Using Science to Reliably Test Potential Marriage Partners

[Knigel]

Marriage seems to be a major commitment that involves a lot of time, money, and energy while having devastating consequences if it comes to divorce.

Choosing marriage partners is very risky business; however, people seem to trust their flawed intuition instead of putting the same rigorous testing that is used in other ventures. Before buying a house, buying a car, joining a company, starting a business, or hiring a new employee, people usually test in at least some way instead of relying on their intuitions.

Why do we not use the techniques that we have learned from psychology and other fields to better predict our partner's future potential? We know love can make us stupid and blind; therefore, why don't we test ourselves more?

So, my real question would be: Which scientific experiments would you suggest running on potential marriage partners?

For example, increasing room temperature while having them work on a task to see how they are when they get aggressive and irritated. Or, an assault of personality and EQ/IQ tests such as they do for businesses.

[Der Trihs]

Why do we not use the techniques that we have learned from psychology and other fields to better predict our partner's future potential? We know love can make us stupid and blind; therefore, why don't we test ourselves more?Because it's not good enough yet, and because people in our culture don't like applying rational analysis to relationships. It smacks too much of stories about old-time families coldbloodedly calculating which arranged marriage to shove their children into to gain the most status or profits, I suspect.

[Maastricht]

Books like these, with questionnaires, make an effort (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=compatible+marriage&x=0&y=0), but nog very succesfull. I guess most people would rather use such tools to convince themselves that whomever they've fallen in love with is compatible with them.

[Alessan]

There are plenty of reasons against it, but one major one is this: most people never buy the best house on the market. The best house goes to the person who made the best bid, and 99% of people are forced to compromise on less than what they were dreaming of. According to the OP's system, marriage will work the same way. People won't get the best possible spouse, but instead, they'll get the best possible spouse that someone better than them didn't get.

Now, you might say that admitting your relationship is based on compromise is a mature and logical way to behave, but I think people need to believe, on some level, that the people they're married to wanted to marry them more than anyone else. A compromise-based society seems like a sad, sad thing.

Besides, no one wants to hear that they're fourth-rate marriage material. The truth hurts.

[Otara]

"Before buying a house, buying a car, joining a company, starting a business, or hiring a new employee, people usually test in at least some way instead of relying on their intuitions."

Id say most dont myself. When we were house buying it seemed like the majority didnt get the place inspected, and bought on the day for instance. Most business fail inside a fairly short period from memory, suggesting that not a lot of research is done there either. Most employee reviews weight subjective impressions very heavily by focussing on the interview, etc etc.

With marriage the person is usually seen for a fairly substantial period before it occurs, family met, etc etc. If anything of the examples you've given Id say its the most tested rather than least.

Otara

[Knigel]

Otara, it may be tested; however, it is tested more subjectively than objectively. While the other situations may not often be tested well, I suspect that they are often tested more often tested objectively than only subjectively. For example, corporations use a whole slew of personality tests done by researchers. We often read car reviews online while comparing specs and safety features. ect. Even if my examples aren't the best, I would say that marriage is one of the least objective decisions people make while it should be one of the most objective.

We know we are blinded by love and sex; however, we ignore this and enjoy it like a drug.

[aruvqan]

I always thought that there should be a requirement for a term limit marriage before a permanent marriage, with a ban on pregnancy until you are in the permanent marriage phase. Sort of like a trial account .. I think that if people had a 3 or 5 year trial marriage before going permanent with no sprogs it would reduce the cost of divorce. The way it would work would piss off the damned fundies of all religions, but screw them [=)] You do the trial marriage and one of the things that happens is mandatory birth control as there are to be no sprogs in the trial [so you dont have to deal with child custody and crap like that if the trial fails] Also, there are no joint purchases or accounts - no buying of houses, condos, expensive cars, boats or jewelry. At the end of the term, the marriage is dissolved, and they walk away or decide to go for permanent marriage.

You can tell a lot about a person while living together that you can not tell about them when just dating, even if you do sleep together. You need to live together to get out of the 'honeymoon phase' where you are on good behavior

[Attack from the 3rd dimension]

Backpacking. Trust me on this one.

