ByDarko Savic
How can we minimize rivalrous dynamics and maximize collaboration on online platforms?
4 years ago
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Challenge
Miloš Stanković Aug 14, 2022
Envision a dating app that screens for variables linked with long-term relationship happiness?
Image credit: Roman Odintsov (Pexels.com)
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Necessity
Is the problem still unsolved?
Conciseness
Is it concisely described?
Bounty for the best solution
Provide a bounty for the best solution
Bounties attract serious brainpower to the challenge.
A study done by 85 researchers looked at 43 studies, 100s of variables, with 11,000 couples examined and came to a conclusion that romantic desirability has almost no predictive power for happiness in long-term relationships.
Meaning that the usual traits people look for when dating, especially online, like height, income, job status, conventional attractiveness, and sexual tastes all turned out to be pretty weak correlations for long-term happiness.
Traits that actually turned out to be strong indicators are:
- Psychological stability
- Growth mindset
- Satisfaction with life
- Conscientiousness
- Secure attachment style
Good explanations of the study. 1 (from 5:10), 2 (39:41)
Obviously, dating apps are particularly focused on things like height, looks, status.
So how would you devise an app to screen and confirm the traits which have a corollation with long-term happiness in relationships? Any one of the traits individually or some or all.
*Ideally, the solution should be more than self-reporting psych tests as those are easy to manipulate and aren't really a guarantee of anything.
Also, maybe calling this app a relationship app instead of a dating app would be a good start too.
[1]https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1917036117?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
5
Creative contributions
I am actually working on one now as a personal project, my aim is to connect like-minded people
R
From my work experience I have learned how valuable it is to associate myself with people with the same values, principles, and lifestyles.
The app I'm currently creating is using a simple machine learning algorithm called ID3, you probably interacted with it already, eg. by playing the game called Akinator.
As a user, you get to create questions for others, and you get to answer other's questions. You are probably imagining it's going to be a mess, but the ID3 algorithm sorts the questions based on the informational gain, so once a couple of people answer a question the app knows if it's a good question that needs to be prioritized or not.
The answers could only be Yes or No to the questions.
It would put you in contact by default with people like you, offer you the option to generate a quiz by selecting existing questions and instantly putting you in contact with the people who fit that criterias.
I initially designed the concept in a business context after failing a cybersecurity startup where due to the lack of contacts I had limited network.
Where the questions are supposed to be easy facts that one could easily answer with no inner reflection, eg. Do you have over 1000 employees?
Ideally, a sales person with a customer profile would fill in all criterias as questions and get instant result a list of contact.
Now, I see it as a social platform where people could do a lot of cool things such as track their own personal development, and could connect with their friends and get to know them better, or just meet new people and businesses.
As for dating, I believe one could find their best match by finding someone that is on the same path as they are, they wouldn't have to match 100% in the present but they would need to match at least once in a point in time.
With enough questions answered by a big community, I bet I could find a great match for someone with around 20 questions (A decisional tree with 20 questions/levels could have 2^20 possibilities, which would mean aprox. 1 in a million).
Considering the nature of social media platforms, that the application is being used on a daily basis, it could rely on continuous feedback from users to keep the information updated, reducing the number of liars to only the number of consistent liars.
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Develop all-in-one dating app factoring in intellectual and psychological variables
To make such an app feasible, the app can include metrics that take into account not just the immediate variables like looks and status, but long-term variables:
I) intellectual compatibility
This metric looks for the intellectual traits one would want in a prospective partner. For this, the app can have some feature that showcases a 'portfolio' of different kinds of contents that are generated by the person. For example, researchgate profile, google scholar profile, any awards won by the person, etc.
II) Political orientation
Often, relationships die out due to fundamental differences in the political thought process. To avoid this, a metric can be devised based on a political spectrum and allow the user to denote where on the political spectrum s/he falls. The spectrum can range from a low end for left leaning to high end on the right leaning. This should help a person figure out if the prospective partner is fit for him/her.
III) Religiosity
This is another important factor when taking into account the future of serious relationships. The app can use some kind of metric (like mentioned earlier) that gauges the person's stance on religion. Depending on whether the person is religious to agnostic to atheist, it will help decide whether to engage or not.
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Miloš Stanković2 years ago
The focus of this challenge is to find a way to screen only for the traits that have been found to correlate to long-term relationship happiness via the study. At the same time, there already exist apps that do all three of the things you listed.
