Good Morning America on Velvet for February 13

THE SECRETS TO A LOVE CONNECTION: INSIDE THE E HARMONY BEHAVIOR LAB
The two students in Southern California had just been introduced during an experiment to test their “interpersonal chemistry.” The man, a graduate student, dutifully asked the undergraduate woman what her major was. “Spanish and sociology,” she said. “Interesting,” he said. ‘‘I was a sociology major. What are you going to do with that?”
“You are just full of questions.” “It’s true.” “My passion has always been Spanish, the language, the culture. I love traveling and knowing new cultures and places.” Bogart and Bacall it was not. But Gian Gonzaga, a social psychologist, could see possibilities for this couple as he watched their recorded chat on a television screen. They were nodding and smiling in unison, and the woman stroked her hair and briefly licked her lips — positive signs of chemistry that would be duly recorded in this experiment at the new eHarmony Labs here. By comparing these results with the couple’s answers to hundreds of other questions, the researchers hoped to draw closer to a new and extremely lucrative grail — making the right match. Once upon a time, finding a mate was considered too important to be entrusted to people under the influence of raging hormones. Their parents, sometimes assisted by astrologers and matchmakers, supervised courtship until customs changed in the West because of what was called the Romeo and Juliet revolution. Grown-ups, leave the kids alone. But now some social scientists have rediscovered the appeal of adult supervision — provided the adults have doctorates and vast caches of psychometric data. Online matchmaking has become a boom industry as rival scientists test their algorithms for finding love. The leading yenta is eHarmony, which pioneered the don’t-try-this-yourself approach eight years ago by refusing to let its online customers browse for their own dates. It requires them to answer a 258-question personality test and then picks potential partners. The company estimates, based on a national Harris survey it commissioned, that its matchmaking was responsible for about 2 percent of the marriages in America last year, nearly 120 weddings a day. Another company, Perfectmatch.com, is using an algorithm designed by Pepper Schwartz, a sociologist at the University of Washington at Seattle. Match.com, which became the largest online dating service by letting people find their own partners, set up a new matchmaking service, Chemistry.com, using an algorithm created by Helen E. Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers who has studied the neural chemistry of people in love. GMA will take you inside their top secret lab.

LEARN AND EARN: DOES IT WORK?
Fulton County school officials will pay students to study after school in a new program designed to improve their classroom performance. The program called "Learn & Earn" is being offered to 40 students from Creekside High and Bear Creek Middle schools in Fairburn. The program will give students $8 an hour to study after school. The privately funded program also will offer cash bonuses to students who improve their in-school performance. School officials say the goal is to determine whether paying students to study will improve their performance. The 15-week trial program will be conducted with students in the eighth and 11th grades. Students were selected by school staff, based on attendance, grades, test scores and free or reduced-lunch status. A community kickoff ceremony is planned for 3 p.m. Thursday in the media center at Creekside High School.

THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES
Mark S. Waters's adaptation of the popular fantasy novels The Spiderwick Chronicles tells the tale of the Graces, a family who must adapt to their new strange surroundings. As the story begins, twin brothers Jared and Simon, along with their sister Mallory and their mother, move away from the big city to a mansion owned by their uncle. When a series of strange happenings suggest that Jared may be causing a number of disturbances, the siblings band together to figure out what is going on. Soon they discover the magical history of the property.