Deciphering the Brain's Love Map 255
victor7 writes "Business Week Online is running a story about a new entrant into the online dating service market called Chemistry.com which has a unique approach to trying to match up subscribers. The goal is to try to programmatically decipher the subscriber's brain's 'love map' which they believe represents that chemistry that people have with each other." From the article: "There are other personality types as well that are based on chemistry. There are questions that tell us if you are good at abstract thinking, or quick to make decisions and act on them. It's not exactly like I'm going to light a fire between the two of you. It just raises the chances. Most people fall in love because they have shared values, but they stay in love because their personalities mesh. We're trying to increase the changes of finding that spark and joy and excitement you feel when personalities mesh."
not sure one CAN predict by formula (Score:4, Interesting)
From the slashdot article:
I remember, but can't cite, an article or study that pretty much shows the odds of people staying together are pretty much the same in marriages where couples fall in love (e.g., in the United States), or in arranged marriages (many cultures), even in arranged marriages where the betrothed are extremely young (sometimes as young as 12 or 13), and even in arranged marriages with large age disparities.
First, does anyone else remember any similar studies? I've found "staying together" seems to have much to do with chemistry, and little observable similarities and tastes correlate. Just curious. What are others' observations?
programatic (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Leaps of Faith (Score:4, Interesting)
Have we not learned from our ventures in weather forecasting, that complex systems, love and relationships, in this case, cannot be predicted through the force of equations.
I prefer more traditional methods, the tea leaves say that I will have a good day tomorrow!
Re:The REAL problem with all of these approaches.. (Score:2, Interesting)
But all kidding aside, it's really scary to consider that a majority of the population could, statistically, be below average intelligence, with a minority of extremely smart people holding up the line on the opposite side.
I'm just happy I can forlumate words correctly.
Re:Love is bullshit (Score:1, Interesting)
Not everyone gets to have a SO, and the sooner you accept that, the sooner you can get on with the rest of your life.
Re:Love is bullshit (Score:3, Interesting)
Not Really New (Score:2, Interesting)
This isn't really new. Internet dating sites have had personality tests backed by actual psychological research for a long time. Instead of referring to the results in terms of personality traits like extroversion and conscientiousness, though, chemistry.com uses serotonin level, testosterone, etc. It's more gimmick than anything. For example, high levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin are theorized to be inversely associated with neuroticism (the personality trait of being prone to anxiety, fearful reactions, and emotional instability). Dominance/aggressiveness/competitiveness is as easily answered with a personality survey as with a measurement of a person's fingers. Actually, aggressive tendencies can be sublimated in a positively: working hard to support a cause one believes in, playing sports, etc. If a physical trait is used, it may offer an inaccurate picture of how that trait is expressed.
I really don't see what sets chemistry.com apart besides the angle they're taking. Personality is personality no matter what words you use to describe (serotonin and testosterone or contentment and social dominance).
Re:yes but (Score:2, Interesting)
No offence meant, but divorce has been taboo in most other civilisations too (including western ones). The difference is, in western civ, until a couple of hundred years back, the groom could divorce the bride and not feel any consequences. The bride's life was pretty much ruined.
At least the taboos in India weren't gender biased.
A 13-year old betrothed to a 60-year old cannot actually be thought to have the same opportunity for divorce as a rich Manhattan female attorney.
This statement of yours makes me think you're trolling. These sort of marriages don't take place except in one-off situations. Even in rural areas, no parent in their right minds would let their daughter marry someone so old.
The only cases where I've heard of age gaps so large involve rich old Arab Sheikhs who come to India, bribe the girl's aunt / some other female relative, who does a lot of propoganda and gets the girl married to the old bastard. Usually, the girls aren't 13 (as you noted) but nearer 18. And most of the times, these guys get caught and jailed.
It makes me sick to hear such ignorance spouted at forums such as these. You compare the values of the western world in the 21st century with those of Medieval India and try and sound insightful.
So go back under your bridge and stop trolling.
Human Instinct by Robert Winston (Score:5, Interesting)
I recall seeing an interesting BBC documentary called Human Instinct [bbc.co.uk] by Professor Robert Winston [amazon.co.uk] that explored the science behind attraction. There were heaps of interesting things they uncovered in the research studies he reported on.
They used morphing to create faces and had people rate the attractiveness of these faces. One experiment used faces that were morphed from female faces to male faces. They found that women tended to be more attracted to male faces that exhibited less masculine features generally. But ovulating women found male faces with more masculine features attractive. They also found that people tended to be more attracted to faces that have some similarities to their own. They did this by morphing a little bit of a test subject's face into some of the samples.
Another interesting test had to do with immune systems and scents. In their studies, they found that people with more different immune systems were more attracted to each other. In the example for the documentary, they tested five (or six- I forget) female subjects for certain immune system markers. They rated them from those that had markers more closely resembling Prof. Winston's own immune system to those that were more different. They then had these women sleep in shirts (over a span of nights, I think) so the shirts would smell. These shirts were placed in sealed jars. In the demonstration, Prof. Winston had to smell each jar and rate them from best to worst. Sure enough, the pattern in which he arranged them exactly matched the pattern of how his immune system compared to that of the shirt's owner.
Re:Love is bullshit (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, if you can harden yourself emotionally to the extent that you don't mind staying single your whole life, you can probably deal with a few rejections, no? So when you meet new women, demonstrate, explicitly, an interest in them; if they'd rather be just friends, they won't hold it against you if they're friends worth having.
Re:programatic (Score:3, Interesting)
That said, this website sounds like total bullshit, merely a slightly more sensible version of those "What kind of vampire are you?" polls you see smattered around in LiveJournals. All the talk about brain chemisty is clearly just an excuse to sound intellectual without having much meat to it. If I was going to create a dating website using a sort of scientific proccess, I'd consider a feeback mechanism such that the system can learn from the results of its dating suggestions to be incredibly important. This just seems to throw together random crap from the world of psychology and biochemistry and hope it sticks. Which isn't an especially scientific way to do things, frankly.
Love as a Hobby (Score:4, Interesting)
Being in a relationship is like a hobby. Some people enjoy doing it, others not so much. What we call love for another person is really just love for the activities involved in maintaining a relationship with that person.
If you don't enjoy all that stuff, then by all means find something else to do with your spare time. Each to his own.