Newsgroups: ba.singles
Subject: Re: analytical modeling
From: kehoe@netcom.com (Thomas David Kehoe)
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 02:38:56 GMT
Distribution: ba
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)

>] The point is, you (whoever you are) will get a hell of a lot further
>] out in the world, meeting people, than sitting around compiling
>] statistics.
>
>Maybe if we developed better Computational Models about
>the sorts of relationships we are interested in testing,
>we could run them through the number cruncher a few
>times before we had to 'put the bird in the wind tunnel.'

I spent a lot of time recently researching this field.
There is an obscure area of psychology called Personal
Construct Theory that can predict long-term interpersonal
attraction, based on a standardized test.  It's not really
a test, in that it doesn't have multiple choice answers
or even really have questions, but it is on paper and
can be analyzed for content or factoral analysis.

There also has been lots of research in demographics of
married couples.  I'll dig out something from my notes...
--
Various studies found correlations in married couples:
Strongest correlation
	Age	0.76-0.91 
	Religion	0.77 (1950)
	Residential area	0.71 (1950)
	Education	0.48-0.60 (years of education, educational level)
	Race/Ethnic group

0.40-0.50
	Intelligence tests	
	Attitudes and opinions (sex roles, societal goals)
	Current smoking
	Alcohol consumption

0.35-0.40
	Physical health
	Mental health	
	Social activity
	Number of rooms in parents' house (surrogate for socioeconomic status)

0.25-0.35:
	Height
	Weight
	Hair color
	Eye color
	Values
	Physical attractiveness
	Socioeconomic status (other measures)
	General cognitive ability (Raven Progressive Matrices)
	A few personality inventory scores
	Amount of leisure exercise
	Vocabulary
	Day/night person

Below 0.25:
	Most personality inventory scores
	Ever smoked
	Use of coffee or tea
	Specific foods
	Number of brothers and sisters
	Handedness

No specific personality inventories or scales correlated consistantly.  E.g.
Neuroticism varied from 0.00 to 0.36, depending on the test and study.
Ethnic and racial differences vary between groups.  E.g. Italian-Americans are
twice as likely to intermarry as Irish-Americans.
Bowerman (1950) found that unmarried persons married unmarried persons and
divorced persons married divorced persons.  This may be a surrogate for age.
Propinquity is lessening.  This may be a surrogate for socioeconomic status.
These studies also looked at which aspects seem to correlate more closer in
couples that had been married longer.
--
The point is that a matchmaking information system seems
to be possible.  Note that the information used by computer
dating services, personal ads, etc., is all but worthless:
personality inventories, shared values (e.g. religion), and shared interests and
hobbies.

SRI International's VALS II appear to be useful for matchmaking.
This is a model of values and lifestyles, but considerably
different from other such models.

If anyone is interested, I'd be happy to discuss this, but it
gets technical very fast.  I could e-mail the paper I wrote
about this to anyone interested.
-- 
"Why my thoughts are my own, when they are in, but when they are out
they are another's." - Susannah Martin, hanged for witchcraft, 1692.
Thomas David Kehoe          kehoe@netcom.com         (408) 354-5926
Newsgroups: ba.singles