Wired May 10th 2022 |Ideas|”People Are Dating All Wrong, According to Data Science” “Larger data sets provide intriguing-and dismaying-insights into who we’re drawn to and how much that matters for our romantic happiness” by Seth Stephens Davidowitz adapted from his book “Using DATA to get what you really want in life Don’t Trust Your Gut”
Read Wired or Seth’s book for more detail
Summary by 2244
A topic most of us are interested in has a history of not so definitive research on what makes a romantic partnership successful for the long run. The author collaborated with more than 80 researchers to create a dataset of more than 11,000 heterosexual couples. What they found is that what attracts us initially, the bright shiny objects so to speak, correlates very well with what makes someone successful in attracting others on dating websites etc but doesn’t predict successful long term romantic partnership. They also found that long term relationships are complex and “unpredictable.”
Nice quote mentioned is the “Counting Crows” line we are all looking for “something beautiful.” But these attributes don’t add any power, even using Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, to predicting successful long term partnerships. The shiny ornaments are “someone tall (if a man), someone of a desired race (even though most never admit it), someone rich, someone in an enforcement profession (like a lawyer or firefighter) if a man, someone with a sexy name (such as Jacob or Emma), and someone just like ourselves (people are 11.3 % more likely to match with someone who shares their initials).” The author further reduces this to the “Irrelevant Eight” namely “Race/ethnicity, Religious affiliation, Height, Occupation, Physical attractiveness, Previous marital status, Sexual tastes, Similarity to oneself.”
While that lack of correlation seems disappointing, what the data did show is that success is linked to positive answers to the following questions. “John, were you satisfied with your life before you met Sally?” “John, were you free from depression before you met Sally?” “John, did you have a positive affect before you met Sally?” Being affirmative in answering theses questions was “roughly four times more predictive of their relationship happiness than all the traits of their romantic partner combined.” Essentially, “Nobody can make you happy until you're happy with yourself first.”
So if dating for a long term romantic partnership, don’t overvalue the “Irrelevant Eight,” try to understand your own and your potential partner’s happiness and understand that, regardless, relationships over the long run can ultimately be “unpredictable.”