MAFS Australia: Is it actually a "social experiment"?
TLDR: No, not really...
At long last, after approximately six weeks, beginning in mid-March, I’ve finally finished watching Married at First Sight Australia—something I did for you, my esteemed audience. For context, this little mission (which my partner was excited to join me on, by the way) started when an Instagram follower asked my opinion about the advice that the MAFS Experts give out. Having never seen MAFS, I was not able to give an answer. However, after some enthusiastic assent and encouragement from the rest of you, here we are six weeks, 38 episodes, and approximately 57 hours of viewing later (on Channel 4, with adverts each episode is about 90 minutes long), and I now have some better-informed views to offer you.
If you aren’t aware, I have written two previous blogs about MAFS: the first was some initial thoughts, while the second focused on my concerns about the level of emotional vulnerability the MAFS participants seemed to have.
Having now ended the show, I would like to focus on two other aspects. Firstly, and in this post, I want to focus on the overall concept of the show as a so-called “social experiment”. In the next, I want to think about the commitment ceremonies and the role that the experts play in them.
But first before we begin here is the usual disclaimer (feel free to skip past this if you’ve read it before):
The commentary offered here is psychologically informed opinions about a heavily edited show created for entertainment purposes. I can only offer opinions on what is aired in the show and any additional media resources written/made about the programme. Therefore, anything I say will be about what happens on the show and does not apply to individuals and their actions beyond the show’s scope.
My main focus will be on what The Experts say, but I may also venture into offering opinions about the participants’ behaviour or the show’s general premise. Some of this may be from a psychological perspective, while others may be from a personal perspective. I will make sure to differentiate between the two perspectives.
These opinions will be informed by several things.
Firstly, my profession, which is as a Clinical and Forensic psychologist. I am not an expert in relationships, but based on my work, I have some insights into human interactions, behaviour (particularly of the anti-social and harmful kind), and personality characteristics. However, I do not speak for all psychological professionals, and my opinions are not necessarily “right”. They just are. They may also not be any more accurate than those of The Experts, but they might be different.
Secondly, my gender. I am a man, so the way I watch the show - that being the things I pick up on, how I interpret them, and whether I choose to talk about certain things I notice - will be influenced by my socialisation as a man.
Thirdly, my feminist ideological stance. I tend to see things through a feminist lens, which, again, will also be influenced by my gender and the experiences I have had in the world as a white man rather than any other marginalised group.
As stated several times throughout this disclaimer, these are just opinions - nothing more. I may use psychological terms and apply them to certain behaviours or presentations, but I am not in a position to make any clinical or therapeutic assessment or declarations about the participants (see previous statement about the heavily edited and entertainment-driven focus of the show). I may be able to offer stronger views on The Experts’ advice, but I will be clear about this throughout my commentary.
Additionally, this blog is written based on the following assumptions:
You are familiar with the concept of married at first sight as a television show
You’ve watched Season 11 of Married at First Sight Australia
If you’ve not done any of the above and choose to continue reading, then you accept that the context of this blog might not fully makes sense.
Psychological Experiments
Now, as I am not an experimental researcher in psychology, from what I can gather, psychological experimentation has three broad categories: controlled (or lab) experiments, natural (or quasi-) experiments, and field experiments.
Controlled experiments are conducted under specific conditions and usually involve manipulating an independent variable (e.g., the amount of sleep one gets) to measure or observe the outcome of a dependent variable (e.g., how someone performs on an academic test) based on a hypothesis (e.g., the less sleep you have, the worse you will do on an academic test).
Natural experiments are usually observations of behaviour or outcomes of the dependent variable in naturally occurring settings without manipulating an independent variable (e.g., going to a school and observing how children play with each other without any interference from an observer).
Field experiments are similar to natural experiments as they are conducted in real-world settings; however, similar to a lab experiment, there is some element of manipulation or engineering of an artificial situation (e.g., someone fainting in public, the independent variable) to observe outcomes (e.g., if anyone assists the person who fainted, the dependent variable).
Married at First Sight Australia promotes itself as a “social experiment,” which aligns with the field of social psychology. Social psychology is a branch of psychology that focuses on understanding how the social environment influences an individual’s behaviour. Considering the different types of experiments defined above, I think it’s fair to say that the concept of Married at First Sight is more akin to a field experiment: it combines the idea of a natural setting with elements of manipulation or social engineering. The show aims to test whether matching people based on specific assessments will lead to successful and long-lasting relationships, with the relationships (and their longevity) being the dependent variable. It seems, then, that one of the roles of the Experts is to introduce independent variables into the “natural setting” and manipulate the experiment to see how these newly introduced variables affect the development of the relationships. This, seemingly, is done, for example, by creating specific weeks where participants engage in various tasks (e.g., Confessions Week, Intimacy Week, Feedback Week, etc.).
