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Hitting It Off, Thanks to Algorithms of Love
Abstract
They were nodding and smiling in unison, and the woman stroked her hair and briefly licked her lips — positive signs of chemistry that would be duly recorded in this experiment at the new eHarmony Labs here. By comparing these results with the couple's answers to hundreds of other questions, the researchers hoped to draw closer to a new and extremely lucrative grail — making the right match. Once upon a time, finding a mate was considered too important to be entrusted to people under the influence of raging hormones. Their parents, sometimes assisted by astrologers and matchmakers, supervised courtship until customs changed in the West because of what was called the Romeo and Juliet revolution. Grown-ups, leave the kids alone. But now some social scientists have rediscovered the appeal of adult supervision — provided the adults have doctorates and vast caches of psychometric data. Online matchmaking has become a boom industry as rival scientists test their algorithms for finding love. The leading yenta is eHarmony, which pioneered the don't-try-this-yourself approach eight years ago by refusing to let its online customers browse for their own dates. It requires them to answer a 258-question personality test and then picks potential partners. The company estimates, based on a national Harris survey it commissioned, that its matchmaking was responsible for about 2 percent of the marriages in America last year, nearly 120 weddings a day.
... Moreover, people with computer access began using the Internet to seek out possible romantic partners at least 20 years ago. Nonetheless, Dr. Neil Clark Warren, founder of eHarmony, is an example of a digital entrepreneur, one who has engaged in business, knowledge, and institutional entrepreneurship practices to establish online matchmaking as a "boom industry" [46]. The firm, founded in 2000, has quickly grown in registered clients and revenues, becoming the 4 th largest online dating service by 2005 [20]. ...
... Rather than allowing customers to simply post their own profiles or to browse other registered users' profiles to select their own "matches," eHarmony uses a lengthy questionnaire to develop a detailed profile of the client's "core traits" and "vital attributes," then searches its user base for potentially compatible partners based on a proprietary search algorithm. 3 Customers pay a monthly fee to view their matches and are guided through an on-line vetting process before initiating face-to-face contact [20], [46]. eHarmony is the most expensive among popular online dating services and justifies its premium price to customers 3 (http://www.eharmony.com/about/faq), ...
... Despite this conservative, status quo orientation (for which the firm has been criticized), institutional entrepreneurship is also evident in eHarmony's attempts to establish the task of finding a romantic partner as a "science." The eHarmony Lab, for example, is staffed primarily by researchers with Ph.D.s in psychology, and though no studies have been published, the firm purports to conduct rigorous, scientific research [46]. Television advertisements not only familiarize the viewer with eHarmony services but also make socio-cultural claims about the legitimacy, efficiency, and even superiority of its algorithm-based matchmaking compared to traditional 8 (www.eharmonylabs.com), ...
This paper asks: "How can we better understand the nature of entrepreneurship in the digital economy?" It posits the following arguments. First, entrepreneurship in the digital economy entails three distinct, yet interrelated, types of opportunities: business, knowledge and institutional. The knowledge intensive and disruptive nature of IT requires entrepreneurs to engage in each form of entrepreneurial practice to create sustainable ventures. Second, entrepreneurial practices in the digital economy are inherently sociomaterial. Investigating these three forms of entrepreneurship jointly and the sociomaterial practices through which they are enacted provides a deeper understanding of the nature and dynamics of new venture discovery and exploitation. We illustrate these points with the example of an online dating service, eHarmony, to highlight how sociomaterial practices of business, knowledge, and institutional entrepreneurship are manifest and synergistic. We then outline a research agenda to develop these ideas.
... Neil Clark Warren, and guided by research they conducted with 5,000 married couples (Tierney, 2008). Their intention was to lower the divorce rate by applying insights from marriage to intervene in the mating decisions of the site's single users (Slater, 2013). ...
... Online Dating makes Instant Communication easier especially for shy people Online dating makes it possible and easier to meet and date people without the fear and pressure of unnecessary commitments. Some success rate has been recorded by high profile Online Dating sites as most now use algorithms for finding love designed by Sociologists and Psychologists although some of these algorithms are yet to be published for peer reviewed as stated by [17] in his online article titled The Science of Online Dating and Compatibility Testing. ...
