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Judging a book by its cover, maybe... but personality is a huge, huge component of romance, and simple questionnaires, even with free-form, essay-style text res

Judging a book by its cover, maybe... but personality is a huge, huge component of romance, and simple questionnaires, even with free-form, essay-style text responses, are unlikely to reveal enough to predict anything by survey alone. Arranged marriages certainly seem to permit a capacity for arbitrary pairings, but when you consider the hereditary aspects behind an arranged marriage, where parents are choosing for children, the reality is that a parent's approximate attraction to someone they select for their children, even by proxy through that someone's parents, will probably land closer to what their children would intuitively approach on their own, than random chance.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago
An arranged marriage is going to be a social and economic positive to at least on party and neutral or positive to the other. A marriage is less likely to fail when it causes enough upsides to be worth the downsides. People don't like the concept of trophy wives, gold diggers and strategic marriages because the pros and cons each side brings to the table are incredibly dissimilar in nature and the perceived value of them is highly subjective so to most people they look like a bad deal for at least one party. On the other hand only two people have to think it's a good deal for it to work out.
- mannykannot 9y ago
  I don't think we can necessarily assume that an arranged marriage is positive-to-neutral for both members of the couple, however. Parents may act in their own best interests or those of other members of the family, even if they tell themselves they are putting their child's interests first. Practices like dowries, and issues of gender inequality and the socio-economic status of families and clans, further cloud the issue. Which is not to say that leaving it up to the kids themselves is always successful...
  - roceasta 9y ago
    So parents pick suitors and daughters have the power of veto. That way parents filter out bad boy thugs (who may damage her face) and those of lower economic/social classes (who may reduce her to penury). Daughter filters out people she finds repulsive. The traditional model as I understand it.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago

An arranged marriage is going to be a social and economic positive to at least on party and neutral or positive to the other. A marriage is less likely to fail when it causes enough upsides to be worth the downsides. People don't like the concept of trophy wives, gold diggers and strategic marriages because the pros and cons each side brings to the table are incredibly dissimilar in nature and the perceived value of them is highly subjective so to most people they look like a bad deal for at least one party. On the other hand only two people have to think it's a good deal for it to work out.

mannykannot 9y ago
I don't think we can necessarily assume that an arranged marriage is positive-to-neutral for both members of the couple, however. Parents may act in their own best interests or those of other members of the family, even if they tell themselves they are putting their child's interests first. Practices like dowries, and issues of gender inequality and the socio-economic status of families and clans, further cloud the issue. Which is not to say that leaving it up to the kids themselves is always successful...
- roceasta 9y ago
  So parents pick suitors and daughters have the power of veto. That way parents filter out bad boy thugs (who may damage her face) and those of lower economic/social classes (who may reduce her to penury). Daughter filters out people she finds repulsive. The traditional model as I understand it.