The Love Experiment: female tech entrepreneurs shake up online dating with Once

French dating app Once, puts an end to patriarchal matching by launching first ever algorithm created by an all female team.

Once has created an emotional profiling test with leading female psychologists and dating experts. The ‘Love Experiment’ steps away from the established matching algorithms which focus only on looks and social status. The test identifies a person’s Emotional Profile, and allows singles to establish which profiles they are most compatible with.

Over 1000 existing couples were analysed to establish proven compatibility trends. The dating app now offers singles the opportunity to join ‘The Love Experiment’ themselves

The Love Experiment

Pioneering French dating app Once continues its campaign for a ‘post-swiping’ era of dating by launching a new matching algorithm, specifically designed by an all-women team.  For the past twenty years, men have been responsible for the matching algorithms powering online dating sites and apps. 

The results are looks-based ‘hot or not’ games, and questionnaires which resemble social security forms – focusing on education, income, age, height and simple questions which can be answered in one or two words.  Some still sadly ask singles to disclose about their weight or define themselves by ‘body type’.

Determined to deconstruct the recipe of love, and take down the patriarchal traditions of dating apps, Once CEO Clementine Lalande enlisted the help of French psychoanalyst Fabienne Kramer, British psychologist Dannielle Haig, and British dating expert and app founder Charly Lester. The four women created THE LOVE EXPERIMENT – a series of 28 contemporary questions, designed to identify a person’s emotional profile. Questions range from whether you’d rather dine with Obama or the Dalai Lama to what your chosen super power would be.

“Dating is a market designed by men for men and is governed in a non-transparent way,” explains Clémentine. “I’m tired of working in a market that reproduces & amplifies patriarchal stereotypes. So I am trying to reinvent the rules of online dating.  It’s time to change the status quo, and so I enlisted a team of female relationship experts to help me change the dating space once and for all, with our Love Experiment.”

The experiment is inspired by transactional analysis, analytical psychology and behavioural analysis. It has been designed specifically to assess how independent an individual is in a relationship, their levels of introversion and extroversion, the importance of physical and cerebral connection to them, and how intuitive he or she is.

The 28 questions have been designed to be revealing, but also contemporary and fun. Once someone has completed the ‘experiment’ they immediately get told their personal Emotional Profile, which is characterised as one of 16 different archetypes. These archetypes range from a detective, to a pilot, to a rock star.

As psychologist Dannielle Haig explains…

“It is well known from scientific research that humans are not very capable of judging ourselves accurately, for example we often think we are portraying ourselves one way when in fact others would say we come across completely differently. We also aren’t hugely adept at separating what we want from life and love, from what society and our family and friends think we should want. Psychological profiling gives you an objective view of yourself without all the noise of preconceptions.”

In order to conclusively establish which profiles are most compatible with one another, the Once team then surveyed over 1000 established couples, with over 9000 years of success between them. Each half of the couple took the test, and then Once compared their results. The oldest couple to take the test so far has been married for 49 years.

Using the outcomes of the married couples’ responses, the Once team was able to deconstruct compatible Emotional Profiles and conclusively determine that compatibility comes from a very subtle set of differences. Of the four axes used in the test (extroversion, physicality, independence and intuition), couples need to have three in common for the best emotional match. All four in common, and you might be too similar. None in common? You’ve just met your arch nemesis!

Psychoanalyst Fabienne Kraemer explains…

“On dating apps it’s hard to tell who the other person is. But from these four lines of questioning, we are already learning a lot. Our four axes test your relationship with yourself, other people, in a couple, and with your body. We then define your Emotional Profile, and we know which profiles are normally compatible. This way, we hope to improve the quality of dates, and to allow singles to understand their compatibility with someone before they even meet: will it be harmonious, complicated or explosive?  In order for a relationship to work in the long-term, it’s about creating a subtle mix – finding someone with whom you share values, ideas, perceptions, and styles of expression without choosing your double.”

Once is now enabling singles to benefit from the outcome of the research, by taking the same test themselves, inside the app – in a feature called ‘The Love Experiment’.

Once a single has been told their personal archetype, they are then given the opportunity to select from other singles, based on their emotional compatibility.  Singles can select a ‘chemical bond’ – just enough difference to ensure a long-lasting relationship which maintains individuality – ‘magnetic attraction’ – with a single who has the exact same test results, and an ‘explosive reaction’ with someone who is their exact opposite, in order to put Once’s conclusion to the test themselves.

“It’s 2021. We know that not everyone is looking for a 49 year marriage, and some people want something explosive and fun, with someone completely different, and so we believed it was important to leave singles in the driving seat when it came to their destiny, and give them a guide, rather than restricting them to only one certain type of match.” explains dating expert Charly Lester. ‘If you take the test, you get three very different outcomes, and then you can decide what the ‘love experiment’ looks like for you.’

16 ARCHETYPES  (Based on emotional profiling)

• The Activist
• The Artist
• The Astronaut
• The Detective
• The Divinity
• The Explorer
• The Film Star
• The Firefighter
• The Guardian
• The Knight
• The Magician
• The Pilot
• The Professor
• The Rock Star
• The Superhero
• The Unicorn

Sample questions included…

To end a pointless argument do you …

1. Leave the room
2. Agree with everything they say?

Would you prefer …

1. Dinner with Obama
2. Lunch with the Dalai Lama?

In bed are you …

1. An (intense) lion
2. A (tender) sloth?

How does your partner know you’re pissed at them?

1. You ‘accidentally’ burn down their house
2. You tell everyone that you’re over

Would you rather …

1. Live twice as long
2. Win the lottery?

Would you rather …

1. Breathe underwater
2. Meet aliens?

Clémentine Lalande is the CEO of Once, the post-swipe dating app that puts quality over quantity. A graduate of the Ecole Centrale in Paris and the Technische Universität in Berlin, she began her professional career at the Boston Consulting Group, before leaving the consulting world to develop the dating app Once.

Clémentine is a serial entrepreneur focused on reinventing the rules of online dating. She founded Pickable, a feminist dating app that reverses gender power imbalances by requiring only men to create a profile, in 2018. Since August 2019, she has headed up the Once Dating Group, which brings together both Once and Pickable. Clémentine defends a more innovative, empathetic and human online dating, respecting and making men and women feel good about dating services.

Once dating app

Launched in October 2015, Once created the concept of slow-dating.  Once offers users only 1 match per day, because it is necessary for the right conditions to bring about beautiful stories.  Every day around noon users are presented a new, specially chosen match, and given 24 hours of exclusive attention. To date, the app has over 10 million users worldwide, and creates over 50 million matches each month.  Once is available for free on Google Play and App Store https://getonce.com