Dating site users may not be in love with the results of a new study of online dating. In a 64-page report published online in February in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a research team led by NU social psychology Prof. Eli Finkel cast significant doubt on the effectiveness and validity of matching techniques touted by online dating services.

Finkel and his team studied online dating site services through patented matchmaking formulas, interviews with the CEOs, books published by the founders and more than 400 psychological studies.

“What I like to say is that there are two ‘original sins’ that are essentially fundamental flaws of online dating site,” Finkel said.

First, he said, there is an over-dependence on browsing through profiles to find a partner. This research shows that people cannot determine who will be compatible based on a single online description. Second, almost all of the dating websites have purported use of “algorithms,” the formulas that match partners from surveys. Finkel argued, though, that after comprehensively reviewing the literature, there is no formula.

“If these websites had one, it would be a boon for singles,” he said. “That’s the holy grail.”

Most websites focus on matching similar traits, Finkel said. One such website, eHarmony, has a patent on its algorithm. Other sites, such as PerfectMatch.com and Chemistry.com, supposedly use a combination of similar traits and complementary traits.

“They don’t publish their algorithms, so it’s impossible to know what actually exists,” he said.

Even combinations of similar and complementary traits are unlikely to promote relationship well-being and longevity, Finkel said. Although it is commonly said that opposites attract, Finkel said that is not clear from available data. Psychologists have yet to identify certain psychological variables in which partners should or should not be similar.

In the past, scientists have shown people have lower divorce rates in same-race or same-religion marriages than in cross-race or cross-religion marriages, the study authors note. Finkel said although this is why some people use online dating services, the websites market more vaguely.

“The algorithms don’t claim that they work because of race or religion,” Finkel said. “They claim that they have some sort of deeper psychological pairing.”

What’s concerning to Finkel, he said, is that he believes the services are producing more homogenous relationships and marriages. Browsing through profiles induces “an assessment mindset, causing users to commoditize potential partners,” the study authors wrote.

Though online dating is not perfect, Finkel said, he believes it is beneficial for some people who might not have as many opportunities to meet others. For a single 30-year-old living in the suburbs, it can be a great way to start, Finkel said.

“Sometimes Cupid goes on vacation, or takes a long nap, or kicks back for a marathon of Lifetime original movies,” the study authors wrote. “Instead of waiting for Cupid to get back to work, people sometimes join dating sites to take back some control of their romantic lives.”

For those people, Finkel’s main advice was to be active immediately after receiving the list of partners.

“Browsing profiles forever won’t help,” Finkel said. “Having an algorithm select someone is not great either. Seize the opportunity to get offline and just set up a 20 minute coffee date with one of them.”

Actress Courtney Cox is appealing for potential suitors to step up and ask her out – because she realises “it’s time” for her to move on from her estranged husband David Arquette.

The former Friends star split from Arquette in 2010 and, while the actor has now found happiness with TV reporter Christina McLarty, Cox admits her love life is basically non-existent.

Appearing on shock jock Howard Stern’s satellite radio show on Wednesday, Cox said, “I’ve not had a man since David… No guy’s asked me out. I’m not saying I’m not ready to have a make-out session, it just makes me nervous. I don’t like to go out in general.”

She adds, “I have sexual feelings, there’s ways to deal with that. It’s time for me to get out there. It’s not easy to meet people. They don’t call me.”

And Cox isn’t sure if she’s strong enough emotionally to open up to a new man: “I’m really not ready… it’s hard. I was in a marriage for a very long time… I’m just not there.”

The actress did confess to one romantic encounter, admitting, “I’ve made out with one guy” – although she remained coy when asked to confirm reports of a fling with her Cougar Town co-star Josh Hopkins.

But she’s still close to Arquette and admits that even he has encouraged her to start dating.

She adds, “He even says to me, ‘Courteney, it’s time, get out there.’ He’s comfortable with whoever that would be with.”

LONELY singles looking for love online could be risking more than just a broken heart as Internet dating scams had tripled last year.

Many involved smooth-talking con men preying on vulnerable middle-aged Singaporean women.

After claiming to be from countries such as Britain and Australia, they often spend months persuading their victims to deposit money in an overseas account. Once they have the funds, they vanish.

The scams first appeared in Singapore about four years ago.

There were 62 last year, a rise from 21 in 2010. Most of the victims were female, with those over 40 the most vulnerable.

They included Susan (not her real name), who lost about S$18,000 (RM43,485) to a man she met on the Date In Asia website.

He claimed to be an Australian, named Sam, working for a bank in Kuala Lumpur.

The pair chatted on the phone and swopped text messages for about three weeks before Susan, 43, decided to meet him last July.

When he arrived at her home in Hillview Avenue, she saw he had brought her a burger – which she now suspects was drugged. After eat­ing it, she passed out for 12 hours.

