In 2012 a team of five psychology professors, led by Eli Finkel at Northwestern University, published a paper in Psychological Science in the Public Interest arguing that no algorithm can predict in advance whether two people will make a good couple. “No compelling evidence supports matching sites’ claims that mathematical algorithms work,” they wrote. The task the sites have set out for themselves—to pick out mates who are uniquely compatible—is, they conclude, “virtually impossible.”12
Much of online dating, Finkel and company argued, is based on the faulty notion that the kind of information we can see in a profile is actually useful in determining whether that person would make a good partner. But because the kind of information that appears on a profile—occupation, income, religion, political views, favorite TV shows, etc.—is the only information we know about that person, we overvalue it. This can actually cause us to make very bad choices about whom we go on a date with.
“Encountering potential partners via online dating profiles reduces three-dimensional people to two-dimensional displays of information,” the authors wrote, adding, “It can also cause people to make lazy, ill-advised decisions when selecting among the large array of potential partners.” Sheena Iyengar, a Columbia University professor who specializes in research on choice, put it to me another way: “People are not products,” she said bluntly. “But, essentially, when you say, ‘I want a guy that’s six foot tall and has blah, blah, blah characteristics,’ you’re treating a human being like one.”
It’s a good point, but at the same time, people doing online dating have no choice but to filter their prospects in some way, and once we accept that it’s reasonable to select for, say, location and job, who’s to say that it’s superficial to select for a doctor who lives in your area? Even if you believe Iyengar’s argument that sometimes online dating sites encourage people to treat one another like products, what choice do you have?
Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist who advises Match .com, says the answer is to avoid reading too much into any given profile and to resist the temptation to start long online exchanges before a first date. As Fisher sees it, there’s only one way to determine whether you have a future with a person: meeting them face-to-face. Nothing else can give you a sense of what a person is actually like, nor whether you two will spark.
“The brain is the best algorithm,” Fisher argues. “There’s not a dating service on this planet that can do what the human brain can do in terms of finding the right person.”
This was probably the advice that resonated with me the most. I wouldn’t know how to search for the things I love about my current girlfriend. It’s not the kind of stuff you can really categorize.
When I’ve really been in love with someone, it’s not because they looked a certain way or liked a certain TV show or a certain cuisine. It’s more because when I watched a certain TV show or ate a certain cuisine with them, it was the most fun thing ever.
Why? I couldn’t type out why.
That doesn’t mean I’m skeptical of online dating; on the contrary, the research we’ve done has convinced me that millions of people have used it to find what they’re looking for, from a one-night stand to marriage and a family. But our research also convinced me that too many people spend way too much time doing the online part of online dating, not the dating part. After years of observing people’s behavior and consulting for Match.com, Fisher came away with a similar conclusion, which is why she advises online daters to keep their messaging to a minimum and to meet the person in real life as quickly as possible.
“This is one of the reasons that it’s a misnomer that they call these things ‘dating services,’” she says. “They should be called ‘introducing services.’ They enable you to go out and go and meet the person yourself.”
Laurie Davis, author of Love at First Click and an online dating consultant, advises her clients to exchange a maximum of six messages before meeting off-line. This should provide enough information to let them know whether they’d have any possible interest in dating the person. Everything after that is usually just postponing the inevitable.
“Online dating is just a vehicle to meet more people,” she says. “It’s not the place to actually date.”
For some people, mostly women, this advice wasn’t convincing. As they see it, the Internet makes connections happen too fast, and their concerns about safety make them reluctant to go out and meet someone in person before they feel like they really know them. Many of the people who spoke to us in focus groups described texting or messaging a potential partner for weeks without actually going on a date. One woman in New York City named Kim showed us an exchange she’d had with a man on OkCupid that she’d ended because he asked her out for coffee after just a few messages within a twenty-minute span.
The two were involved in some funny instant messages, and Kim commented on how awkward meeting people online can be. The guy wrote back, “I would much rather connect with you in person than this online thing because just like you I think this is ‘awkward.’”