CR: Yeah, that totally makes sense. Imagine a mixer with three people. That would be a pretty rough hour if you lasted even that long in there. OkCupid, metaphorically speaking, is a mixer with four million people. At the same time, I think for an individual crafting his online dating presence, playing the middle is a bad strategy.

You want to get back to these pictures of Machu Picchu or whatever it is. You need to stand out in some way because the fact that there are so many people, that the market is so thick means that you have to stand out all the more. They actually need to like you and be interested in what you seemingly have to offer.

So yeah, going to a site with more users seems obviously better to me, but at the same time, having a bland, middle of the road profile with bland, middle of the road pictures seems like a bad strategy to me. CR: Right. Dudes have been making up stuff about themselves probably since there have been dudes. CR: Kind of paradoxically, men are very open minded or very even handed with their votes of women. Their discount is almost 50 percent off of how men rate women.

So essentially, the average rating for a man is about half as high as the rating for a woman on OkCupid — in terms of looks. Women are much more discriminating — let me put it that way. I think both types of people are equally interested in having an attractive partner — those curves look the same.

But women essentially give the thumbs up to only half as many guys as guys giving the thumbs up to women. PS: But that has nothing to do with how much money the guys make, or anything like that? CR: I know for a fact that information is very unreliable on OkCupid, and I think our users have probably figured that out. That sounds like an outdated story to me. CR: Using this method, which teases out what a group talks about and the people not in that group never talk about, you find things like white men are really into stuff like woodworking, snowmobiling, a lot of jam bands and country bands, mudding.

Reggae, I think, was another one. Spike Lee. So yeah, we just kind of threw a billion words that are contributed into a statistical blender tagged with the race and the gender of the writer, and this is what came out of the blender, so to speak. People tend to prefer their own race online in terms of the volume of messages. In terms of interracial dating, it is the case, not just on OkCupid but also on Match and DateHookup, black men and women get a universal discount from people of other races, from whites but also Asians and Latinos.

If you imagine the ratings curves of the groups, the one for black women in this case is sort of shifted down towards the lower end. PS: So the mean, the average rating is 25 percent lower than the average rating for the white woman. Paul Solman has been a business, economics and occasional art correspondent for the PBS NewsHour since Friday, Sep Close Menu PBS NewsHour. The Latest. Politics Brooks and Capehart Politics Monday Supreme Court. Arts CANVAS Poetry Now Read This.

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CBS Are you one of the millions of Americans who use online dating to look for love? A new scientific study of the popular practice shows when it comes to finding a soulmate, you might be better off searching elsewhere.

Eli Finkel, associate professor of social psychology at Northwestern University, said in a written statement. But "users need to be aware of its many pitfalls. For the study, published in Feb. What did they find? All those sites that tout "scientific algorithms" that will help you find love aren't any more effective at predicting whether people are a match than the old fashioned way. In fact, our report concludes that it is unlikely that their algorithms can work, even in principle, given the limitations of the sorts of matching procedures that these sites use.

The authors say current dating algorithms look to predict long-term compatibility by matching personality and attitude traits, but most relationship research suggests that the biggest factors for predicting long-term success are how couples interact and manage conflict. That can't be assessed by any algorithm. The algorithms were not shared with the researchers since they are property of the dating websites.

Study co-author Harry T. Reis, a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester in N. Besides questions on the validity of the algorithms, Finkel told Reuters that online dating is like shopping at "supermarkets of love," which could backfire and overload people.

Previous research shows when people are presented with too many options, they make worse decisions. That's not to say online dating is a total waste of time. The study found that it provides some benefits, including helping folks who might have a hard time meeting people because of their schedules or if they're new in town.

Reis told WebMD that daters should look at only a handful of people at a time, allowing them to evaluate partners on an individual level, not just how they compare to other potential dates. Don't just look at characteristics people list in their profile, he said, but try to picture yourself going on a vacation with this person. He also advised daters to keep their online communication short and try to meet in-person quickly, because written words can sometimes take on unrealistic significance.

Finkel told Reuters. CBS News App Ukraine Crisis COVID Pandemic CBS News Live Managing Your Money Essentials Shopping Newsletters. Ryan Jaslow. Ryan Jaslow is CBSNews. com's health editor. Thanks for reading CBS NEWS. Please enter email address to continue. Please enter valid email address to continue. View CBS News In. CBS News App Open. Chrome Safari Continue. Be the first to know. Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.

Health Long-Term Care. Close Comment Window. Chrome Safari Continue. Kmos-Tv is one channel name. And there was just one day. By — Frank Carlson Frank Carlson Frank Carlson is a general assignment producer at the PBS NewsHour, where he's been making video since Kmos-Tv is a look at everything we turn to online dating?

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