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Friday, March 20, 2015

The Scientific Match Dating Site - The Pandora Radio of Love

Relationship columns in magazines and newspapers have always published pop psychology pop quizzes - the ones that are forever trying to inflame your interest with running around familiar love topics every which way they can think of. "Should you date someone younger than you?", " How compatible are you in bed?" - they know that people will never tire of hearing something saucy about the men and women they are interested in and getting their buttons pushed. These columns are suposed to help us understand love better. But apparently, there are some who now believe that sauciness has had a good run, and it is time to bring some science to bear on the success wesee in love, relationships, and of course, dating. When the Internet first took shape about 20 years ago, it was like it was made for the dating scene. Ever since, every major and minor website has put out a match dating site, and found as much luck as anyone else, helping people find love. The scientific approach, is about to revolutionize all that.

What they are doing, bringing science into the psychology of personal taste, isn't all that new actually. Pandora, the music website, tries to look at all the music you like so far, and to predict what you might like in the future. Netflix has a scientific formula that tries to look at your past list of personal hits, to predict what you might like that you haven't seen on its catalog. Scientific dating, tries to use formulas to analyze your personality, for what they call biological markers; to come up with suggestions for whom you might like out of all the people there are on their rolls. The concept of the scientific match dating site has a few variations on the theme, and the three or four websites that have picked up on the idea run the range.

eHarmony.com was the website that first started it all off. They ask you to answer dozens of questions on a very thorough scientifically-prepared questionnaire that helps them see the kind of person you might like. ScientificMatch.com has been around a couple of years now, and takes the most trouble of them all. For under a $2000 fee, as they give you a DNA test, and try to match you against other people by matching your immune system genetically to someone else's. The theory is, that women find themselves attracted to men by the smell of a different immune system. Chemistry.com, a sister enterprise of Match.com, tries a less exotic approach. They charge you $50 for a monthly membership, and scientifically analyze your answers to a questionnaire, with proprietary algorithms. Chemistry.com, appropriately tries to analyze your brain chemistry to find your match.

These sites are said to be more successful, in general, than the general-purpose match dating sites out there.This could mean that their proprietary analyses are more successful, or, alternatively, that these more expensive sites attract a better kind of clientele. It could also mean that when they give you such extensive ranges of information obtained from their questionnaires, you have a better chance at making a smart choice.