When she woke up, Sam had stolen her personal documents, including credit cards, and spent about $18,000 on Apple products and jewellery.

“It didn’t hit me, I was not suspicious,” the corporate communications officer said. “I had never met such people in my life. Now I want to forget the whole thing.”

Police said it was hard to retrieve the money once it had been sent abroad.

That is why it is important to report such crimes early.

Internet dating ruses are classified as commercial crimes, a category that also includes kidnap scams.

These often involve foreigners calling families in Singapore, pretending a loved one had been snatched and then demand a ransom.

The “kidnappers” sometimes or­­der the relatives not to hang up until the money has been transferred. Fearing for their loved ones’ safety, the victims usually do as they are told.

There were 44 successful kidnap scams last year, in which the families actually transferred the money. This was a surge from just nine in 2010

Men spend far more time looking at photographs rather than reading the online profile on dating sites, a new study has revealed. On the other hand, women give more importance to reading the profile and pay less attention to the pictures.

AnswerLab, a consumer research company, conducted

the study in one day at a coffee shop in San Francisco, California.

The study asked 39 patrons who identified themselves as interested in dating the opposite sex to take part in the study, the Discovery News reported.

Participants including 18 women and 21 men, looked at dating profiles from Match.com and eHarmony.com on a laptop. The results showed that men spend 65 percent more time looking at photos than women.

Women, on the other hand, spent 50 percent more time than men on actually reading the profiles. The researchers collected data using the Tobii X1 Light Eye Tracker, a new, portable model of eye tracker.

The device works by shining an infrared light at the eye, creating reflections, which are, in turn, recorded by a camera.

Using the recorded pattern of reflections, the program calculates the angle between the cornea and pupil, which is used to calculate the angle of the gaze.

Combining the angle of the gaze and the distance between the eyes and the screen leads to accurate tracking of the eye’s movements.

Although people might not know it, our eyes are constantly moving, making quick adjustments to take in details.

Only the very small, central portion of the eye, called the fovea, is capable of really seeing details.

And as you look at something complicated, like a dating profile, with different text elements, photos and advertisements, your eyes make rapid movements so the fovea can briefly focus on each of the different elements that catch your eye’s attention.

Each tiny focusing event is called a fixation.

Because the eyes make this tiny movement when we study objects or read, the eye-tracking systems is able to figure out what we looked at, precisely, and for how long.

Advocacy groups say one third of teenagers are or have been in a violent or abusive relationship.

For just the third time, the Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence is marking February as teen dating violence awareness month, hoping to draw attention to the problem. The group says sometimes teens are unwilling to seek help or report it. The coalition says one in three teens in the US is a victim of physical, emotional or verbal abuse from a dating partner. It says 57-percent of teens know someone who has been abusive. That’s why the group is trying to raise awareness. The group says it’s trying to provide support to current victims and is encouraging healthy relationships among teens.

When we told viewers on Facebook we were looking into the issue of dating violence the stories slowly started coming in.

“My son’s father wanted my son killed while I was pregnant. I was only 16 then,” wrote one woman.

“The neighbor boy thought he owned me. Looking back, I could never understand why people didn’t step in,” said another.

“He hit me so hard one day that it chipped my tooth. He once hit me with a bat…” “He would always tell me how sorry he was and it wouldn’t happen again,” explained another victim.

Then we heard from Greg Schreiner. The 19 year old man in Eau Claire says he was to blame for verbal abuse in his teen relationship a few years ago.

“I always went on her Facebook and email just looking thought her personal stuff and harassing her about people she was talking to just to get information,” says Schreiner.

He says looking back he knows it was wrong and says he knows people can change, that’s why he wants to share his story. He says he changed his ways and regrets the choices he made while in high school.

“If you know someone who is being abused you should speak up because you could save somebody’s life,” says Schreiner.

The Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence says teen dating violence is higher than all other forms of youth violence but the group says it’s under reported. Local officers say they don’t hear much about it.

“This is always a topic where it’s hard for people to come forward. They might be embarrassed or they don’t want to get anyone else in trouble but as we look at domestic violence little things lead to bigger things and this is where we encourage the kids to seek out a teacher, find a parent, seek out the school officers or their councilors and tell them what’s going on,” says Lt. Chad Hoyord with the Eau Claire Police Department.

The coalition says if the abuse goes unchecked it will likely continue as teens grow up. That’s why it wants to address the issue.

As the sun sets on the golf course outside the Palm Court Café, the party inside has already started. The drinks are two for one. The music is blaring. A DJ plays the Cupid Shuffle and a dozen ladies rush to the dance floor. It’s 6 p.m. Do you know where your grandma is?