[Lanzy]

Most people could probably marry any one of thousands and still be happy if they put the work into making the marriage work. People think they met the "one" and are amazed at how lucky they got when there is no "one" there are many many many ones that could make you happy. Decideing on one is a string of events that could have gone another way at any event.

[Otara]

I think you're confusing whats _possible_ with the examples you've given and whats commonly done. There are many objective tests and data available, but the examples I give show they are often not actually used in practise. So it shouldnt be a surprise to not see them used in marriage either, particularly given there isnt even a strong claim to substantially better predictive ability in that area.

If you want to know what experiments have been run already there is a fair bit of literature in the area. My understanding is its pretty much considered a dead end in psychology, and you can mainly expect to see it on dating sites or the like.

If you just 'do what seems good' as tests though, you're really just replacing one form of intuition for another.

Otara

[Knigel]

Otara, I understand what you are saying; however, I am not talking about what is possible, but what seems to be more common. It is quite common for companies to run new employees through personality tests before hiring, yet it is not common for lovers to do this or anything like this. I know people are impulsive; however, compared to something like business, marriage seems far behind. I think a large number of people would be insulted if asked to take research tests before marriage, yet it is common practice in businesses.

[Alessan]

First of all, don't knock intuition - we've been developing it for hundreds of millions of years. Logic, OTOH, has only been around for a few centuries, and is still in its beta stage.

Second of all, you seem to be assuming spherical humans; spherical, frictionless humans in a vacuum. In other words, your approach will work for the humans you think should exist rather than the humans that actually do. That kind of thinking has been tried many times before, and it never works.

[Otara]

I must admit google shows Im a bit out of date about how commonly they're used in the US nowadays.

One obvious other problem is that an employment test can afford to be conservative in many settings - you miss out on one good employee in return for avoiding 10 bad ones, it can be worth it. For marriage, not necessarily unless your available pool is large. Normative testing can be very useful to an employer with hundreds of employees, and not so much when you're only taking one person.

There are tons of marriage prediction sites available online too. So people are interested in them in theory, its just that they're (rightly) believed to be basically useless. Perhaps it they werent, they might start being used more often?

Otara

[Morgenstern]

You would never be able to test for things like changes in interest or attitude over time.
Then there is the little boss man who never listens to reason when it comes to 38Ds.

[Le Jacquelope]

Why do we not use the techniques that we have learned from psychology and other fields to better predict our partner's future potential? We know love can make us stupid and blind; therefore, why don't we test ourselves more?Because it's not good enough yet, and because people in our culture don't like applying rational analysis to relationships. It smacks too much of stories about old-time families coldbloodedly calculating which arranged marriage to shove their children into to gain the most status or profits, I suspect.
Indeed. Who here thinks this stuff will ever work before the day that we are all Borg?

[Antigen]

I did use science (http://www.okcupid.com/faaaq), in a way.

We're a super match. We were long-distance for a year before we managed to be living in the same country, so we had a lot of time to talk and ask each other the big important questions. Of course, like any pair of human beings, we still need to work on some things, and emotion and "gut feelings" played a big part in our decisions to stay together and get married. But science (and the Internet) brought us together.

I wonder if any research has been done on the lasting power of relationships started through questionnaire-based online dating sites, to see if the "scientific" method of choosing a mate works any better than picking up that cutie in the produce section.

[Le Jacquelope]

I did use science (http://www.okcupid.com/faaaq), in a way.

We're a super match. We were long-distance for a year before we managed to be living in the same country, so we had a lot of time to talk and ask each other the big important questions. Of course, like any pair of human beings, we still need to work on some things, and emotion and "gut feelings" played a big part in our decisions to stay together and get married. But science (and the Internet) brought us together.

I wonder if any research has been done on the lasting power of relationships started through questionnaire-based online dating sites, to see if the "scientific" method of choosing a mate works any better than picking up that cutie in the produce section.
Eharmony says their system works fabulously! :D

[theR]

Otara, I understand what you are saying; however, I am not talking about what is possible, but what seems to be more common. It is quite common for companies to run new employees through personality tests before hiring, yet it is not common for lovers to do this or anything like this. I know people are impulsive; however, compared to something like business, marriage seems far behind. I think a large number of people would be insulted if asked to take research tests before marriage, yet it is common practice in businesses.