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Personalized option
I think it's important to also personalize such an app to make it truly successful. Let's aim for the highest result.
Why personalize: Different people choose different partners. The five major factors indicated in the challenge description are approximated for the general population, but what's worth of it, if a certain potential partner has a high score of all the five factors, but you don't feel attracted to/interested in them because they lack other factors that are important to you personally.
How would it work:
If you'd analyze all the past relationships of your's and derive variables of what qualities in people you are attracted to (why you choose partners that you choose), how long did you manage to maintain those relationships, and what were the reasons for disbalance and eventually break up, you could make conclusions about what has to be different for you to get people that attract you initially, but also maintain that bond for a long time.
Not sure what would be the best way to go about, to achieve this, but things like filling up specifically designed questionaries about all or most/major past relationships and letting the AI do the rest, comes to mind. A program would analyze all the mentioned factors and then give suggestions on what to do to raise the probability of having happy, long-term relationships. It could be choosing people with some of the same, but some of the different qualities, but it can also be changing something in yourself.
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Povilas S2 years ago
Miloš Stanković The approach I mention here is also more suitable to get objective results about the user than self-reporting tests. If the user is asked about their past relationships, this is an indirect, but likely a more effective way to dredge out the information about their psychological traits. Even if the user knows that the aim of the test is to determine the psychological fitness required for happy relationships, they wouldn't know exactly how and to which questions to lie to lean the results to their benefit.
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Miloš Stanković2 years ago
Povilas S Do you think people are going to be impartial when looking back at their own relationships? I'd argue that this topic makes anyone the least rational or realistic version of themselves because the topic is so emotionally charged.
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Povilas S2 years ago
Miloš Stanković It all depends on what you ask. Don't ask whose fault it was that you two broke up or what you or the other person did wrong there, etc. Ask rather impartial questions, for example, what did you expect from that relationship, what was that you lacked in it, what was that you got from it, how does it compare to your other relationships (in terms of getting and lacking), which relationships lasted the longest, what do you think were the reasons for them to last longer than others, etc.
Design the questions smartly, collect enough data this way and then you'd see the trends. Also, let's not write people off as seeing only themselves when it comes to relationships. If a person is intelligent enough they try to view the situation objectively, especially, if enough time has passed after the breakup.
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Psychological tests
The scores for all the five factors that you mention in the challenge description can be determined by using psychological tests. They’d have to be rather extensive to gain good results. There already are sites/apps that use psychological tests to better match people for romantic love. One of the better known of those is eHarmony. Not sure what factors they mostly pay attention to when designing their questionnaires, but I guess at least a few of those that you mention play a role.
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Miloš Stanković2 years ago
This is similar/same to the comment by Shubhankar Kulkarni. It would be much better and more accurate to avoid self-reporting or self-assessment.
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Povilas S2 years ago
Miloš Stanković Sorry, I didn't notice the comment
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Statistics and other people's opinions, too
Service that does a proper deep-search of your perfect long-term match.
First, I like the name relationship apps. It should be named different from dating apps. Not all people want long-term relationships.
How would it work?
Along with the mentioned psychological tests and already used preferences set by the user, I think the app should also do the following:
- Ask others about you. The "others" would primarily be your ex-partners, close friends and relatives that you list during the app initialization. Of course, it requires it to be more than an app. It would be a service that finds you a match with more effort than usual dating apps. It would contact people you listed as contacts, question them through simple questions to see how loyal, sincere and good you were.
- Consider those in happy long-term relationships. The service should buy anonymous personal data collected from all people, but especially people in stabile long relationships. Things they do, browse, mention, work, etc (or did, browsed, mentioned, worked when they were in a relationship). It would be like a scientific approach to a psychological problem by observing positive controls and decipher the differences.
By statistical comparison of people similar to you and their partners in long-term happy relationships, the app would calculate a percentage of match you have with someone. It would integrate your preferences and try to find you a perfect relationship match.
What do you think?
It sounds pretty close to what is described in the "hang the DJ" episode of Black Mirror (great one!) where people are matched into relationships for fixed lengths of time by an algorithm that eventually determines their life-long partner.
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Miloš Stanković2 years ago
This "asking others" approach has already been attempted. Wingman app. There were ideas on Brainstorming and in real-life too about an app that would have the exes rate people. But that's not a good idea for all the apparent reasons. There are bad feelings and impartialness in 99% of cases.
