Studies

Online dating has become a typical way to meet people outside of your own social networks. In fact, the majority of people have tried it at least once.

But what about the opportunity to connect via social media? Most people have a Facebook or Twitter account, and they contain a wealth of information about what we like, who we are, who are friends are, and what we do. The natural progression of social media is to harness this information and look to who might benefit from it – including online daters.

In fact, eHarmony released a study recently which found 7% of people who married after meeting online had met for the first time on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and ClassMates – not through matchmaking chat rooms, online dating sites or other romance-based online connections.

In an article in Time Magazine, Jeffrey Hall, associate professor of Communication Studies at University of Kansas, decided to investigate this connection. He wanted to learn more about who was meeting their significant others through social media, and how well these marriages fared.

He surveyed over 19,000 people who had been married between 2005 and 2012, and asked them how they’d met. Those who met on social networking sites were more likely to be younger and married more recently compared to those who met online in other ways. He was surprised to find that those who met via social networking sites were just as happy as those who met online, and those who met online in general were happier than those couples who met in more traditional ways, such as through friends.

Social networking sites have potential advantages over online dating sites, Hall noted. For one, you can meet people through networks of friends, which means there is some connection first. This puts many people – especially women – more at ease. Also, people are more likely to represent themselves in an honest light over Facebook, because their friends are reading their posts and making comments. You get a more complete view of the person you’re meeting – where she likes to eat, what TV shows she watches, what she does for a living. A Facebook page is a little more personal than an online dating profile.

Another interesting finding in the study was that most of the marriages resulting from social media connections were among African Americans. Hall attributes this to the fact that African Americans and Latinos were over-represented on social networking sites between 2005 and 2012, and use social networks to engage with their already close network of friends.

Social media is an important part of making romantic connections, and is growing in popularity every day. Maybe it’s time to check Facebook if you want to meet someone new.

Traditionally, online dating websites match users based on things like shared preferences, interests, and goals. There's no doubt that all those things are important elements of a successful relationship, but there's one hugely important factor that dating algorithms don't take into account: physical attraction.

Sure, online daters can list vague specifications about things like height and body type preferences, and of course most of us are guilty of spending more time on photos than profile essays, but matchmaking formulas give very little weight to attraction. Until now, that is. A new potential matchmaking formula created by computer scientists at the University of Iowa puts mutual physical attraction front and center by only matching you with partners who are likely to find you attractive.

The formula works by analyzing your message history in order to make date recommendations based on shared tastes and the kinds of people you found attractive in the past. The scientists who designed the algorithm described it using a fictional online dater named Mike: “It is Mike’s taste that affects whom he approaches through initial contacts, and his attractiveness that determines whether he can get responses.”

In other words, Mike – or any of us – can initiate conversations with anyone he wants, but he won't get very far if he continually reaches out to people who don't find him attractive. If the people you contact never reply, all the recommendations in the world will never be of any use. The most effective online dating algorithm would be able to suggest matches based on the likelihood that they will respond to your messages.

“Considering the match of both taste and attractiveness, our model tries to improve dating partner recommendations by boosting a user’s chance of getting responses,” the researchers write.

To test their theory, they used anonymized data on 47,000 users from a real dating website over the course of a period of nearly 200 days. Their program analyzed the replies each user received and used them to evaluate the user's attractiveness or unattractiveness based on the assumption that people who receive more replies are more attractive. When compared with other methods of matchmaking – like pairing people based on shared interests and other variables they had in common – the results showed that the beauty-based method was significantly more effective.

“If a user approaches a partner recommended by [our engine], he/she will have a better chance of getting responses,” the researchers say. So far the attractiveness sorting formula is just a concept, but it's probably only a matter of time before a dating service seeking to be the next best thing turns it into a reality.

People who participate in online dating may be more open to interracial relationships than those who stick solely to traditional dating, says a study published in the Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers from the University of California, San Diego analyzed the first interactions of 126,134 American OkCupid users to study the complex relationship tween online dating and race. They found, unsurprisingly, that many users tended to send messages to other users of their own race – but they also found that they were much more likely to respond to messages from users of a different racial background. The study also found that once an individual responded to a member of another race, they were even more likely to initiate conversation with other users of different ethnicities in the future.

"It's not that people's levels of prejudice are changing; people are avoiding others from a different racial background because they think those other people won't be interested," study author Kevin Lewis, a sociologist for UC San Diego, told USA Today. "Receiving an interracial contact and replying to it makes you send over twice as many new interracial messages in the short-term future than you would have otherwise."

Online daters may be chipping away at racial barriers, but that doesn't mean they've fallen completely. "Race as a dividing factor is much more important than basically any other attribute," Lewis explained. The study found that white online daters, both male and female, overwhelmingly made contact with other white users (although that's also due to the fact that there are more white people on OkCupid to choose from). Caucasian users were also the most likely to seek out people of another race. Those who identified as black, Hispanic, Indian or Asian were much more likely to stay within their own racial lane while online dating.

The only group that consistently bucked the trend was Asian women. Asian women were more likely to contact white men and other Asian men. They were also more likely to respond to white men (though it's important to note that all races were most likely to respond to white men).

Lewis calls online daters’ reluctance to reach out to users of different ethnic backgrounds "pre-emptive discrimination." Based on the way race has shaped their lives so far, they expect to experience rejection – or at least to have little in common with someone who doesn't share their heritage. But, says Lewis, the study suggests that if someone is bold enough to make the first move and overcome their fear of rejection, they are rewarded with the realization that the pool of potential partners is wider and richer than they had ever imagined.

Are you passionate and romantic? Or do you consider yourself more rational and perceptive?