Just because it is common for employers to run candidates through personality tests doesn't mean it actually works. Have there been scientific analyses of whether these tests actually help companies find better employees or avoid worse ones? They've been sold a bill of goods, and I have my doubts whether it is anything other than woo masquerading as science.

I'm not saying personality tests are not science, just that the application and effectiveness of them in this scenario seems questionable. I certainly may be wrong and am just making a guess based on what little I've seen on the subject.

Why does it matter? Because it goes back to the point that a lot of people disagree with your opening post when you state that people use rigorous test for big decisions like buying a car, hiring, etc. They don't. Most people use intuition and emotion with some small amount of objective information.

[ITR champion]

It is quite common for companies to run new employees through personality tests before hiring,
Cite, please? I've never in my life taken a personality test from any company interested in hiring me, and I've probably applied for fifty-odd jobs in my life. Even if companies do give personality tests, that doesn't mean those tests are worth anything. Companies do a lot of things that only waste their employees' time and money.

About a generation ago there was a big hullabaloo in the education world surrounding the use of personality tests on learners. Supposedly we would give these tests to students and sort them into various categories such as visual/audio/kinesthetic learners, logical/emotional learners, creative/non-creative learners, etc... Much time and money was spent on giving these tests to students, with the eventual goal of assigning students to classes based on their learning style and creating assignments and materials for each individual style. Then educators figured out that personality tests are junk and that the entire concept wasn't improving student performance at all. Now the whole idea has been dropped.
So, my real question would be: Which scientific experiments would you suggest running on potential marriage partners?

For example, increasing room temperature while having them work on a task to see how they are when they get aggressive and irritated. Or, an assault of personality and EQ/IQ tests such as they do for businesses.
I'd reject any partner dumb enough to demand those things, that's for sure.

[tomndebb]

About a generation ago there was a big hullabaloo in the education world surrounding the use of personality tests on learners. Supposedly we would give these tests to students and sort them into various categories such as visual/audio/kinesthetic learners, logical/emotional learners, creative/non-creative learners, etc... Much time and money was spent on giving these tests to students, with the eventual goal of assigning students to classes based on their learning style and creating assignments and materials for each individual style. Then educators figured out that personality tests are junk and that the entire concept wasn't improving student performance at all. Now the whole idea has been dropped.While I am less than persuaded that tests for employment, education, or marriage are all that useful, I doubt that "educators figured out that personality tests are junk." It seems rather more likely that school boards never came up with the funds to hire or train teachers to apply the test results to students in actual classroom situations than that the concept was wrong or the tests were flawed.

[Chronos]

Eharmony says their system works fabulously!And maybe it even does, for the task that it's designed for. The problem is, the task they designed their system for isn't the task they thought they designed it for. What they're actually testing for is couples unlikely to get divorced, but they never actually made any effort at finding people who should have gotten married in the first place. It would, in fact, be interesting to see the results if some matchmaking company were to actually try to do what eHarmony claims.

[ITR champion]

While I am less than persuaded that tests for employment, education, or marriage are all that useful, I doubt that "educators figured out that personality tests are junk." It seems rather more likely that school boards never came up with the funds to hire or train teachers to apply the test results to students in actual classroom situations than that the concept was wrong or the tests were flawed.
At my school we're reading this book by Dr. Daniel T. Willingham (http://www.amazon.com/Why-Dont-Students-Like-School/dp/047059196X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1286133322&sr=1-1) for our professional development course. Chapter seven deals directly with this issue, and Willingham says pretty clearly that the tests which were given to students did not correctly sort students into categories in any meaningful way. In fact, he's skeptical that any test could produce useful divisions of the sort that educators were hoping for.

