eHarmony Blog.com

What does one do on a lazy afternoon after being done with all one’s holiday shopping? Accompany someone signing up for eHarmony of course!

To our surprise, eHarmony revised the questionnaire since one of us took it four months ago. It used to begin with “Warm Clever Dominant Ambitious.” That’s also what we remember being said by an interviewer during a radio interview with Dr. Warren. We love the 436 questions: (1) it screens out the “players,” and (2) you find the truth. I mean, if you ask a person questions like:

• Are you stable?
• Are you predictable?
• Are you not spontaneous?
• Are you reliable?
• Are you stubborn?
• Are your emotions stable?

and (1) get answers and (2) get the same answers, then you’ve found a person one’s parents may approve of .

eHarmony revised the questionnaire and revised the so-called $40 Personality Profile. A few months ago it used to be two reports: a Personality Profile and a Compatibility Profile. The second report, in fact, was a new feature described for the first time in eHarmony’s newsletter last January. The two reports looked like this:

eHarmony Personality Profile (old version)

eHarmony Compatibility Profile (no longer offered)

The new report looked like this:

eHarmony Personality Profile (new version)

As you can see, the old personality report gave information about “communication”, “improving communication”, “strengths” and “needs”. One’s “Compatibility Report” had a lot to say about the 29 dimensions of the person one is most compatible with. It was very exhaustive.

The new profile, bleh, described the person only in FIVE — count ‘em — traits:

• Agreeableness
• Openness (Curious or Contented)
• Emotional Stability (Steady or Responsive)
• Conscientiousness (Focused or Flexible)
• Extraversion (Outgoing or Reserved)

What the bloody hell happened to the 29 Dimensions? Who threw obstreperousness, artistic passion, humour and the rest out of the window? Pardon us, eHarmony, we love you, but THIS IS INSANE. I bloody know I’m unagreeable. I bloody know I’m curious. I bloody know I’m unresponsive and terribly flexible. And isn’t it bloody obvious: I’m NOT reserved.

For the love of Jezebel, I took the bloody test, told it I’m humorous a few times, the least it could say is that I’m funny.

We tried to find out when this “upgrade” happened. Our research found a blog post in 3 September 06 where a guy posted his eHarmony test results in MySpace. The research revealed mixed results, too. Some registrants received the old extended test + extended profile, but some received the short test + crummy profile.

We thus wonder:

• Did eHarmony revise the questionnaire because of Chemistry.com? Bar none — no dating site out there has a 400+ item profile questionnaire.
• Does the new questionnaire reject as much people as the old? Are more people passing the test now — has eHarmony lowered the standards of admission?
• Are old test-takers matched with the new? For example, the shortened test didn’t ask us if we enjoyed Animals, Antiques, Art, Astrology and Astronomy. These topics won’t appear on the Common Interests section of our match’s About Me page then!
• The shortened test asked nothing about the person’s relationship with her parents. There’s nothing to base the “Family Background” dimension! Read the official definition of “Family Background” and see for yourself. Scratch one dimension, then by definition, we members get lower quality of matches!

Oh eHarmony what will you do next?!