The Ideal Mate Template: Searching for the Perfect Partner

One of the story arcs in "How I Met Your Mother" was this matchmaking service which could reportedly find your soulmate by using a computer algorithm. A seeker would just send his profile in and is then compared to the records in the database by rating how compatible they could be according to a rating scale of 1-10. A match is then called if the profile pinged at least an 8.5 rating. The service then sets up a date, and since the algorithm has predicted that they would really hit it off, they live happily ever after. Or so goes the story.

It perked my interest to have a notion of compatibility based on characteristics; I believe this is something we are well-aware of. Ask a random person what they look for in a partner and they could instantly summon a laundry-list of things they look for in a potential mate. Maybe we just have this inner "ideal mate template" lurking in our heads and we tick off this every time we meet another person. Cute? Check. Witty? Check. And so on. This sounds logical because by just matching this template with someone else's, it would be a breeze to know instantly if that person is "The One". Hey, we know ourselves enough to know what will make us happy right?

It's not always the case.

Sheena Iyengar and Raymond Fishman, professors from Columbia University, tried to find out how speed-daters think through and decide which person is a good catch by comparing their "ideal mate template" to the characteristics of the persons they did choose. To find this out, they asked each participant to fill out a questionnaire that could give them a cross-section of the characteristics of their ideal mate before the event. At the end of every "date" (i.e. the 6-minute conversation) they rate the one they've met using the same questionnaire. This goes on until at the end of the event, they write down their choice dates.

On the onset, we would probably think that each ideal was used exclusively to filter down the prospects. The results of the questionnaire that they filled-in before the start of the event should, more or less, be similar to the characteristics of the dates they chose. Lo, and behold, it was not what happened. In one example, a speed-dater who filled-in "sincerity" and "intelligence" as the ideal characteristics of a potential partner chose a guy who was rated highest as "attractive" and "funny". Whatever happened to the sincere, intelligent dream guy template? This is not an isolated case because most of participants in the spread had behaved in the same way. It seems that at the moment where it should count, the "ideal mate template" was set aside.

We could probably say that the conditions were not really good enough to conclude that the template was not used, given the fact that it was a speed-dating event and not a real-world thing. We could probably argue that normally we meet people on a slower pace of getting-to-know, giving us a better idea of whether that person is worth knowing more. But what I really want to share is, whatever template we have in our heads, the ideal partner, regardless of the characteristics they might possess, will almost always be someone that would surprise us in one way or another. He or she may not coincide with the "ideal mate template" but we'll still be happy nevertheless.

Whether or not an algorithm could really match you to your one true love, we just know, when that moment comes we're in for a surprise.