Online dating startup Soul2Match promises to match singles based solely on one piece of information from each of them: their headshot.
Yes, founders Jorn Eiting and Linda van Liempt are serious. They cite several studies that show what we’re all really looking for in our ideal mate is ourselves.
“The more two people have similarities in their faces, the more they look alike, the happier they are in the relationhsip, the stronger the relationship,” says Eiting, who announcing the launch of the Soul2Match iPhone app [iTunes link] on Tuesday.
The research itself is less absolute. Some of it shows that couples with similar levels of attractiveness are the happiest. Other research says people trust those who have similar facial features more than those who don’t.
The best proof for Soul2Match‘s matchmaking method? A 1999 study that used computer-graphic image manipulation to generate male faces that looked like female participants. For example, if a woman’s cheekbone stuck out 0.3 percent more than the average woman’s cheekbones do, the program would generate a male face with cheekbones that stuck out 0.3 percent more than the male average. Women were more likely to rate faces as attractive that had been manipulated to match their own.
Trouble is, a later study by Lisa M. DeBruine of McMaster University showed that people are more likely to rate faces similar to their attractive when it’s the same sex than photos of the opposite sex.
“The same-sex bias … is a product of specialized responses to facial resemblance as a cue of kinship,” DeBruine wrote; it helps us “favor kin in a non-sexual prosocial context and avoid kin in a mating context.”
In other words, her theory is that it’s all part of the brain’s recognition mechanism that helps us be nice to family members — and avoid incest.
While the research behind it might be less than bulletproof, Soul2Match does have this going for it: it’s an extremely simple dating site. Instead of filling out long questionnaires, users take a photo of themselves and post it to the site or the iPhone app. The site uses facial recognition software to analyze features in the photo and the photos of other users, and spits out a “compatibility score.” There’s an option to message people who are highly compatible with you.
Eiting and van Liempt, for instance, are a couple — and have a compatibilty score that is higher than 70%.
In my trials of the site, however, I wasn’t able to find anyone who was more than 24% compatible.
I would like to believe that I’m particularly incompatible, and that Soul2Match will work well for those who want to leave their time-consuming online dating questionnaires behind forever. But it seems the site’s main draw will be entertainment value.
“There’s only one way to find out, and that’s by using it.” Eiting says.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, adventtr
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