UK Edition
Secret of eHarmony algorithm is revealed....
For 17 years, the online dating site eHarmony has closely guarded its matchmaking algorithm.
Singles are asked to fill out an extensive list of personal preferences, before the computer programme spits out a list of suitable dates, picked to meet even the most demanding criteria.
The relationship questionnaire, says the website, will ‘help us build a comprehensive personality profile of you and work out which of our members you will be deeply compatible with.’
Yet, the secret to eHarmony’s success may actually lie in ignoring the wishes of picky clients.
The Chief Scientist at eHarmony has revealed that although singles are asked to choose likes and dislikes on a sliding scale, unless they pick the extreme ends their answers will be largely ignored.
Dr Steve Carter said it stopped daters ending up ‘in a universe of one.’
“We saw that by giving people the opportunity to say what race do you want to be presented with? what religion? what denomination? how much can they smoke or drink? people thought ‘Oh, I have to make a choice here’ when they might not have made a choice,” he said in a debate staged by the Institute of Art and Ideas in London.
“Then that choice becomes absolute, and that choice is run against the database and anyone who doesn’t fit that choice never gets presented to them.
“We realised fairly early on that are users were kicking themselves in the nuts. We needed to figure out a way to not allow them to paint themselves into such a corner.
“So we started asking people how important these things were on a scale of one to seven, it’s now a scale of one to three. If you didn’t say it’s very very important, if you didn’t go all the way up to the top of that scale, yeah we kinda ignored it, anytime we could.
“We wanted to get people in front of you who were beyond that bucket, and based on what we knew worked for a long term relationship, to try and trick you into going out with that person and seeing if the chemistry will happen.”
According to latest figures, 17 million people in Britain used dating sites last year, generating £14.5bn to the economy with the app industry alone making £11.7bn. One in five relationships in the UK now begins online.
However experts at Kings College and Oxford University said they were concerned that dating websites could not recreate the serendipitous attraction that two people can feel when they have little in common.
Dr Christopher Hamilton, a lecturer in philosophy and religion at King’s College London, said: “There are things that one can’t predict. Being open to chance events seems to be one of the interesting and exciting things.
“Human beings are deeply unpredictable. It can be that one particularly mannerism in one person can be the thing that funnels and channels the interest and excitement and so on but one can’t predict that, because there is something deeply elusive about it.
“I might think I am a cantankerous, grumpy middle-aged man, but then I meet this person and I find I am full of energy and happy but I would never have predicted that.
“There is a fear that technology bypasses the irreducible mystery of human beings and who we are attracted to.”
Oxford neuroscientist Dr Anders Sandberg said that people may start to move away from web dating in the future and go back to finding partners offline.
“The fear we have of using technology is it’s too binary and too clear cut,” he said.
“We tend to get unhappy when we remove too much of a ahuman. Brutalist buildings made people very unhappy. It’s why shabby chic came back.
“I would imagine that if we go too far in rationalising love we will see people becoming unhappy even if we can’t point out why. Then we might have a pendulum swing back.”
Dr Carter also described eHarmony as a form of ‘social engineering.’
“It’s absolutely social engineering. If you look at a problem in society, and you say I’m going to create a tool to lessen that, then that is exactly what eHarmony was, it was an attempt to reduce the rate at which people were unhappy in relationships.
“So that is social engineering to the extent that it was successful. We’re proud social engineers to that extent.”