I took Sociology 101 in university and never liked it.
eHarmony Labs (and subsequently the official blog) shared this week the findings of four University of California Berkeley (UCB) psychology majors of their study on the “Relative Importance of Physical Attractiveness on Initial Attractiveness and Dating Online“.
The Labs piece, “A picture in your profile might get you a date, but not a relationship!” reads like a rebuttal to last month’s OKCupid Blog piece on the 4 myths of profile photos that was featured on the New York Times two weeks ago. The Labs piece reads like a half-baked “Hey, here’s proof that good photos don’t matter in a long-term-relationship dating site.”
I reviewed these students’ findings and, funny, I came up with different conclusions:
- Lab Study 1 and 2: UCB undergraduates are shallow. (sample size = 100)
- Online Dating Study 1: White 40-year-olds who are interested in casual dating are shallow. (sample size = 150)
- Online Dating Study 2: White 40-year-olds don’t end relationships because their partner is ugly. (sample size = 150)
What I hate the most about social experiments is the limitation of survey data. I don’t know how they expect an person to do the extrapolation. Publishing psych lab results is stupid because your data will be based only on observing willing participants who are within your limited community. And then, what’s your sample size? You can’t honestly ask me to believe that results from a survey of a hundred people is reliable, unless we’re playing Family Feud or something.
Physicists agree that oil and water don’t mix, but social scientists can never agree on anything as basic. The unrepeatable nature of social studies is the main reason why I favored math and physical sciences.
Social experiments are good as a pastime for psych students and sociology undergrads. It’s only good for impressing professors and consuming study grants.
Furthermore, publishing study results like these is dangerous because there will be idiots (e.g., those who buy and read magazines filled with this crap) who use this information to make life decisions. Who checks for observer bias?
This brings us to ask what eHarmony Labs is for. After all, would findings from observing behaviors of residents from the Los Angeles Area be at all representative of behaviors across North America? No, of course not. eHarmony Labs is only there for show, for smoke and mirrors. eHarmony Labs is there only for public relations.
Exactly like what we’ve always known (and incidentally, what our patented Compatibility Matching Services is based on), a study by Goodman et al found out that eHarmony is the best dating site out there.
(Also, do you expect eHarmony Labs to release the results (data, methodology and conclusions) of any research related to their core business of compatibility matching?)
Do you want to know where the real social experiments are? They are in the “feedback loop” that eHarmony uses through the site. eHarmony does more A/B Testing than anything you can think of. In a given moment, 10% of users could be seeing blue banners on the site, 40-year-old males in the Midwest could be seeing red banners, while childfree ladies could be seeing green banners. They then sit and watch which banners get the most clicks … or which personality profile combinations attract the most subscribers and the most repeat subscribers.
Using massive multi-layered social experiments on its users, eHarmony maximizes its revenues. With this revenue they can pay for these for-show labs and studies. Perfect.
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