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 Office Hours With Dr. Jim
by James
Houran, Ph.D
In
this column, "Dr.
Jim"
honestly and candidly answers your questions about
dating, love and sexuality. He doesn’t tell
you what you want to hear – he tells you what
you need to hear. Dr. Jim is committed to offering
you guidance based on responsible clinical practice
and hard data from the latest scientific studies. Send
Dr. Jim your questions today for consideration
in an upcoming issue.
Do
Compatibility Tests Work When They Can't Measure
Attraction?
Quick
Access:
Compatibility Tests and
Attraction
Aren’t “compatibility
tests” useless
because they don’t predict physical attraction
between people? There’s
been much buzz lately about Dr. Helen Fisher and
her work at Chemistry.com – an
offshoot of Match.com. This is Match.com's
attempt to enter the niche market of online daters
seeking “long-term
compatibility.” In the US market, eHarmony.com and PerfectMatch dominate
this niche.
Dr.
Fisher is getting good publicity, because she purports
to have a “test” that predicts if two people
have what it takes to sustain romantic love and passion – what
people call chemistry – over the long haul.
This promise resonates with people, because research
by independent research firm Synovate reveals that
one of the top reasons people worldwide do not use
online dating sites is that they would “just
rather meet someone in person first” (see the
Table directly below - click it to enlarge).
Click Image or Here to Enlarge
The
impression is that people don’t want to go
through a “box” to meet and get to know
someone – or in other words a computer and
quizzes can’t really assess if you have chemistry
with someone. I agree with this sentiment to some
extent, but I also think Chemistry.com is handling
the topic of sexuality in a much more classy, educational
and productive way than other online dating sites
-- so kudos to Dr. Fisher and Chemistry.com. Having
said that, I also have reservations.
Helen
and I are acquaintances, so I’m familiar with
her questionnaire and she’s aware of my work
in scaling and mathematics in compatibility testing.
Scientists are still grappling with this notion of
love and attraction, but traditionally “love” has
been simplified as two main types -- Passionate /
Erotic Love (mechanisms driving sexuality and emotional
passion) and Companionate Love (feelings of deep
attachment and friendship). It’s well established
that high levels of Passionate / Erotic Love characterize
early stages of romantic relationships. However,
these levels naturally and predictably fade over
the course of a relationship. That is not a sign
that the bond is weakening for the couple; it’s
simply a natural progression where one bond gives
way to the influence of feelings and drives that
more often concern attachment, friendship and commitment.
Passionate
Love throughout one’s relationship
of the intensity experienced in the early stages
of a relationship is what Hollywood and songwriters
promote, but it’s not what actually happens.
Too often, people are not taught realistic expectations
for relationships, so they understandably become
disappointed.
My
own research using advanced scaling techniques derived
from modern test theory, as well as the literature
with which I’m aware, all
points to a cognitive view of romantic compatibility.
This view stresses partners’ dynamic reinterpretation
of their social, emotion and sexual realities. In
past publications and academic conferences, I’ve
defined it as “a holistic pattern of shared
beliefs and values, mutually beneficial similarities
and differences across personality traits, demographic
preferences, and a cognitive set that motivates and
sustains both erotic and companionate love in each
partner.” This perspective agrees with previous
work (4,5) that suggests relationship
satisfaction derives from the tendency to view positive
perceptions as more important than negative perceptions,
as well as the tendency to alter the importance of
specific perceptions as is needed over time. For example,
the tendency to describe the marital relationship
in unrealistically positive terms is called marital
conventionalization. Such positive distortions in
marriage– what Edmonds (1) viewed
as social desirability bias in marital quality measurements —are
strikingly similar to psychological constructs such
as positive illusions (8) and unrealistic optimism (6).
The
assessment or cognitive appraisal of one’s
partner and the quality of marriage thus parallels
a self-fulfilling prophecy (2) whose
contents form a mindset that is determined mostly
by the psychological costs associated with changing
or leaving the relationship (3).
