‘Are You The One?’: How Are the Matches Made for the Show?
Are You The One? claims to have found that special person for everyone in its cast. The stars have to figure out who it is in order to win up to $1 million.
But how do they make the matches for the show? Here is everything to know about the process including the expert that is on Season 8.
Season 8’s expert Dr. Frankie Bashan didn’t know the matches
The Season 8 cast is entirely sexually fluid. That means anyone can be anyone’s match no matter their gender. Dr. Frankie Bashan is the relationship expert who is helping them figure things out. She talked about the trends she noticed with them.
“Petty behaviors like manipulation, stone-walling — stone-walling is the same idea as ghosting, but it’s doing it in person,” she told People. “You get into a situation with your partner and then you ignore them, you don’t want to talk about it. You disappear, essentially. But now you’re under the same roof, having to sleep next to each other. So they have to confront [each other], they don’t have a choice, which is a beautiful thing, because they’re forced to work on it.”
The one thing that she didn’t know when helping was their matches. “No, I wasn’t aware of them,” she said. “But I think they made sense.”
There is compatibility testing and interviews to make matches
Normally people date around to find “the one.” The show promises that they found that person for the cast and used a few methods to determine it.
“The methods came from a combo of scientifically proven compatibility testing, as well as straight matchmaking,” executive producer Tiffany Williams told Entertainment Weekly. “The matchmakers got pretty deep into all of the contestants’ past relationship history, so they would do these interviews with the contestants and their family, friends, and exes. All that information was combined and analyzed.”
Matchmakers have given their own opinions and use math
The people behind the show have also tried to find experts to give their opinions on the matches. Those experts included a licensed marriage/family therapist and a psychologist who has used a holistic therapy approach to successfully matching hundreds of couples.
There is also some math involved. “We have this algorithm that essentially determines what a perfect match is,” former host, Ryan Devlin told International Business Times. “What we’ve put together here is a really legitimate process to identify what somebody needs. It’s up to them if they actually find it and if they actually give themselves over to that because sometimes what you want and what you need are two different things.”
Devlin revealed why the process still might not work out. “I think what you can do is go into a process with the absolute best tools and best intentions to create perfect matches. What you can’t account for is this unknown thing called chemistry,” he admitted.
“When you bring together 10 guys and 10 girls and sometimes your perfect matches are going to click immediately and sometimes you’re going to have non-matches form a really strong bond,” he continued. “It may not be what they need according to our team of experts but at that time, they may be blinded.”
In the end, the show uses interviews, an algorithm, and expert advice to make the matches. All that work still might be wrong due to lack of chemistry.