Deception and Consent
Sometimes, the independent/manipulated variable in an experiment is deception. This typically involves purposely misleading participants or withholding information that could influence a participant’s decision to take part in an experiment (i.e., not being told an aspect of the experiment that, if they knew about it, the participant might choose not to participate) or influence their behaviour in the experiment. For example, Stanley Milgram was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction, even if it involved harming another person. In a controlled experiment conducted in 1963, participants were misled about administering electric shocks to a confederate of Milgram’s (i.e., a person in on the experiment). The confederate pretended to receive increasingly stronger shocks from participants who were told to administer them by an authority figure. The shocks were not real, but participants believed they were. The point of the experiment was to highlight that people could be obedient to authority figures even when it involved causing harm to others.
There are a few things to consider if an experiment requires deception. For example, deception needs strong scientific justification and should, ideally, be minimised. So, in the Milgrim study above, Milgrim was interested in trying to understand why people followed Hitler’s commands in Nazi Germany, with his hypothesis being that people would commit harm to others if instructed by an authority figure. Which, as you have read, was demonstrated to be true. One might argue that understanding how and why people could be willing to enact the atrocities of the Holocaust is a sound scientific justification as that might offer some ideas of how to prevent or mitigate that in the future.
At the same time, ethics in research has come a long way since the days of Milgram and Zimbardo (he of the Stanford Prison Experiment) and deception causing significant harm is no longer allowed, and researchers must carefully consider if deception is necessary and ethical. Alongside this, if possible, participants should be informed of any deception without compromising the study’s integrity, and consideration should be given to the fact that if participants are likely to object or be distressed when they discover the true nature of the research, the research should be considered unacceptable to undertake. Additionally, if participants must give informed consent through deception, the true nature of the research should be made known to the participants at the earliest opportunity. Even with all these considerations, for some researchers, deception can never be justified.
I don’t believe that deception played a major role in Married at First Sight (as much as the themed weeks, that is). However, I think the aspects of deception that did occur had a considerable impact in influencing the relationships on the show, and so, could be considered a key factor.
For example, participants seemed to withhold certain information, possibly at the producers’ direction, and reveal it at calculated times. For instance, Eden received a text message from Sarah about going to dinner with her ex-boyfriend behind her husband Tim’s back but held onto the message for a while before confronting Sarah in front of Tim at a dinner party. Similarly, Tori learned about Jono (Lauren’s husband), texting Ellie after Ellie left the show and kept this information until one of the commitment ceremonies. This type of deception involved withholding information.
Unlike the Stanley Milgram experiment, though, there seems to be no scientific justification for such deceptive behaviour. It appears, more than anything else, to be about putting people in highly stressful situations causing significant distress, and possibly shattering their assumptions about their partners. In the cases of both Tim and Lauren, the acts of their respective partner’s actions being revealed to them at key times put Tim in a position to relive the real difficulties and challenges he had with his ex-girlfriend, who cheated on him, and for Lauren to also have yet another experience of a partner texting other women behind her back. It is almost, almost, as if the producers knew about these aspects of their emotional vulnerabilities and when opportunities to exploit them came up in the show, waited for them to be revealed for ultimate impact. Also, Tori saying she had become “privy” to the information about Jono and Ellie texting just screams that the producers let her know and specifically chose Tori – who had been friendly with Lauren but had fallen out due to Lauren’s continued conflicts with Tori’s husband Jack – because Tori would likely be gleeful about it (which she was) and it would likely hit Lauren harder coming from her.
A further consideration is that we, as the audience, are also massively deceived in the way that the show is edited. In a recently released article by ABC News in Australia, Olivia Frazer (a participant in the 2022 season of MAFS) has gone on record - and apparently against a non-disclosure agreement that the producers ask participants to sign - to talk about how she was made out to be the bad guy of the show through the “villain edit”. It’s a really interesting article, with a lot of supposedly behind the scenes secrets disclosed. But the gist is pretty much that during the audition phase, the producers can push participants to reveal aspects about themselves, which they weave a narrative around. The producers will then seemingly engineer situations to get participants to react and relate those reactions/actions to their past behaviour and the aspects they disclosed during the audition. Again, this goes against the idea of this being an experiment in which people react naturally to their environment. Therefore, Married at First Sight can hardly be considered a social experiment when, as noted by Olivia Frazer in the article, “‘One dinner party, we were all having such a lovely time … to the point where [a program maker] had to come out and be like, “Right, you guys need to start drama or we’re going to be here all night,”… “Australia’s not tuning in to watch a tea party.’”
