LTR – Currently, Professor Dolan holds the position of Professor of Behavioural Science at the LSE and serves as the Director of the Executive MSc in Behavioural Science. He is an internationally recognized authority on happiness, behavior, and public policy, and conducts original research on the measurement, causes, and consequences of happiness. With more than 120 peer-reviewed papers and 31K citations, he has collaborated extensively with policy-makers and private companies.
Professor Dolan discusses the benefits of collaboration between academics and the dating industry, particularly in the areas of economics and psychology. He explains that academics are interested in establishing cause-and-effect relationships between interventions and changes in behavior. This is best achieved through observing human behavior in natural environments without them knowing they are being watched. In the dating industry, manipulating people's profiles can help establish causal effects, but ethical considerations must be taken into account. Professor Dolan also mentions that there is currently less collaboration between academia and the dating industry than in other fields such as health and finance.
The March LTR was kindly sponsored by technology providers Livebox by The Meet Group, Courtland Brooks and Matchmaker.com