Blinded by Science and Marketing in Online Dating

The New York Times seems to be covering a number of dating topics recently. In this article they looked at the marketing of the science behind online dating. A professor of psychology, Jeffrey Lohr is quoted several times in the article. He released a research paper recently which looked into some of the claims from the more popular dating sites (see Story). In summary of his research, Professor Lohr stated:

It seems to me that everybody is marketing their product far beyond the available evidence. There is none to very little effectiveness in the matching process.

The one person he did have praise for is Dr. Helen Fisher of the anthropology department at Rutgers. She helped Chemistry.com create their profile questions and matching system. Dr. Fisher based her work for Chemistry on her own published and peer reviewed research about how love and matchmaking works. Unlike Chemistry, most dating sites have very little science that has been published to back up the claims of their service and matchmaking system.

Online dating is big business, so the critics of the industry are only going to get more media attention. In 2007 the online dating industry revenue was estimated to be $900 million USD (see our Statistics), in 2008 Jaffray investment research stated that $1.2 billion was spent on dating sites. By 2013 they predict an increase in revenue to $1.7 billion. I hope dating sites learn quickly form this mini back lash we are seeing in the media and start to release some real statistics and facts about their online service and how it works.

For more information about the dating site mentioned in this story, read our review of Chemistry.