“The thing that’s so interesting—and, from a research perspective, useful—about OkCupid is that their algorithm is transparent and user-driven, rather than the black-box approach employed by Match.com or eHarmony,” he said. “So, with OkCupid, you tell them what you want, and they’ll find your soul mate. Whereas with Match or eHarmony, they say, ‘We know what you really want; let us handle the whole soul mate thing.’ But the truth is none of these sites really has any idea what they’re doing—otherwise they’d have a monopoly on the market.”
The problem, Lewis noted, is an ancient and obvious one: There’s no such thing as love-hacking. “OkCupid is premised on this great notion that we know what we want,” he said, “but we often have no idea what makes for chemistry or compatibility.” The algorithm, in other words, is geared to find you someone who’s like you—all those political questions, say, on which your ideal match would share your values—which isn’t necessarily the same as a desirable long-term partner. Meeting up with a 99 percent match for cocktails, in other words, is sort of like gazing in a mirror on a good hair day, which may explain why the looks-first model employed by Tinder is winning with tech-savvy younger users. It’s simpler. It discards the unhelpful information.
So, come Valentine’s Day, remember to remember the grim reality: Since the rise of online dating in the early 2000s, research by sociologists, most notably a large-scale 2012 study published by the Association for Psychological Science, has consistently found that matching algorithms, no matter how sophisticated, just do not work. Indeed, the authors of that study wrote, “no compelling evidence supports matching sites’ claims that mathematical algorithms work—that they foster romantic outcomes that are superior to those fostered by other means of pairing partners.” The feel-good principles on which these search-methods are grounded—similarity of values, complementarity of sexual preference—are, sorry to be a killjoy, actually rather poor predictors of subjectively rated romantic success. “[T]hese sites,” the authors continue, “are in a poor position to know how the two partners will grow and mature over time, what life circumstances they will confront and coping responses they will exhibit in the future, and how the dynamics of their interaction will ultimately promote or undermine romantic attraction and long-term relationship well-being.” When you finally get that note-perfect message from a total cutie—who, OMG, is also a 99 percent match!?—in other words, don’t get too excited.
No comments:
Post a Comment