If she lives in the retirement community of Kings Point, she might be at this resident-only hot spot. Especially if she’s on a date. Or on the prowl.

With more than 5,000 unmarried residents, the dating scene in Sun City Center is far from dead.

But it can get a little interesting.

For every single man there are three single women, according to the 2010 Census. The average age is 74.

On Thursdays, a DJ plays music from 5 to 8 p.m. at the South Club’s cafe. And, according to residents, it’s one of the best places to meet new people in this usually quiet community.

Gracie Swagel, 66, met her boyfriend there.

One year ago today, a friend introduced her to Rick Razick Sr., 77.

“He was sitting at the bar,” Swagel said. “He brought me a rose and took me to dinner.”

Razick had seen her around the community before, but the retired Air Force pilot hadn’t been interested then.

“There were plenty of women here,” Razick said.

What changed?

“She got me hooked,” he said. “She’s very nice to me.”

For Swagel, a widower, it took a lot of courage to get back into dating.

“The whole world changes when you lose a spouse,” she said. “The hardest thing was to get started.”

The couple plan to have an early Valentine’s date to celebrate their anniversary.

“We don’t know how it will work out,” Swagel said, “but we are happy here and now.”

If it sounds a lot like dating anywhere else, that’s because it is, said Mary Haverstock, 79.

Haverstock’s husband passed away soon after they moved to Kings Point a decade ago.

Since then, she has learned a few things about dating as she ages.

The women are still the same.

“It’s very much like high school with the jealousy,” she said.

The men still have the ability to drive the women crazy.

“They are not that much different from when they were young,” she said.

What has changed? Dating becomes something you do for yourself again, she said. There are no parents to check in with or other people to worry about.

Haverstock loves dancing, so she often comes to the Palm Court Café on Thursdays and takes a few turns around the dance floor.

If a man catches her eye, at least she can see how he behaves before she agrees to go out with him.

“One of the nice things about it here is that you can meet men in a group setting,” she said. “If they are a gentleman, you learn that before you agree to a date.”

Bobbi Burnette, 55, agrees with the jealousy part. She moved to Kings Point with her husband when she was 53 and she says she was immediately lambasted because of her age.

“I moved here and the other women hated my guts,” she said.

She is now divorced. She quickly found that dating her neighbors wasn’t something she was interested in.

“A lot of the men are looking for a nurse or a purse,” she said. “I’m not either.”

Then there are the women so desperate to find a man in the unevenly split community that residents often refer to them as the “casserole brigade” in hushed tones.

“There are women who look in the newspapers to find out whose wife passed away,” Burnette said. “Then they’ll go bring him a casserole.”

Burnette is now dating a man who lives outside the community.

Jack Keller, 78, and Carol Carter, 71, met in Kings Point. Both have been married before. Keller is a widower and Carter a divorcee.

They try not to take things too seriously.

“We have a lot of fun together and we laugh,” Keller said.

They often go to the horse races or dancing. Sometimes Carter cooks.

“She puts a slug on a plate,” Keller joked.

He pursued her, attracted to her appearance and her kind nature, he said.

For Carter, it came down to one kiss.

“I kissed him, and when I kissed him, that was it.”

In some ways yes — and in others, maybe not, according to a study on online dating released by the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest.

“Romantic relationships can begin anywhere. When online dating arrow strikes, you might be at church or at school, playing chess or softball, searching for a partner at a party, or minding your own business on the train,” the authors write. “But sometimes online dating goes on vacation, or takes a long nap, or kicks back for a marathon of Lifetime original movies. As a result, people go through stretches of time when desirable potential partners seem out of reach.”

Many online dating sites purport to have an advantage over random real-life encounters in that they employ special “algorithms” that can help people find their “match” — weeding through all the people who wouldn’t be compatible in the first place. But this practice might be grossly misleading and even counterproductive — especially since none of these formulas has undergone rigorous scientific review — according to the study.

“The ready access to a large pool of potential partners can elicit an evaluative, assessment-oriented mindset that leads online daters to objectify potential partners and might even undermine their willingness to commit to one of them,” the authors write in the study led by Eli Finkel of Northwestern University. “It can also cause people to make lazy, ill-advised decisions when selecting among the large array of potential partners.”

It’s reminiscent of other work by Finkel, which found, among other things, that such apparently trivial distinctions made a difference. For example, women go for men who gaze away from the camera — the broody, mysterious look — while men respond to women who smile at the camera, because it triggers what Finkel called “men’s ’sexual over-perception bias.’”

But the fact that these sites provide singles with unprecedented access to others who also want to date means that singles have far more opportunities to meet and form a lasting bond than they would otherwise, the authors point out. If there’s interest, the trick might be to take things off-line as quickly as possible — because a face-to-face interaction is a better way to “get a clearer sense of their romantic potential.”

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