The Experts

Jo Coker
Psycho-sexual therapist and psychologist
Jo is an accredited psychosexual/relationship therapist and an accredited clinical supervisor. She has worked for 30 years in the NHS and in private practice with individuals, couples and families in a variety of clinical and counselling roles.  Jo is a lecturer and trainer in Psychosexual Therapy and counselling. Jo’s main models are person centred CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) and integrative, also using coaching and life skills training where appropriate.

Role in matching:
Jo explored past relationship histories, attitudes to sex, whether or not applicants were suitable and serious in their desire to take part.

Once the matches were made her role was to work with the individual applicants ahead of marriage and work with them in a therapeutic manner as a couple.

Andrew Irving
Social Visual Anthropologist
A lecturer at the University of Manchester Andrew is also the Director of the Granada Centre of Visual Anthropology. His research has focussed on emotions, people in crisis, people expressing themselves, the evolutionary benefit of love, care and duty.

Andrew has said the critical moment in this process will be when the couple utter the words “I do”, as it forms a contract and transcends them from one state of being to another.

Role in matching:
Andrew compared the participant’s through video elicitation – or Descriptive Experience Sampling. Over the course of a day, participants were sent prompts at random intervals asking them to film, for 30 seconds, the activity they were engaged in at that moment with description of what they are thinking and feeling.   This was done to gain a comparative perspective of people’s everyday lives – their actions, thoughts, moods, routines and experiences – through a series of snapshots of their day.

This generated footage that was broadly representative of daily life and its practical and emotional content.  This was then analysed for commonalities and discrepancies, e.g. someone who is out socialising at 11pm every night in contrast to someone who can typically found in bed with a book every night, someone who can't sit still and someone who spends the night on the sofa.  

Anna Machin
Evolutionary Anthropologist
Anna’s research focuses on the psychology, cognition and neurobiology of human social relationships.   She is interested in how individuals maintain their closest relationships and why people might differ in their desire and ability to do this.

Involvement in happy, stable relationships has a positive impact upon an individual’s mental and physical health while being involved in dysfunctional relationships can ultimately lead to addiction, poor mental health and antisocial behaviour.  As a consequence, by understanding what underpins our behaviour within relationships we can promote healthy social interaction and step in when individuals struggle to form positive, functioning bonds.

Role in Matching:
Anna matched the individuals through genotyping, biological measures and looking at their facial symmetry.

Biological measures included taking measurements of the right hand (a measure of circulating testosterone when you were developing in the womb – linked to dominance, success, ambition), hip to waist ratios (women, linked to fertility) Shoulder/waist ratio (men)  

She also looked at the facial symmetry of applicants as our faces have the potential to be advertisements of mate quality and both symmetry and sexual dimorphism have been linked to the attractiveness of human face shape.

Genotyping involved looking at two specific genes, the OXTR gene and the OPRM1 gene, from these genes Anna was able to better understand which of the participants were suited.  

OXTR gene:  There are lots of differences in this gene between people.  We looked at 12 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPS) on this gene. These variances lead to differences between individuals in the way the gene is expressed behaviourally or physically.  So differences between the OXTR gene means that people vary in how empathetic they are, how good they are at perspective taking, how sociable they are, how likely it is their marriage will experience problems (i.e. how good at pair bonding behaviour they are), how likely they are to have a secure as opposed to fearful attachment profile and how maternally sensitive they are.  It has a major effect on how people behave in relationships.  

OPRM1 gene: This looks at one SNP on this gene which is the A118G gain of function SNP. People who have the guanine (or G version) of this SNP are much more sensitive to social rejection and the emotional impact of relationship break down but they also tend to feel relationship formation more deeply.

Dr Mark Coulson
Associate Professor of Psychology at Middlesex University
Mark has been teaching Psychology at Middlesex University for 20 years. His research includes happiness and mindfulness, the internet and game playing, how emotion is conveyed through the human body, and the consolidation of knowledge.

Role in matching:
Mark collated psychological data through a series of tests and questionnaires to determine which Love Project participants would be best suited.
•    Q500 questionnaire – a series of 324 questions across six key areas of life which generates a psychological profile
•    Standard Mensa IQ Test
•    Attractiveness test

Reverend Nick Devenish
Church of England Priest, Vicar of a priory in the Lake District
Nick was involved in the Church of England's wedding project and is also passionate about performing wedding ceremonies, helping couples prepare for marriage and about encouraging couples to personalise their service. Nick has been married to Diana for over 20 years and has two grown up children.
Role in matching:
Rev’d Nick collated further narrative data through looking at the participants understanding of what a marriage is, what they wanted from marriage and how well they had understood the seriousness and commitment required.

Please note that Reverend Nick Devenish did not perform the weddings in the programme as they were civil ceremonies.