback sometimes give contradictory information?
Sometimes the feedback will give respondents apparently contradictory feedback. This is an unfortunate consequence of making generalizations. Quite often, individuals cannot be captured by the general trends derived from analyses of large numbers of people. Of course, while our generalizations do get it wrong sometimes they tend to get it right more often than not. “
Oh! that is terrible
Who is/are the brain/s behin that compatibility test & algorithm?
Kindest Regards,
Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
ardenghifer@gmail.com
5
Fernando Ardenghi (Check me out!)
// May 15, 2007 at 11:48 pm
From the the FAQ’s
“the Plenty of Fish Compatibility Predictor (POFCP) – the only tool of its kind to match you to people worldwide. ”
They must be joking: “match you to people worldwide” I suppose it is only for USA and Canada, but they should use different test versions for different countries!
“non-native English speakers to understand” ???
Uhhhhh, see for example the 16PF5 Languages and Norms
English for Australia and the Norm for Australia.
English for Canada and the Norm for Canada.
English for India and the Norm for India.
English for South Africa and the Norm for South Africa.
English for the United Kingdom and the Norm for the United Kingdom.
English for the United States and the Norm for the United States.
Portuguese (European and New World) and the Norm for Portugal.
Portuguese of Brazil and the Norm for Brazil.
“Validation of the POFCP was done using a national sample of individuals with the same demographic characteristics as members of the Plenty of Fish community.”
Uhhhhh, shouldn’t they had used a stratified random sampling procedure using sex, race, and age variables that reflect the 2000 U.S. Census figures for the U.S. test version?
and another stratified random sampling procedure using sex, race, and age variables that reflect the 2000 Canadian Census figures for the Canadian test version?
and so on, so on
“This is the only known relationship test where the test scoring and matching algorithm are based in the statistical gold standard of modern test theory”
????? and the test used by True ??
“4. Why is the feedback sometimes very different from how I see myself?
The feedback is not meant to suggest that that everyone who is high or low on a personality dimension is exactly the way described. Indeed, the feedback was based on AVERAGE scores for people high, moderate, and low on each personality dimension. This means that the feedback could be less accurate for individuals whose scores are in between the moderate and high, or moderate and low scores. If you feel the feedback did not match you very well, this could be one reason why.”
Oh!, what does that mean? They are saying the whole precision is less than you could had achieved searching by your own?.
“5. Why does the feedback sometimes give contradictory information?
Sometimes the feedback will give respondents apparently contradictory feedback. This is an unfortunate consequence of making generalizations. Quite often, individuals cannot be captured by the general trends derived from analyses of large numbers of people. Of course, while our generalizations do get it wrong sometimes they tend to get it right more often than not. ”
Oh! that is terrible
Who is/are the brain/s behin that compatibility test & algorithm?
Kindest Regards,
Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
ardenghifer@gmail.com
6
K.M. (Check me out!)
// May 16, 2007 at 11:45 am
Really no mysteries here from what I can tell:
First, markus/plentyoffish is changing business strategies in some ways and so what?!!! Match did it, eHarmony did it, Yahoo Personals did it. What does it matter if markus has changed his mind about the value of compatibility tests. After all, the tagline to his blog is “adapt or die.”
Second, good questions, Fernando. now about you answering them about your own compatibility test idea. i have seen repeatedly rebukes of your notion that the 16PF will save the world of online daters. where’s your evidence that the 16PF predicts successful relationships and that your matching equation is superior?
also, your cries of “foul” that the pof test serves up generalizations is crazily off base. ALL personality tests and like minded ilk produce conclusions based on generalizations. there’s nothing “wrong” with that; in fact it is the norm. i actually applaud pof for admitting this fact and letting people know upfront or explaining why reports can contain information of varying levels of accuracy.
Third, i am not in a position to judge if one test is better scientifically than another, but i agree with Dave that it seems that pof addresses topics similar to other tests. maybe that’s because most love doctors draw from the same research!
the pof test is not pretty looking and the name sucks, but boy has it hit a nerve around here — again markus seems to be doing something right.
peace out
7
David Evans (Check me out!)
// May 16, 2007 at 11:59 am
Clarification: The title was meant to imply that PoF is moving in a new direction that is part eHarmony and part Chemistry.com. I did not know about echemistry.com.
8 Personality Testing. « The Paradigm Shift // May 16, 2007 at 9:17 pm
[...] http://onlinedatingpost.com/archives/2007/05/plentyoffish-is-now-echemistrycom [...]
9
Edward (Check me out!)
// May 16, 2007 at 11:25 pm
The testing aspect is completely understandable from a SEO perspective. OKCupid has a ton of inbound links from people who take a test and post a link to the test on their blog.
10
Markus (Check me out!)
// May 17, 2007 at 12:07 pm
To bad that only works if you allow non members to take the test, which I don’t.
11 Plentyoffish Relationship Needs Assessment » Online Dating Insider // Jul 9, 2007 at 10:42 am
[...] assessment feature. I believe this is the feature I wrote about back in May in a post titled PlentyofFish Is Now EChemistry.com. I had to re-read the title twice. Funny choice of words. The Relationship Needs Assessment [...]
12
LOCjyggg (Check me out!)
// Nov 16, 2007 at 1:04 am
aiken south carolina apartment rental
aiken south carolina apartment rental
13
DAsjykok (Check me out!)
// Nov 21, 2007 at 4:10 am
fghjnffssefxc
smell
Leave a Comment