[KarlGrenze]

At my school we're reading this book by Dr. Daniel T. Willingham (http://www.amazon.com/Why-Dont-Students-Like-School/dp/047059196X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1286133322&sr=1-1) for our professional development course. Chapter seven deals directly with this issue, and Willingham says pretty clearly that the tests which were given to students did not correctly sort students into categories in any meaningful way. In fact, he's skeptical that any test could produce useful divisions of the sort that educators were hoping for.

ITR, VARK (http://www.vark-learn.com/english/index.asp) is used in my department to develop the pathology curriculum for veterinary students.

I know I study the way they say I should study for my "category". And it definitely, in a way, makes sense to me why sometimes I have trouble communicating with others. I suck at visual learning, but others can't comprehend a thing unless there is a figure attached, which I hate to provide because I can't understand it.

[guizot]

Just because it is common for employers to run candidates through personality tests doesn't mean it actually works. Have there been scientific analyses of whether these tests actually help companies find better employees or avoid worse ones? I was given one once (after I'd been hired), and I wasn't particularly interested in taking the time to fill it out. So I looked at the alignment of the bubbles on the answer sheet, and just randomly answered in a way that would make my personality 100% "neutral." They saw that, and made me do it again, but do you think they were ever going to take any answers from me seriously after that?

[tomndebb]

At my school we're reading this book by Dr. Daniel T. Willingham (http://www.amazon.com/Why-Dont-Students-Like-School/dp/047059196X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1286133322&sr=1-1) for our professional development course. Chapter seven deals directly with this issue, and Willingham says pretty clearly that the tests which were given to students did not correctly sort students into categories in any meaningful way. In fact, he's skeptical that any test could produce useful divisions of the sort that educators were hoping for.As I noted in my opening clause, I am not persuaded that such tests work. However, my point was that I doubt that the tests were actually evaluated and discarded by educators and that it is much more likely that they were employed in a half-assed (undefunded) manner and then dropped in favor of the next fad.

[Otara]

Well one argument for job assessment is that simply by removing the unstructured interview as the primary primary decision point you pretty much improve things automatically. This is based on the supposed finding that job performance can be inversely correlated to job interview performance for many professions.

Which makes some sense in that the people getting the most practise in job interviews are the ones changing around a fair bit.

If the tests actually offer useful information as well, its just gravy.

Otara

[Ramanujan]

First of all, don't knock intuition - we've been developing it for hundreds of millions of years. Logic, OTOH, has only been around for a few centuries, and is still in its beta stage.

Second of all, you seem to be assuming spherical humans; spherical, frictionless humans in a vacuum. In other words, your approach will work for the humans you think should exist rather than the humans that actually do. That kind of thinking has been tried many times before, and it never works.

to sort of expand on what Alessan is saying here: the social sciences have yet to produce anything even remotely near the predictive results of actual scientific rigor. the best they do is provide statistical analysis of moving targets. assuming there could be some "compatibility" test, based in actual science, is simply asking too much.

as a bit of an example, consider that there are at least two different approaches to marriage. in one, the loving couple believes that they've each met the person with whom they couldn't spend the rest of their lives without. human preferences are incredibly difficult to predict, and certainly no self-reporting could achieve an adequate result. if it could, this wouldn't be a discussion.

in another approach, people are paired and expected to work toward a happy marriage. there is an effort placed on ensuring compatibility; it is not expected at the outset. what could our woeful ability to predict human behavior say about the chances at success for these sorts of marriages?

and what set of tests could achieve adequate predictive results given that there are many different approaches than those named here, and that most everyone on the planet who even considers getting married uses some indeterminate hybrid of any number of them?

i contend that it simply can't be done. and, as was said earlier, don't be too hard on intuition.

[jsgoddess]

Relationships aren't about objective measures, so testing how someone matches up objectively isn't necessarily giving all that much information. The real question is: Does this person make me want to figure out some way to run over myself with my own car? There are people who on paper don't make me want to do that but who in person have me diagramming it.

[even sven]

It wouldn't help one bit.

People in love are amazing at willfully ignoring big blinding red flags. Most people who are going into something with the wrong person can see it a mile away- and they simply refuse to see it. In truth a lot of traits that make for an attractive sex partner make for a horrible life partner. But that realization isn't going to make that initial attractive any bit weaker.

