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Why Can't Machine Learning Predict Romantic Compatibility?

Paul Eastwick says studies with psychologist Samantha Joel tested whether compatibility at a first meeting can be predicted from what two people report about themselves. Matching on deal-breakers does not work well, and similarity is not a strong predictor of who will like whom.

Speed daters had reported their own traits, preferences, goals, and desires. Machine learning used one person's self-report and the other person's self-report to guess which pairs would be especially compatible when they met. For compatibility, the prediction was exactly 0 percent. Some people really liked each other and some really did not. Self-reported information still could not explain ahead of time why two people ended up compatible.

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How Love Really Works ·

Hidden Brain

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  3. Why Don't Dating Preferences Predict Who We Fall for?Paul Eastwick says the traits people name as what they want in a partner do a poor job of predicting whom they like once they meet face to face.
  4. Does Ambition Attract Men and Women Equally?Paul Eastwick says ambition attracts men and women about equally in the first minutes of a date.
  5. Why Do Dating Apps Make Women Look Pickier?Paul Eastwick says dating apps make women look much pickier than men, because the gap in who says yes is far larger online than when people meet face to face.
  6. How Do Couples Create Compatibility?Paul Eastwick, a psychologist at the University of California, Davis, says compatibility is tightly tied to history: the story two people share and how that…
  7. What's the Best Way to Meet Someone You'll Click With?Paul Eastwick says the way to meet someone you will click with is to keep up friendships and not cross people off from a description on paper.
  8. Why Do People Fall in Love With an Idea of Their Partner?Shankar Vedantam says people sometimes respond to an idea of a partner they created themselves.
  9. What Is Social Projection?Edward Lemay, a psychologist at the University of Maryland, says social projection is a bias where people assume others are more like them than they really are.
  10. What Is an Upward Comparison in a Relationship?Edward Lemay says an upward comparison is what happens when people measure their own relationship against one that looks better.
  11. Why Do People Project Current Feelings Onto a Relationship's Future?Edward Lemay says people project how they feel about a partner today onto the future of the relationship.
  12. Why Do World Beliefs Change How a Partner Looks?Edward Lemay says people use their beliefs about the world as a lens on a partner.

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