Online Compatibility Tools

I recommend reading the article "How Do I Love Thee?" about online dating sites which use some kind of compatibility algorithm. The creators of these websites have gotten pretty far using personal experience, insight, and data processing tools. There is enough money in this field to propel the work along -- probably more than in the field of just psychological types (i.e. MBTI), much less socionics.

I won't pretend that knowing socionics gives one an advantage over these guys. After gaining extensive personal experience with socionics you will start to wonder what distinguishes the duals you really click with from the others that you are relatively comfortable with but indifferent towards, and why you are drawn to certain non-duals and not to others. And that puts you at the beginning stages of trying to understand compatibility. So, let's not be too smug about our "hidden" knowledge :-)

Let me pull out some of the important conclusions that these people have come to:

• The more peripheral your traits (intellect, abilities, etc.), the fewer good matches you will have. This makes patience essential.
• "...one of Warren’s longtime observations: namely, that the members of a happy couple are far more similar to each other than are the members of an unhappy couple. Compatibility, in other words, rests on shared traits."
• At the same time, "You don’t want two obsessives,” he explained. “They’ll drive each other crazy. You don’t find two control freaks in a great marriage."
• "Fifty percent of the ball game is finding two people who are stable." Instability may mean incompatibility with nearly everyone.
• “Long-term satisfaction is not the same as short-term attraction. A lot of people, when they see their initial matches, it’s like, ‘This is crap!’” In other words, long-term attraction tends to grow on you.
• "Don’t have sex if you don’t want to fall in love.”
• "The problem with sites like eHarmony, she believes, is that they place too much emphasis on similarity, whereas, in her view, falling in love depends on two elements: similarity and complementarity." (My own limited encounters with eHarmony confirm this)
• “We also want someone who masks our flaws,” she explained. “For example, people with poor social skills sometimes gravitate toward people with good social skills. I’m an Explorer, so I don’t really need a partner who is socially skilled. That’s not essential to me. But it may be essential to a Director, who’s generally less socially skilled.” Of course, this totally jives with socionics. However there are different ways of "lacking social skills" (think SLE vs. LSE's weaknesses).
• "Schwartz’s Duet model consists of a mere forty-eight questions and focuses on eight specific personality characteristics: romantic impulsivity, personal energy, outlook, predictability, flexibility, decision-making style, emotionality, and self-nurturing style. On the first four, she believes, a well-suited couple should be similar; on the last four, however, a couple can thrive on either similarity or difference."

Also interesting is the fact that so much of our personality depends on levels of different hormones and/or the genes that determine these levels:

"Genes for the activity of dopamine are associated with motivation, curiosity,
anxiety, and optimism. Genes for the metabolism of serotonin, another
neurotransmitter, tend to modulate one’s degree of calm, stability, popularity,
and religiosity. Testosterone is associated with being rational, analytical,
exacting, independent, logical, rank-oriented, competitive, irreverent, and
narcissistic. And the hormone estrogen is associated with being imaginative,
creative, insightful, humane, sympathetic, agreeable, flexible, and verbal."

A big part of the article is about trying to figure out which traits need to be similar and which need to be different for optimal satisfaction. I've written some of my own ideas here. The search goes on.