Love Science

Online dating companies are getting more technical in their match-making abilities including matching couples based on genetic markers of the immune systems. “If finding true love were an exact science, we wouldn’t need matchmakers, singles bars or, of course, online dating services. Like job seekers who take the Myers-Briggs personality test to help steer them to suitable professions, we’d simply take a relationship test, whose results would identify our most compatible types of mates and rule out the frogs. Problem solved. Of course, Cosmopolitan magazine has been running pop psychology love quizzes — ‘Which Bachelor Is Right for You?,’ ‘Is He Naughty or Nice?’ — for decades, prompting young women the world over to assess how sexually or socially compatible they might be with their objects of desire. Now, a handful of dating Web sites are competing to impose some science, or at least some structure, on the quest for love by using different kinds of tests to winnow the selection process. In short, each of these sites is aiming to be the Netflix of love. Instead of using a proprietary algorithm to recommend movies you might enjoy, based on your past choices, however, these dating sites offer you a list of romantic candidates whose selection is based on proprietary analyses of personality characteristics or biological markers.”