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February 6th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda MONDAY, Feb. 6 (HealthDay News) — Online dating has upended
traditional matchmaking, new research suggests, with more would-be suitors
embracing the notion that Mr. or Ms. Right may only be a click away.
A review of roughly 400 studies and surveys reveals that for an
estimated 25 million users around the world, the online dating scene has
gone mainstream, shedding all vestiges of stigma.
Online dating is now second only to direct introductions though friends
as a means of lighting the candle of romance.
However, the investigating team cautions that matchmaking sites may
foster unrealistic expectations, while boasting of allegedly “scientific”
dating formulas that are misleading and unproven.
“What we found is that online dating is a terrific and accepted
addition to the ways people can meet,” said study lead author Eli Finkel,
an associate professor of social psychology at Northwestern University in
Evanston, Ill. “It helps all kinds of people get access to potential
partners they might not otherwise have met. And it also tends to be
particularly helpful to people who have idiosyncratic needs, such as
same-sex partners or those who struggle with certain handicaps.”
On the other hand, Finkel added, “many of the online industry sites say
that they have used science to figure out who is compatible with you. And
they make a lot of money with those claims. But the reality is they have
presented no evidence to back up their notion of a ‘special sauce’. And
our review actually suggests that it’s almost impossible that what they
claimed they’ve figured out actually works, or that there’s anything to
it.”
The study appears in the February issue of Psychological Science in
the Public Interest.
While less than 1 percent of Americans met mates via printed personals
in the early 1990s, by 2005 a whopping 37 percent of singles said they had
embarked on a date initiated in an online connection.
One study from Stanford University found that between 2007 and 2009,
more than one in five straight couples said they had met their current
mate online. Among gay couples that figure rose to more than 60
percent.
A gender divide existed in approaches to online dating, with men
sifting through three times as many online profiles as women.
Men were 40 percent more likely to get in touch with a woman after
checking out her profile than women were after reviewing a male
prospect.
Finkel and colleagues found not a single reliable published study that
backed up, with detailed evidence, claims that sites had developed a
“scientific” method for boosting one’s dating odds.
Such claims, they warned, are usually made by dating websites
themselves, based on self-generated “secret” information that has never
been vetted.
Jeffrey Hall, an assistant professor in communication studies at the
University of Kansas, said online dating’s popularity should be seen in
the context of changing social norms.
“A lot of research loses sight of how amazing it is that something that
was once the domain of creeps and losers is now fully incorporated as a
functional part of our lives,” he said. “And this study does a great job
of showing us just how dramatically things have changed over the course of
the last 15 years.”
“There’s an increased need for young people to find somebody to date as
they spend a longer time between school and marriage,” Hall said. “And
they’re increasingly comfortable using the Internet to do just that. Young
adults are very comfortable using online media to present themselves and
creating an online profile.”
“One of the benefits is that shy or introverted people can put their
best foot forward,” Hall said. But the downside, he said, “is that people
are going to be more shallow, and maybe use bad cues when making
decisions, like focusing too much on how attractive someone is.”
“What the Internet does is help people skip right to the first date. It
helps people muster the courage to ask someone out,” he concluded.
More information
For more on social networking, visit Harvard
College.
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