

Insights from
Written by
Sad about being single this Valentine’s Day? Try playing matchmaker for someone else — research shows it’ll lift your spirits.
“Creating successful, thoughtful matches for others makes us happier,” says Darden marketing professor Lalin Anik. “Matchmaking is a social lubricant. It makes our social networks denser, our communities closer.”
Whether the matchmaking was romantic (a la a blind date) or platonic (introducing two colleagues), connecting others made the matchmaker happier. In a survey of 300 people, those who were habitual matchmakers reported greater well-being.
“We’re used to thinking of matchmaking as a specialized role, like the Yenta in the Yiddish tradition, but it turns out there’s a matchmaker in all of us. It’s probably evolutionary,” Anik says.
We know social connections matter — a lot. Humans spend, on average, 80 percent of their waking hours with others. Studies show people who have a rich network of relationships enjoy better physical and mental health, and increased longevity.
And it seems that helping others develop their network of relationships also benefits us. So-called “chronic matchmakers” were happier with their lives, even controlling for network size and personality type. Anik and colleague Michael Norton, of Harvard Business School, also investigated what type of matchmaking drives satisfaction. They discovered meaning is critical — when 118 participants were assigned to make matches among a group of strangers, only those asked to make pairs of people likely to get along experienced a lift in happiness. Groups asked to pair people who would not get along or to randomly pair people based on social security numbers showed no significant mood change.
Matchmaking increases happiness, Anik writes, “but only when that matching is done in the service of creating connections with others.”
These days, matchmaking goes beyond playing Cupid — it’s a business imperative. People work across time zones and locations; to innovate and compete, they need to collaborate globally with customers, suppliers and colleagues. Companies may want to promote matchmaking, says Anik, to drive positive engagement (via happier workers) and to create cohesive, powerful workforces.
There’s an element of creativity that matters, too. Anik discovered people found it more rewarding to create “bridging ties,” matches between people who likely would not have otherwise met, than to pair people who are obviously similar. Translated to the office, that means it’s a greater thrill to connect your colleague to a researcher across the country than to introduce two peers in adjoining departments (although even the more obvious, local match would theoretically have an upside for the connector.)
“We seem to get a greater boost when we put time and effort into bridging social gaps,” Anik says. “The upside is huge.”
Lalin Anik co-authored “Matchmaking Promotes Happiness,” which appeared in Social Psychological and Personality Science, with Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School.