Consent
In experiments, different levels of consent are required for participation. Controlled experiments, for example, require consent before participation. These experiments typically involve a test group and a control group. The test group receives the manipulated independent variable, while the control group does not receive anything or might receive a placebo. The outcomes of the test group are then compared to those of the control group to determine if there is a difference and if any change occurred because of the independent variable. Both control and test participants are typically informed that they will be randomly assigned to either the control or test conditions, unless, of course, the intention is to test a placebo effect, in which case both test and control participants are not aware of which group they are in. Nevertheless, they are usually told that they could be in either one or the other and that there will be some effect or impact. They are also usually informed of any potential side effects that might occur in relation to the experiment. This is known as informed consent, ensuring that participants have full knowledge of what will and could potentially happen in order to make a fully informed decision about whether they want to participate in the experiment.
The area of consent becomes more ambiguous when the experiments are of the natural or field variety. For example, if you were conducting a field experiment in which you observed how children played with each other during school, you would have to carefully consider whether to inform the children that they were being observed because their awareness of being watched might influence how they would naturally play, and therefore impacting the validity and accuracy of the observations. Additionally, in a field experiment, you may not want the people who are reacting to the manipulated variable in the environment to know that the variable is being manipulated, as they may not react in a way that is natural or in accordance with their typical behaviour (i.e., you can’t really let people know that someone in public might faint as they might react differently than if it was unexpected).
Given all of this, the issue of consent for Married at First Sight becomes an interesting thing to consider. The participants must consent to appear on the show and are fully aware that it is an experiment (mostly because they keep calling it “the experiment” throughout the show). However, what is less clear is the process for consent around experiencing distressing events. For example, what would the consent process be for potentially experiencing misogynistic and sexist behaviour, such as in the case of Lauren and Jack when he told Jono, Lauren's husband, to “muzzle his woman”? This raises an ethical grey area - if Lauren did consent to it, then the producers of the show had some idea that women in the show may be exposed to misogynistic behaviour and are, therefore, justifying it. However, if Lauren didn’t consent to something like that, then she was consenting to participate in the experiment without necessarily knowing the full range of experiences that she may have. However, this type of manipulation often creates more drama than successful marriages.
Hypothesis
And I guess this brings us to the hypothesis of Married at First Sight. As noted earlier, allegedly, the show proposes that matching people based on specific assessments will lead to successful and long-lasting relationships. However, in my view, it seems to be more about determining whether people who have never met each other - and are hopeful in wanting to find a relationship and a connection - can potentially withstand an incredible amount of stress in an unfamiliar environment, matched with somebody that they have to get to know, under some pretty extreme circumstances. Along the way, participants who are coupled up discover many different things about each other, some of which can be very uncomfortable, disappointing, and hurtful. Somehow, this is supposed to indicate if they have found a solid partner with whom to spend the rest of their life.
Additionally, according to an article by The Conversation, specifically )commenting on Married at First Sight Australia), the show promotes two components which don’t seem to foster the development of a long-lasting relationship. Firstly, participants are put under a significant amount of stress. Now, despite what the producers might think, stress does not create stronger bonds between people, especially those trying to form romantic connections. In fact, stress has been found to be a predictor of relationship breakdown. Therefore, the introduction of stress really early on in the relationship (as seems to happen quite quickly within the show), along with the very short duration of the show (it’s only 8 weeks long), doesn’t allow for a crucial factor in forming romantic relationships: time and space to get to know somebody and develop a sincere level of commitment. The various tasks that the Experts provide during the themed weeks are allegedly supposed to improve this level of commitment and understanding. However, the whole show is an artificial situation, and as highlighted earlier, a lot of what comes up for the participants in the show seems to cause distress or confusion, likely impeding the levels of commitment they are able to give their new partners.
Again, the proof is in the pudding. According to one statistic I found when researching one of my earlier blogs about the show, Married at First Sight has a success rate of only 1 in 10 marriages. This, I am going to say, highlights that the show’s hypothesis is just not good and, in fact, seems to have been proven unsuccessful more times than it has been proven successful. Not only that, but the show seems to create a significant amount of distress.
So - in my very humble opinion here on the internet - the producers should probably stop… but they won’t. And why not? Because the show isn’t about finding love (and it may very well once have been in it’s earlier conceptualisation) but rather about creating drama for increased ratings… which is not the most ethical thing to purposefully.
Anyway, that’s it for now. Thanks for sticking with me on this one. I have one more blog about MAFS planned, this time sharing some of my thought about the Experts. It might be a while in the making (as this one took some time to write), but I will let you know about its progress.
As always, all the best.
Nice-ish.