A new study came out from statistician, researcher and computational biologist Emma Pierson, who dug into some eHarmony-released data to produce some interesting findings. Apparently, the adjectives you use to describe yourself on the eHarmony site influences who you are matched with.

The study pointed out that many people tend to use the same adjectives together to describe themselves. For instance, if you call yourself passionate likely you also use the term romantic. If you describe yourself as intelligent you probably would agree that you’re also rational or perceptive.

Based on these adjective groupings, Pierson found that there are five basic types of eHarmony daters: The Romeos (passionate), the Spocks (intelligent, rational), the Snow Whites (sweet, quiet), the Teddy Roosevelts (optimistic and energetic), and the Hufflepuffs (hard working and loyal).

According to the study, most people will identify with one of these groups more than the others, and tend to use adjectives that describe them together – such as dependable and hard-working. This matters to eHarmony because it also determines who to match you with based on these adjectives.

The most striking observation from the data she collected: women tend to be matched with men who are in the same grouping – in other words, Teddy Roosevelts tend to go for other Teddy Roosevelts. There are two exceptions however: Spock women seem to have a thing for Romeo men (opposites attract?), and Hufflepuff women get matched up with Snow White men.

For the men, it lines up pretty closely as well. Though the majority of male members get matched up with women in their same category, Romeo men pair up with Spock women fairly often too. (Good to know that a passionate man likes a smart woman – maybe she keeps him reigned in?) Also, Snow White men tend to go for the loyal, dependable Hufflepuff women.

Where do you fall on the chart? Are you the rational dater, who carefully examines all the evidence before deciding whether or not to fall in love? Or are you easy-going and optimistic, assuming that when you meet the right person, things will work out, so you don’t sweat the small stuff?

There’s some truth to matching based on how you see yourself, because eHarmony claims that their members have longer lasting marriages and relationships than those who met on other dating sites. Mostly, it’s interesting to see that in the end, similar and complementary feelings, approaches and personality traits do tend to attract each other.

Match.com's Singles in America study, now in its fourth year, examines the attitudes and behaviors of over 5,300 American singles from all walks of life in order to get a glimpse into how love and relationships are viewed today.

Dating is many things, but cheap often isn't one of them. In fact, according to Match.com's 4th Annual Singles in America study, singles spend $82 billion on their dating lives. Spoiler alert: that's a lot of billions. To find out exactly where all of them are going, Match asked singles to break down their spending habits per month.

Traditional dating (think bars, sports, religious activities, entry fees, drinks, tickets, and food) looked something like this:

• Min: $0
• Max: $3,044
• Mean: $55.84

Modern dating (which includes online dating, matchmakers, speed dating, dating apps, and dating coaches) looks more like this:

• Min: $0
• Max: $1,250
• Mean: $5.69

So not only are online and mobile services making dating more convenient, they're also making it easier on our wallets. Score!

The total dating cost, when you add traditional and modern methods together, comes out to $61.53 per single per month. That means $738.36 a year per single, and when you multiply that by 111 million singles (a number that comes from the 2013 U.S. Census CPS data), you get the $82 billion figure. That's a hefty chunk of cash.

Wondering what we're spending it on? The top three date expenses for men are personal entertainment (like movie or concert tickets), dining or going out, and personal electronics. The top three date expenses for women are new outfits, dining or going out, and personal electronics. So even though online and mobile dating may be cheaper in the long run, the initial cost of the device is going to set you back a bit.

And here's a fun fact: Match.com has an especially interesting history where money matters are concerned. When the economy crashed in 2008, Match.com had its best quarter to date. "To have your best quarter in the worst economic times I think is an astounding realization," said Whitney Casey, a Match.com relationship expert. "Sometimes the first things to go are gym memberships because people have lost their jobs. But it seems the last thing to go from their budget is love."

Secretly we're all romantics at heart, it seems.

You already know online dating is a great way to meet your match, but apparently it's also a great way to do something a little more unexpected: learn economics.

In his new book, Paul Oyer explores why online dating is an ideal way to study economic concepts and how they can be used to write a résumé or make an investment. Oyer is the Fred H. Merrill professor of economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the author of Everything I Ever Needed to Know about Economics I Learned from Online Dating. Dense economic concepts, he believes, can be understood more easily when looked at through the accessible lens of online dating.

Online dating is a great place to learn economics because it's a market that anyone can understand, yet it functions in the same way as significantly more complex markets. Most people associate economics with money, explains Oyer, but money is an unimportant detail for most economists. Online dating allows Oyer to clarify economic ideas without mentioning money.

For example, the way an investor would research start-ups to put money into is similar to the way a woman would search through profiles on a dating website. In both situations, the person knows they have limited information and that the other side has a compelling reason to skew that information in their favor. Both people know that they must be careful when making their decision and that a better opportunity could come along if they postpone, but they must weigh that against the fact that they could be left for a long time with nowhere to invest or no one to date if they choose to wait.

"Shopping for a date" is surprisingly similar to shopping for clothes. A "thick market" is one with lots of buyers and sellers, which means more competition and more variety. If you have very specific taste in clothes, a bigger mall with more options is more likely to have what you're looking for then a small store with a limited selection. And a dating site with more users is more likely to find you a quality match than a dating site with fewer users.

Choosing a date also has something in common with the hiring process. Studies have shown that companies shy away from hiring someone who has been out of work for a long time, even if the person has appropriate skills. The company assumes that long-term unemployment occurs for a good reason and sees the person as "damaged goods." Likewise, if a person reaches a certain age and has never been in a serious relationship, potential partners make negative assumptions about him or her.

In the same way that you have to be careful about what you say on your resume because potential employers will make assumptions, you have to be careful about what you say on your online dating profile.