Do You Need a Quiz to Find a Partner?

Friday, August 10th, 2012
Multiple choice answer sheet being filled in with a pencil

Nowadays you can take a quiz to tell you about every aspect of your life (which are usually based on a psychological profiling questionnaires called the MBTI System), but would you trust a questionnaire to help you to find the love of your life? We look into the pros cons of using a personality quiz to find a date online:

Pros

  • Quizzes can be a light-hearted way of finding out things about yourself and others; for example our ‘How Muddy are You?’ quiz can give you an indication of how ‘muddy’ or ‘townie’ you are. You can even search for other members based on their Muddy-Townie ratio.
  • When it comes to love, experts say that the old adage ‘opposites attract’ isn’t necessarily true. Although it makes sense to find someone who isn’t a carbon copy of yourself (as frankly it would be boring) it is important to agree on key issues and a personality test can be a good way to see if you have similar personality types.
  • If you are on a large dating site with millions of members it can be hard to narrow down the people who you wish to find out more about without resorting to choosing by hair colour, so a personality test can help you to narrow your search.

Cons

  • Life isn’t black and white, but quizzes give an either/or option without a middle ground. For example, you might enjoy ski holidays and beach holidays equally, but be forced to choose between the two. If the most common dating profile phrase “I like going out with friends and I also like staying in with a DVD and a bottle of wine” is anything to go by, then it shows that people like different things at different times.
  • People may answer questions based on what they want to be like, rather than what they are actually like, as they believe that certain aspects of their personality can be perceived as negative. If they choose a rose-tinted view the questionnaire will not show their true personality.
  • Last, but not least not everyone has the patience to fill in long questionnaires. I don’t know about you, but whenever I fill in a long quiz online I lose interest by about the third page and start just ticking anything to get it over and done with. I’m sure I’m not the only person who loses patience with endless “would you rather” questions.

* We could go on forever about this subject but following on from my last point, I realise that people may get bored and stop reading (assuming they haven’t already).

What do you think about dating questionnaires? Let us know on Facebook or email dating@muddymatches.co.uk.