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People are more likely to cross races for dating, but only with others they meet online, a new study has found. According to newswise.com,  race does still matter online. "People still self-segregate as much as they do in face-to-face interactions; most, that is, still reach out to members of their own racial background." But here's the exciting new twist: people are more likely to reciprocate an online cross-race overture than previous research has suggested. "And – once they have replied to a suitor from a different race – people are then themselves more likely to cross racial lines and initiate interracial contact in the future," the Web site reports. It's not every race that's willing to be open to other ethnic groups.  "The tendency to initiate contact within one’s own race, the study observes, is strongest among Asians and Indians and weakest among whites," newswise.com notes. What I found really interesting in the report of this...

Would you believe it took match.com, or its German equivalent, to help people in this country find love?  Well, according to smartplanet.com, "The last decade has seen Germany grow into the second most profitable online dating market in Europe after the UK." Shannon Smith reports that market value in 2012 was eight times what it was in 2003 when the first dating sites arrived on the scene. But a little differently than in this country, it's mostly 40- to 60-year-olds who flock to the sites.  And the younger people who do visit these sites?  They're more into polygamy, Smith relates, manifesting in "separate living situations and other non-traditional romantic and familial arrangements." In 2008 eight percent of people between 20 and 35 questioned by a German magazine acknowledged that they were in relationships with more than one person who they met online, according to a study referenced by Smith. Smith notes that the magazine credits Jean-Claude ...

A recent story in The New York Times noted that eHarmony's much-vaunted algorithms for matching people may just not be doing the job, after all. According to the story,  eHarmony’s senior research scientist, Dr. Gian C. Gonzaga, was criticized by Dr. Harry T. Reis of of the University of Rochester, one of the authors of last year’s critique of the company's matching formula, saying eHarmony's results  could simply "merely reflect the well-known 'person effect;' an agreeable, non-neurotic, optimistic person will tend to fare better in any relationship." But the research, reporter John Tierney writes, "also showed that it’s hard to make predictions based on what’s called a dyadic effect — how similar the partners are to each other," one of the main ways eHarmony matches people with their "soul mate." On the other side, I recently read that one out of six marriages now come from online matches.  So, who's to say?  I met my husban...