The popular dating website/social network OkCupid has released data on three experiments it conducted on its users , shortly after the uproar caused by a corresponding announcement by Facebook about conducting a large-scale psychological experiment without the knowledge of its users, modifying the content of the newsfeeds of 700,000 people.
The announcement is signed by Kristian Runder, one of the founders of OkCupid, and is humorously titled «We Experiment on Human Beings!» («we conduct experiments on humans!»).
«I am the first to admit it: we may be popular, we may create many nice relationships… but OkCupid doesn't really know ’ what exactly it does. Not any other site either. After all, it hasn't been long since people started building them, or that you can go see some designs or something like that. Most ideas are bad. Even good ideas could be better. You notice this through experiments… we recently realized that people didn't like that Facebook ‘was experimented’ with the news feed… but guess what: if you use the Internet, you are subjected to hundreds of experiments at any given moment, on every site. That's how sites work».
One of the experiments dealt with the disappearance of profile pictures, another with the power of the photo in relation to the profile text to determine how personality ratings are affected, and in the other, recommendations were made to users regarding whether they match or not with other people, which deviated from the estimates that the company's software had actually made. Specifically, as it turned out, if a user is told that they have a high «compatibility score» with another user (when in reality it was low), then the former is more likely to try to approach the latter. Those who believed they were being addressed as a «good match» were twice as likely to send at least four messages compared to people who were told that the compatibility score was low. "When we tell people they match, they behave as if they match. Even when they don’t match» it is noted accordingly.
Regarding the photos, the announcement refers to the hiding of photos during «Love is Blind Day» on January 15, 2013. Although overall a drop in the number of conversations was noted during that period, it was found that compared to a typical Tuesday, within seven hours without photos users responded to first messages 44% more often, the conversations were deeper, contact details (phone numbers, email) were exchanged more quickly and «in short, OkCupid worked better». However, as noted, the «magic» was lost when the photos returned, as 2,200 people who were in conversations that had started «blindly» stopped them. «It was like we turned on bright lights in a bar at midnight» is noted. «Basically, people are exactly as expansive as technology allows them to be».
The third experiment dealt with the value of a photo regarding the evaluation of a profile (initially OkCupid provided two rating scales, one for personality and one for appearance).
«As mentioned in the announcement, based on the small deviation between the scores, the «appearance» and the «personality» were more or less the same, as the evaluations ranged at similar levels. «After we got rid of the two scales and kept only one, we conducted an experiment to confirm our hunch—that users simply look at the photo…your image indeed is worth a thousand words, but your words themselves (the profile text) are worth…almost nothing» is noted accordingly.
Source: naftemporiki.gr