The importance of dating can never be over emphasized as it is a prerequisite that should be considered before going into any form of courtship that can either lead to marriage or not. As a result of the dramatic increase in Internet usage, there has been a proliferation of numerous online dating sites that allow people to meet and date in a virtual environment. This form of socialization has been perceived by many to be either a blessing or a curse depending on individuals' opinions and experiences due to the present level of increase in divorce rate among those who are married. The study considered the perception of online dating in sustaining marriages. This study employed descriptive statistics using quantitative research methodology which involves the use of questionnaires as the research instrument and the questionnaire. Data used for the analysis were collected with the use of a well-structured questionnaire administered to 50 respondents in the PhD family wholeness class of 2015/2016 and the analysis was done with the help of Statistical Package Service Solution (SPSS) version 21.0. The sample size was chosen based on Convenience Sampling method. Our finding shows that 26.2% of the respondents are within 21-30 years age range, 38.1% fall into 31-40 age bracket, and 23.8% are within the 41-50 years age range. 64.3% of the respondents are married while 35.7% are single. However, 51% of the respondents admitted that dating and marrying an online friend is possible if only the person has a good heart and fears God. Furthermore, 72.61% of the respondents do not believe that online dating can lead to sustainable marriage while 27.39% of the population sampled believes otherwise. The result of the analysis evidenced that a larger percentage of the population surveyed do not accept that online dating can actually lead to a sustainable marriage. The study recommends that while people may engage in online dating, it is advisable they meet physically to become more acquainted before considering marriage.
... At one time, automation was simply a tool to interpret large amounts of data and create forecasts, such as stock prices. Now, automation is informing decisions in highly personal and emotional domains, such as pain management (Inthorn, Tabacchi, & Seising, 2015) and the pairing of romantic partners (Tierney, 2008). Furthermore, the degree to which automation operates and makes decisions autonomously is accelerating rapidly. ...
It is becoming common for decisions with serious consequences to be made by automation. Therefore, it is important for counselors to consider the challenges of working with clients who are affected. If a high-consequence decision that leads to tragedy is made by a computer, does this change the counseling process? This article starts this discussion by investigating forgiveness therapy as it applies to computers. First, forgiving a human is qualitatively different from forgiving a computer. Next, examples of automated decisions are presented. Finally, the authors discuss issues that clients wishing to forgive a computer face, suggest interventions, and propose a research agenda.
... Online Dating makes Instant Communication easier especially for shy people Online dating makes it possible and easier to meet and date people without the fear and pressure of unnecessary commitments. Some success rate has been recorded by high profile Online Dating sites as most now use algorithms for finding love designed by Sociologists and Psychologists although some of these algorithms are yet to be published for peer reviewed as stated by [17] in his online article titled The Science of Online Dating and Compatibility Testing. ...
The importance of dating can never be over emphasized as it is a prerequisite that should be considered before going into any form of courtship that can either lead to marriage or not. As a result of the dramatic increase in Internet usage, there has been a proliferation of numerous online dating sites that allow people to meet and date in a virtual environment. This form of socialization has been perceived by many to be either a blessing or a curse depending on individuals' opinions and experiences due to the present level of increase in divorce rate among those who are married. The study considered the perception of online dating in sustaining marriages. This study employed descriptive statistics using quantitative research methodology which involves the use of questionnaires as the research instrument and the questionnaire. Data used for the analysis were collected with the use of a well-structured questionnaire administered to 50 respondents in the PhD family wholeness class of 2015/2016 and the analysis was done with the help of Statistical Package Service Solution (SPSS) version 21.0. The sample size was chosen based on Convenience Sampling method. Our finding shows that 26.2% of the respondents are within 21-30 years age range, 38.1% fall into 31-40 age bracket, and 23.8% are within the 41-50 years age range. 64.3% of the respondents are married while 35.7% are single. However, 51% of the respondents admitted that dating and marrying an online friend is possible if only the person has a good heart and fears God. Furthermore, 72.61% of the respondents do not believe that online dating can lead to sustainable marriage while 27.39% of the population sampled believes otherwise. The result of the analysis evidenced that a larger percentage of the population surveyed do not accept that online dating can actually lead to a sustainable marriage. The study recommends that while people may engage in online dating, it is advisable they meet physically to become more acquainted before considering marriage.
Online dating services have increased in popularity around the world, but a lack of quality data hinders our understanding of their role in family formation. This paper studies the effect of online dating services on marital sorting, using a novel dataset with verified information on people and their spouses. Estimates based on matching techniques suggest that, relative to other spouse search methods, online dating promotes marriages that exhibit weaker sorting along occupation and geographical proximity but stronger sorting along education and other demographic traits. Sensitivity analysis, including the Rosenbaum Bounds approach, suggests that online dating's impact on marital sorting is robust to potential selection bias. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The editors that plan and lay out the Journal are experts at matching up articles with a similar chemistry (literally) in every issue. As articles accepted for publication progress through the system, each is tentatively slotted into a particular issue. Matches are made between related articles if possible, and you’ll commonly find them juxtaposed in an issue. Keywords (Audience): General Public
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