[TruCelt]

I think it would help in the most egregious cases. The amen clinic can discover a great deal about people using functional MRI and other brain scan technologies. If I'd had my ex-fiancee tested there, I'd likely have learned that he was without normal function in sympathy and bonding. That might have clued me in that I was getting involved with a sociopath. Now, whether I would, in the throes of "love" have ignored that is open for debate.

It's certain that he took a Myers-briggs type test and that I was horrified by the result. It just didn't gel with the person I knew, so I put it down to the test being wrong. Turns out the man he represented himself to be was the fake, and the type-testing was accurate.

[Le Jacquelope]

i contend that it simply can't be done. and, as was said earlier, don't be too hard on intuition.
Intuition isn't perfect, though. Lots of battered and cheated-on women learn that the hard way.

That's not to say that science is any better...

[jsgoddess]

It wouldn't help one bit.

People in love are amazing at willfully ignoring big blinding red flags. Most people who are going into something with the wrong person can see it a mile away- and they simply refuse to see it. In truth a lot of traits that make for an attractive sex partner make for a horrible life partner. But that realization isn't going to make that initial attractive any bit weaker.

I'm not a fan of the idea that people can either be in love or think, not both. It's very possible to do both, though most people might not.



i contend that it simply can't be done. and, as was said earlier, don't be too hard on intuition.
Intuition isn't perfect, though. Lots of battered and cheated-on women learn that the hard way.

That's not to say that science is any better...

I think many battered and cheated on women AND men ignored their intuition. The danger signs are often there, but US culture romanticizes some pretty ugly behavior at times. Oh, if he's possessive and violent, it means he really really cares, etc.

[even sven]

I'm not a fan of the idea that people can either be in love or think, not both. It's very possible to do both, though most people might not.

Of course it is very possible, and if your goal is a steady long-lasting marriage that'd be smart. But I think most people secretly have other goals, which they chose by their actions even if they mouth different words. And I don't think this has to be a bad thing- I think there are perfectly valid and good models for relationships besides "We are going to love each other for ever and ever and that's that." Every relationship doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to provide what it is the people involved are looking for.

[jsgoddess]

I think there are perfectly valid and good models for relationships besides "We are going to love each other for ever and ever and that's that." Every relationship doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to provide what it is the people involved are looking for.

I definitely agree with that. But I took from your earlier comment that you thought people weren't modeling any sort of healthy relationship for themselves, they were just getting carried away by hormones and the like.

[kunilou]

There are damn few tests that can mimic the real-life scenarios that stress marriages.

If you've grown up in a comfortable middle-class home, there's no set of questions that can accurately judge how you'll react if you or your spouse becomes unemployed, cutting your household income in half, forcing you to make choices you never even thought about.

If you have a child, there's no way to tell how two people will react to the demands of a third, all-demanding, totally dependent person in the house, especially if the child has health problems that could require constant management for the rest of your life.

How would you predict how you'd react if your spouse one day said, "I have the job opportunity of a lifetime, but I have to spend 5 years in Elbonia?" Or if your spouse developed a drug or alcohol addiction, was crippled in a car accident, or suffered a paralyzing stroke a year after you were married?

[jsgoddess]

How would you predict how you'd react if your spouse one day said, "I have the job opportunity of a lifetime, but I have to spend 5 years in Elbonia?" Or if your spouse developed a drug or alcohol addiction, was crippled in a car accident, or suffered a paralyzing stroke a year after you were married?

While I completely agree that there's no way to know precisely how each of these things would go down, isn't a lot of how we handle stress due to our basic, inherent, character?

I, for example, am very easily stressed but I am also stubborn as hell, so I don't give up easily (maybe not easily enough) when the going gets tough. That's my nature. People who know me know my nature. Isn't that predictive?

[Hilarity N. Suze]

I am trying to figure out how you can get horrifying results from a Myers-Briggs type test. It sounds like being horrified to realize that your honey is a Scorpio instead of a Virgo.

[chacoguy]

Backpacking. Trust me on this one.

This, absolutely this.