I feel like this is a bit desperate too. Bothering your friends to help you date and having them do testimonials, be it in text or video. While I'm guessing many would argue that having a plugged-in social media profile like Instagram on the dating app profile provides the same social proof by proxy.
Having something be close to an episode of Black Mirror isn't a good selling point. On the contrary. It is called a black mirror for a reason, to illustrate the ominous black screen when the devices are turned off.
"Black Mirror is what's in front of us after technology stops working." - as the showrunners explained. And we had some other propositions here that were aligned with some episodes...
The second bullet point has a promise of value but as a standalone idea that would need to be explained in more detail. This challenge is for the listed traits and proving them.
But also, your second bullet point is what the scientists I mentioned did already. They collected data from people in happy long-term relationships and presented the key traits needed to replicate their success. Now I'm asking how to check for these traits in individuals for online dating.
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jnikola2 years ago
Miloš Stanković Okay, I get your points. I wouldn't agree that everything considering Black Mirror is false. They make some good predictions, and although some of them sound really strange and scary, most of them will soon be among us. As I mentioned, the dating service mentioned in the episode is actually a great virtual model to test the compatibility of the partners and could act as a solid foundation for "the perfect relationship app".
The second point was not to just collect data from people in happy long-term relationships and presented the key traits, but to apply them, compare them with you and your partner and see what is the likelihood you will be a perfect match.
However, I understand I missed a point a bit. I'll try to think of ways how to check these traits.
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Miloš Stanković2 years ago
J. Nikola I'm not saying Black Mirror is false. I'm saying it's not something we should aim to replicate by design. The essence of the show is the bad way technology is coming at us. The worst-case scenario of technology.
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General comments
Shubhankar Kulkarni2 years ago
Awesome! So, according to the study, we have the variables that can predict happiness in a relationship. The next step would be devising questions (preferably multiple-choice questions) that can accurately determine the "Psychological stability, Growth mindset, Satisfaction with life, Conscientiousness, and Secure attachment style" of the user. Every new user is asked the series of questions and then matched with appropriate individuals. Of course, some of the conservative indicators like sexual orientation, preferences, geographical location, etc. are important and need to be recorded.
Along with all this, the users should be explained the study results. They should be told that long-term happiness does not depend on the usual traits they look for, probably using simple videos/ podcasts.
The questionnaire should be repeated regularly (probably after every six months, since the user's answers to the strong indicators might change with time) as long as the user is active on the platform (indicating that they are single).
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Miloš Stanković2 years ago
Shubhankar Kulkarni I'm worried that in this age where studies are always in the news, people are well aware of the goals of questionnaires and would know how to manipulate them. Additionally, people will most likely overvalue themselves for the positive qualities in a competitive market.
I'd like to find a way that would exclude self-reporting. That would have the smallest margin for error. What do you think?
Maybe making the questions as practical as possible could do that.
For growth mindset: A questionnaire that would ask you what has been your biggest success in 2017? Then for 2018, 2019, 2020 and so on. If a person has good answers to this, varied too, they could be considered to have solid proof of their growth mindset. They get approved by the app with a green icon for example and the app could even ask for proof.
You could pay to have yourself verified in these traits and that would be how the app is monetized. Like you pay for a certificate on LinkedIn.
Another way would be to have a therapist conduct an hour of conversation with a user and check for the traits. That would be expensive, but not in exchange for what you're getting - long-term relationship happiness.
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Shubhankar Kulkarni2 years ago
Miloš Stanković I agree with you. The suggestions sound good, too. Conversation with a therapist should be voluntary but those who have had a conversation should get a badge/ certificate and be placed higher in the list of matches shown to other users. Other privileges like "free premium access" could be provided.
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Povilas S2 years ago
Shubhankar Kulkarni Miloš Stanković So the approach is to screen the users upon entry into the app's database by a reliable method, let's say to have your profile approved and active you have to score 5 or higher (out of 10) in each of the 5 psychological traits. As a result, we'd have a pool of users who could all be considered reliable in bringing long-term relationship happiness. Then inside that pool, the users would get matched according to other, more pragmatic factors, like looks, hobbies, etc. is that correct?
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Miloš Stanković2 years ago
Povilas S Yes. I'm not arguing for the elimination of pragmatic factors. Just adding the new variables.
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