What people want to know before they spend fifteen minutes on the survey: what you get back, who can see it, what it costs, and how the network works.
Resonance is a free survey — about fifteen minutes, 134 short statements about how you naturally see the world — that gives you a free personal report comparing you with thousands of other people who have taken it. From there you can invite your connections, so each of them gets their own report too, and you can set up a profile in the Resonance network, which is live in beta — matches are real, and some features are still rolling out — and which introduces you to the people you're most likely to resonate with. It was created by UCLA psychology professor Matthew Lieberman.
No. Resonance is about connection of every kind, and friendship is where it starts — the people you'd actually want to eat lunch with, work beside, or talk to for three hours. There's no swiping and no romantic framing. Organizations that set up their own community inside the network can build one for whatever purpose they like, including dating, but the network itself is here to introduce you to people you'd genuinely click with.
Nothing for the vast majority of users. The survey is free, your report is free, inviting people is free, and a profile in the network is free. Organizations pay to set up closed communities (for their first-year students, say), but virtually everything else is available for free.
Resonance was co-founded by Matthew Lieberman, a UCLA Professor of Psychology who has studied the social brain for more than 25 years. The way compatibility is measured comes out of that research. There's more on The Science and About.
Compatibility is computed across your whole profile — all twelve dimensions of perception — and similarity on some of them counts for far more than similarity on others. Some differences are complementary: they're part of what makes two people resonate, not something the matching has to look past. Two people who fit well are rarely two copies of each other. In fact, two people with the same exact profile would not have a particularly high compatibility score with themselves. They would be in the 78th percentile, which might sound high. But we never give matches below the 90th percentile and usually above the 95th. Put another way, in a group of 1000 people, over 200 of them would be more compatible with you.
About fifteen minutes, once. It's 134 short statements about how you naturally see and experience the world — what you notice first, how you read a situation, what matters to you. It isn't a quiz and there are no right answers. Your progress saves as you go, so you can do it in one sitting or come back to it.
One piece of advice, and it makes a real difference: don't deliberate. Some people spend a long time going back and forth on a single statement — well, sometimes I do this, but do I really do it more than other people? We have found that the more you go with your gut and answer quickly, the better your matches turn out to be.
Please don't — honest answers are the strategy. Your report describes whoever your answers describe, and so do your matches. Answering as the person you think you ought to be gets you a report about that person, and introductions to their people rather than yours.
Twelve dimensions of perception, all of it set against a reference group of thousands of people who answered the same statements: your perceptual type, the lenses where you're most distinctive, the surprising combinations in how you pay attention, and the kinds of people you're most likely to resonate with.
It's ready minutes after you finish. You can read it right in your browser, have a copy emailed to you, or save it as a PDF. It's yours to keep either way.
No. You can take the survey and read your report without one. The account is what carries you forward: it's how you set up your network profile, invite people, and find your way back to your report later. Create it on the account page with the same email address you used for the survey — that's what links the two together.
Your report opens in your browser the moment it's finished, so the first thing to try is the tab you had open. If you asked for a copy by email and nothing has shown up after a few minutes:
Still nothing? Email support@resonance.info and we'll get it to you.
Same drill: look in spam and Promotions, mark it "not spam," then click the link from your inbox rather than from the spam folder. The link is good for 24 hours, and the account page has a "send it again" button for when the first one expires or vanishes.
We send the invitation for you, with your name on it, and replies come straight to you. Whoever you invite gets their own free report, exactly like yours — that alone is worth the invitation.
If you both say yes, you each see the other's report, plus a joint report about the two of you: where you overlap, where you differ, and what that combination tends to look like in practice. It takes both of you agreeing. If either one says no, nothing is shared.
Then nothing happens. They got one invitation from you; there's no joint report and nothing changes on your end. Your own report is yours regardless.
Yes. Every invitation is optional, and you're never required to name a single person to get your report or your profile. Most people invite someone anyway, because the joint report is the part that's hard to stop talking about.
A place where you have a profile, and where you're introduced to the people you're most compatible with — nearby and everywhere else — with a reason attached to every introduction rather than a photo and a shrug.
Organizations can have walled-garden communities inside it, with sub-groups of their own for a class, a team, the first years, an event. And all of it is opt-in: taking the survey doesn't put you in the network, and nobody can see you there unless you decide to be there.
Take the survey, then create your account with the same email address you used for it — that's what links the two together. Your survey answers give us your lenses; you choose which three to show, add a few interests, and you're published.
Most people will never need it. If you choose to pay for premium, what you get is more granular control over the geographic areas your matches come from — narrowing them to the places you would actually travel to meet somebody. It does not give you more matches, and it does not give them to you faster. Nothing about who the network thinks you should meet is for sale.
No. The network never shows scores, percentages, rankings or numbers of any kind. Matching is computed from your full twelve-dimension profile, but what reaches you is language: what the two of you share, where your differences fit together, and why the introduction is worth making. Resonance is expressed in words.
No, and taking the survey doesn't sign you up for it. The survey and the report stand perfectly well on their own. Joining is a separate, deliberate step, and so is everything inside it — being visible, accepting an introduction, joining a community.
Two things, and only two things: they produce your report, and they compute your matches. They are never sold and never shared with third parties, and nobody — not another member, not an organization — ever sees the answers themselves. That commitment comes straight from the founder.
You, and anyone you deliberately send it to. Your report lives at its own private link; anyone holding that link can read it, so pass it on only if you want to. The one other case is an invitation you both accepted — then you each see the other's, because you each said yes.
Your profile — the name, the photo and the words you chose to put there — and, when the two of you are introduced, a description of how you fit together. Never your survey answers. Never your report, unless you send it yourself. Never a score.
Yes. Delete your account yourself from your Account page. Deletion is immediate in the live system, and your data is purged from our backups within thirty days. If you would rather ask a person, email support@resonance.info with the subject "Account Deletion" and the address on the account in the body. The full terms are in the Privacy Policy.
Yes — that's what a walled garden is: a private community inside the network with only your people in it, and rooms within it for a class, a team, the first years, a single conference session. Your people take the same survey and get the same free report as everyone else, and the organization never sees anyone's individual results.
It's free for early partners. Tell us what you're trying to build on the Resonance for organizations page — Matt reads those himself.
Email support@resonance.info — tell us what you were doing and what happened, and we'll sort it out. If you came in through a school, company or group that brought Resonance in, whoever runs it can reach us directly too.
Ready when you are. The survey is free, it takes about fifteen minutes, and your report is waiting the moment you finish. Start the survey →