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Several online services are now built entirely around claims that they have powerful, effective, "scientific" matchmaking tests--most notably eHarmony.com, promoted by clinical psychologist Neil Warren; PerfectMatch.com, promoted by sociologist Pepper Schwartz of the University of Washington; and Chemistry.com (a recent spin-off of Match.com), promoted by anthropologist Helen Fisher of Rutgers. But not one of the tests they offer has ever been subjected to the type of outside scientific verification that I have described.

Why would a major company such as eHarmony, which claims to have 12 million members, not subject its "scientific, 29-dimension" test to a scientific validation process? In 2004 eHarmony personnel did present a paper at a national convention claiming that married couples who met through eHarmony were happier than couples who met by other means. Typically such a paper would then be submitted for possible publication in a peer-reviewed journal. But this paper has still not been published, possibly because of its obvious flaws--the most problematic being that the eHarmony couples in the study were newlyweds (married an average of six months), whereas the couples in the control group (who had met by other means) were way past the honeymoon period (married an average of 2.1 years). (eHarmony personnel, including its founder, Neil Warren, did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this article.)

In 2005, using eHarmony's own published statistics, a team of credible authorities--among them Philip Zimbardo, a former president of the American Psychological Association--concluded in an online white paper: "When eHarmony recommends someone as a compatible match, there is a 1 in 500 chance that you'll marry this person.... Given that eHarmony delivers about 1.5 matches a month, if you went on a date with all of them, it would take 346 dates and 19 years to reach [a] 50% chance of getting married." The team also made the sweeping observation that "there is no evidence that ... scientific psychology is able to pair individuals who will enjoy happy, lasting marriages."

Think about how difficult this task is. Most online matching is done, for example, by pairing up people who are "similar" in various respects. But you do not need to look farther than your own family and friends to know that similarity is not always a good predictor of success in a relationship. Sometimes opposites really do attract. How could an online test possibly determine whether you should be paired with someone similar or with someone different, or with some magic mix?

And even if validated predictive tests eventually appeared online, how could such tests possibly predict how two people will feel when they finally meet--when that all-important "chemistry" comes into play? Oddly enough, eHarmony does not even ask people about their body type, even though research shows unequivocally that physical appearance is important to both men and women.

But the biggest problem with online testing is the "false negative problem." A test that determines in advance whom you might meet and whom you will never meet necessarily fails to allow certain people to meet who would adore each other. The good news, though, is that according to psychologist Larry D. Rosen of California State University, Dominguez Hills, "In our studies only 30 percent of the people say they use [online tests] at all, and most of those people find them ridiculous."

High Hopes and Poor Odds
Advertising materials from the largest online dating services--Match, eHarmony, True.com and Yahoo! Personals--suggest that more than 50 million Americans are now using such services (assuming relatively little overlap in membership) and that satisfaction levels are high. But recent independent studies suggest that only 16 million Americans were using online dating services by late 2005 and that satisfaction levels were low. Based on a phone survey with more than 2,000 people, Jupiter Research reports that "barely one quarter of users reported being very satisfied or satisfied with online personals sites." Another extensive survey conducted by Pew Internet & American Life Projects suggests that 66 percent of Internet users think that online dating is a "dangerous activity."

According to Trish McDermott, a longtime spokesperson for Match and now an executive at Engage.com, the confusion over membership ?figures results from the fact that while a large company such as Match might advertise that it has 15 million members, less than a million are actually paying customers. The others have full profiles online--an important marketing draw--but cannot respond to e-mails. This is one of several reasons, according to McDermott, why many paying members get frustrated by a lack of response to their e-mails; the vast majority of people in the profiles simply cannot respond.

One of my greatest concerns about online dating has to do with what I call "the click problem." We already have a commitment problem in America, one of several reasons why roughly half of first marriages and about two thirds of second marriages here end in divorce. Online dating probably is making things worse.

No matter what Hollywood tells us, long-term relationships take patience, skill and effort. In cyberspace, unfortunately, the bar is so long and the action so quick that few people are willing to put up with even the slightest imperfection in a potential mate. If someone is the wrong height or wears the wrong shoes or makes the wrong kind of joke, he or she is often dismissed instantly. After all, it is a simple matter to go back and click, with tens of thousands of potential mates ready to fill the void.

Virtual Dating and More
These many problems notwithstanding, the future of online dating and matchmaking looks bright. Interest is growing rapidly, and intense competition will force rapid changes in the kinds of services that are offered. In 2001 online dating was a $40-million business; by 2008 that figure is expected to break $600 million, with more than 800 businesses, both large and small, vying for every dollar.

The online dating model is already developing rapidly. Phase one--the Long Bar--is exemplified by companies such as Match, True and Yahoo! Personals. Phase two--the Long Test--is the bread and butter of companies like eHarmony and PerfectMatch. But phase three is already well under way.

Virtual dating takes care of the safety concerns that prevent many people from meeting in person.

 

Engage, for example, allows members to bring friends and family with them online, all of whom can prowl the profiles, checking people out and matching them up. Members can also rate the politeness of their dates, as well as the accuracy of the profiles. This is the new "community" approach to online matching--a naturalistic, social corrective for the deception that plagues cyberspace. The community approach is also evident in the sprawling new social networking sites such as Facebook, Friendster and MySpace; MySpace alone has more than 100 million members. Although the social networking sites appeal mainly to young users and are not strictly dating sites, they bring the community back into whatever dating is generated there. On mega dating sites such as eHarmony and Match, dating is done in complete social isolation, a matter of great concern to Ellison and other researchers in this area.

And the next step in online dating--"virtual dating"--is already being developed. Using special software developed by the M.I.T. Media Lab, researchers Frost, Ariely and Harvard University's Michael I. Norton recently reported that people who had had a chance to interact with each other (by computer only) on a virtual tour of a museum subsequently had more successful face-to-face meetings than people who had viewed only profiles. One major bonus: virtual dating takes care of the safety concerns that prevent many people from meeting in person.

Take this just a small step forward: people meeting and chatting in a romantic virtual cafe on the Champs-Élysées in Paris--seeing and hearing each other online as they interact in this beautiful setting. Andrew Fiore, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies online dating, suggests that in a few years we will even be able to add physiological signs to the experience--the sound of your date's heartbeat, perhaps?

Add community-based matchmaking to enriched virtual dating, and we have turned the ?Internet into the greatest yenta the world has ever known.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
ROBERT EPSTEIN is a contributing editor for Scientific American Mind and the former editor in chief and current West Coast editor of Psychology Today. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and is a longtime researcher and professor. His latest book is The Case against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen (Jossey-Bass, 2007). He is working on a book entitled Making Love: How People Learn to Love, and How You Can Too. Epstein has served as a paid consultant to Engage.com, and Psychology Today is affiliated with True.com.