As evidence of the long-term consequences, Buckwalter cites a paper recently published in the Archives of Internal Medicine showing a direct correlation between negative intimate relationships and heart disease. On the health benefits side of the equation, he then cites another recently published study demonstrating that, among older couples, even those who provided emotional support in their intimate relationships had higher survival rates than those who did not.

 

“What sustains health is very complex,” Buckwalter admits. “So is what brings people together. The MHC preference we’re studying makes sense from an evolutionary perspective because it promotes outbreeding. On the other hand, we have pictures of our couples—there’s so much physical similarity it’s amazing. And these are people who began to connect with each other before they were even shown each other’s photographs.” Buckwalter says what they are looking for are specific precursors.

 

“We might find a specific correlation between contempt in conversation and heart disease 10 years later,” says Buckwalter. “So what do we do with that information? Are there ways to combat that? Are their precursors to contempt? Is it something aligned with inherent values or does it evolve out of some aspect of the interaction? In this context, of course, a known threat of heart disease could be a compelling, added incentive to address the problem forthrightly and try to change the behavior.”

 

For all the potentially wide-ranging implications, eHarmony’s research findings, like the company’s core business, will not address same-sex couples. “They leave themselves vulnerable to the accusation of prejudice,” says UCLA’s Hasselton. “From a scientific point of view, I think they have a defensible position. I also think that a lot of people are skeptical that that’s really what’s going on.”

 

She goes on to explain that, if you look at the literature on mate preferences, sexual jealousies, and the other sorts of things that evolutionary psychologists have studied, sometimes you see the same behaviors in gay couples that you see in straight couples, but in other cases the behaviors are quite different. “It’s a mixed bag,” she says. “You can’t reliably predict that the model developed for one situation would work for the other. And what eHarmony is selling, of course, is prediction.” But then she switches gears. “Still, speaking as a person instead of a scientist, I wish eHarmony did not have the policy they have regarding gays.”

 

Despite the limits eHarmony has set for itself, the revolutionary proposition underlying this research is that the ability to regulate and co-regulate physiological processes extends well beyond commonly accepted boundaries. Or as John Cacioppo says, “Even in medicine, the unit of one—meaning the isolated individual—may be an inadequate unit of investigation.”