Maybe their results do measure people's genuine attraction to others. But they might also just show that they are just being more realistic in their choices of who they might want to be with. Either way, they show how powerful social conditioning and environmental factors are in dating and courting behaviour.
Here's yet another example of a dating site being used as a tool for psychological research. This time researches used one to find out if members were mostly attracted to others in their own "league" of desirability, or not. The Berkeley researchers drew this conclusion from their study of 3000 members: "Individuals on the dating market will assess their own self-worth and select partners whose social desirability approximately equals their own."
Maybe their results do measure people's genuine attraction to others. But they might also just show that they are just being more realistic in their choices of who they might want to be with. Either way, they show how powerful social conditioning and environmental factors are in dating and courting behaviour.
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We now live in a world that is simply awash with digital technology. Among many other things it enables us to make contact with people almost anywhere, anytime. Online dating sites are a popular example of this. And they all seem to have sprung up in the last ten years or so.
But the actual concept of using a computer to meet a potential partner actually goes back half a century. As this article states: The first-ever computer matchmaking system was designed by New York accountant Lewis Altfest and his friend Robert Ross. The two were inspired by the Parker Pen Pavilion they came across at New York's World Fair in 1964, where a giant computer selected pen pals for anyone who wanted one. All they had to do was "fill out a questionnaire, feed it into the machine, and almost instantly received a card with the name and address of a like-minded participant in some far-flung locale—your ideal match," according to The New Yorker. Sound familiar? That well worn phrase "everything old is new again" seems to have been confirmed ... yet again. |
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