Pick a time when you are both weakened and wanting control. Then, see how you mesh. Other good tests include: Moving a big piece of furniture up, or down, stairs. Taking a drive of fourteen hours or more and being sick,simultaneously.

If you can get along and work together, in those times, you probably can make it in the long term.

[jsgoddess]

I am trying to figure out how you can get horrifying results from a Myers-Briggs type test. It sounds like being horrified to realize that your honey is a Scorpio instead of a Virgo.

If someone presents themselves as one thing and tests as something completely different, I could see that setting off alarms.

[kunilou]

How would you predict how you'd react if your spouse one day said, "I have the job opportunity of a lifetime, but I have to spend 5 years in Elbonia?" Or if your spouse developed a drug or alcohol addiction, was crippled in a car accident, or suffered a paralyzing stroke a year after you were married?

While I completely agree that there's no way to know precisely how each of these things would go down, isn't a lot of how we handle stress due to our basic, inherent, character?

I, for example, am very easily stressed but I am also stubborn as hell, so I don't give up easily (maybe not easily enough) when the going gets tough. That's my nature. People who know me know my nature. Isn't that predictive?

Your self-description makes me think of multiple scenarios if your spouse is crippled in a car accident.

1) You tenaciously fight for your spouse to achieve and maintain the highest quality of life possible.

2) You frantically search for a "miracle cure" for your spouse's injuries, to the point of wasting time and money that could be better used on conventional rehabilitation.

3) You collapse under the stress and turn to drugs, alcohol or chronic depression, gradually losing your ability to effectively care for your spouse.

4) You stubbornly insist that it's your duty to care for your spouse by yourself, to the point of ignoring advice that the spouse would be better off with 24-hour care in a rehabilitation center, or even that you avail yourself of respite care.

So far, the only thing your stressed-but-stubborn personality can predict is that you probably won't willfully desert your crippled spouse. But there's nothing there that can predict the quality of your marriage, or even of your own life.

[lee]

Trial arrangements are not marriage; marriage is a commitment. We have an out these days, it is called divorce. Going into a marriage with a "we'll see" attitude doesn't seem like it would help. There would still be people who are fully committed, even during the trial period and some of those would be with partners who have not committed themselves mentally and will be out of there as soon as it is not fun or easy which may be during or after a warranty period. Why would a warranty period help at all? What is the advantage?

Nothing can tell you how you will change from age 18 - 100, and nothing can tell you about how another person will change over those years either. Things that some see as red flags may very well be non-issues in the long haul. In 1987, no one thought that my husband and I should get married, but getting married was just a recognition of a change that had already taken place. We had made the commitment to each other.

At what point do you decide that yep, this one is for real?

[jsgoddess]

So far, the only thing your stressed-but-stubborn personality can predict is that you probably won't willfully desert your crippled spouse. But there's nothing there that can predict the quality of your marriage, or even of your own life.

If personality can't, then nothing can. I don't believe life is so wildly unpredictable that we really have no idea how people we know well will react in a given situation.

[TruCelt]

I am trying to figure out how you can get horrifying results from a Myers-Briggs type test. It sounds like being horrified to realize that your honey is a Scorpio instead of a Virgo.

If someone presents themselves as one thing and tests as something completely different, I could see that setting off alarms.

Exactly. I woudl have placed him at a ENTJ, he turned out to be an ESTP. that represents a completely different thought process, and likely indicates a set of values with which I have very little in common. It was also the extemeity of all his measurements. He had almost nothing in or near the center scale.

[Otara]

FWIW, psychology tried like billyo to find ways of predicting marriage success based on personality profiling, and my understanding is it basically got nowhere.

It 'makes sense' that it would, but just doesnt seem to pan out in practise.

Otara

[begbert2]

I thought the term for what the OP is asking for was "dating". And/or, "engagement".

Myself, I went the "long engagement" route. A year and a half, iirc. The test was successful: I'm still single.

[Euphonious Polemic]

Backpacking. Trust me on this one.

I was coming here to post the very same thing.

[Bryan Ekers]

Just be aware that the computer matches would be so perfect as to eliminate the thrill of romantic conquest. Ha-ho-ha-hey-hoo.