To avoid these costs and consequences, it seems likely
that partners use Erotic Love to reinforce Companionate
Love or vice versa. Of course, individuals can also
use negative distortions to negate Erotic or Companionate
Love. Such mindsets help explain why satisfied couples
can be “objectively” incompatible and
unsatisfied couples can be “objectively” compatible.
Although my own work has not assessed this variable
in any rigorous way, I speculate that this cognitive
set is related to Psychologist Robert Sternberg’s
(7) notion of the conscious decision to commit to a
relationship. Accordingly, conventionalization may
not simply be a confounding variable in relationship
satisfaction and adjustment; it might well be the very
process by which couples remain satisfied and bonded
over time.
Of
course, common sense and personal experience tell
us that physical attraction is also a highly idiosyncratic
phenomenon. To this end, the testing firm of weAttract.com has developed a computerized “physical
attraction test” that finds photographs of
individuals from a pool of online daters that a person
will find attractive based on that person’s
preferences mapped from a set of prototype faces
and body types. At the 2005 iDate Conference, Fujii
Film introduced facial recognition software that
parallels the pioneering efforts of weAttract.com.
This software reportedly finds matches to photographs
a person finds attractive from online dating profiles.
Thus, if an online-dater finds Person A and Person
B attractive from their photographs, this software
will locate other candidates from an online dating
pool that resemble the photographs of Person A and
B.
As
noted by Thompson and his colleagues (9), it remains
to be seen whether psychological and physical compatibility
can efficiently and validly be synthesized into a
single compatibility test and matching system. I
appreciate Helen's efforts along these lines, but
I have seen no compelling scientific evidence for
the Chemistry.com “test” -- or for most
compatibility tests for that matter. I anticipate
that any successful efforts along these lines would
significantly increase the validity of a compatibility
test in predicting relationship satisfaction and
stability.
In
the mean time, let me draw everyone's attention to
Wilson and Cousin’s (10) excellently
worded and accurate perspective on the current state
of romantic compatibility testing – “It
will not tell you whether or not you are going to
fall in love with another person in a compulsive, ‘chemical’ way,
just whether or not it is a good idea if you do” (p.
viii).
References:
1
Edmonds, V. H. (1967). Marital conventionalization:
definition and measurement. Journal of Marriage and
the Family, 29, 681-688.
2
Houran, J., & Lange, R. (2004). Redefining delusion
based on studies of subjective paranormal ideation.
Psychological Reports, 94, 501-513. 3
Lange, R., & Houran,
J. (2000). Modeling Maher’s attribution theory
of delusions as a cusp catastrophe. Nonlinear Dynamics,
Psychology, and Life Sciences, 4, 235-254. 4
Levinger, G. (1986). Compatibility in relationships.
Social Science, 71, 173-177.
5
Neff, L. A., & Karney,
B. R. (2003). The dynamic structure of relationship
perceptions: differential importance as a strategy
of relationship maintenance. Personality and Social
Psychology Bulletin, 29, 1433-1446.
6
Scheier, M. F., & Carver, C. S. (1992). Effects
of optimism on psychological and physical well being:
theoretical overview and empirical update. Cognitive
Therapy and Research, 16, 201-228.
7
Sternberg, R. J. (1986). A triangular theory of love.
Psychological Review, 93, 119-135.
8
Taylor, S. E., & Brown, J. D. (1988).
Illusion and well-being: a social psychological perspective
on mental health. Psychological Bulletin, 103, 193-210.
9
Thompson, M., Zimbardo, P. & Hutchinson, G.
(2005). Consumers are having second thoughts about
online dating: are the real benefits getting lost
in over promises? [Industry Report]. Dallas, TX:
weAttract.com. Available online at: http://weattract.com/images/weAttract_whitepaper.pdf.
10
Wilson, G. D., & Cousins, J. M. (2003). CQ:
learn the secret of lasting love. London: Fusion
Press.
> Perfectmatch.com - The best approach to find the one.
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