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A blind date ? Being paired up by family? Or getting to know each other through friends? It’s a thing of the past. Nowadays, most people meet each other ‘online’. It’s by far the most popular way for new couples to meet. And because Tinder is still the number one dating app in the Netherlands, it often started with a swipe to the right. But why do people swipe right on certain profiles and reject others with a swipe to the left?
Why do we swipe right?
New research from Michigan State and Maryland Universities sheds light on the reasons singles swipe right on a dating app. While we all know by now that group photos don’t work and sunglasses do n’t belong in a profile pic, the researchers wanted to understand what makes someone swipe left or right—and more importantly, the process behind how they make those decisions.
The results were clear: the motivation to swipe right is primarily based on the attractiveness and race of a potential partner. And consistent with previous research, the decision to swipe right or left was often made in less than a second.
“It’s eye-opening that people are willing to make sub-second decisions about whether or not they want to get to know another human being, and base that decision almost exclusively on the other person’s appearance,” said William Chopik, one of the researchers.
The swipe study, published in the Journal of Research in Personality , analyzed how dating app users—from different walks of life—interacted with the profiles they were shown. One part of the study focused on college students, while the other focused on middle-aged adults, with an average age of 35. They were given the option to view profiles of men or women, depending on their dating preferences.
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‘Personality doesn’t matter’
On average, men swipe right more often than women, the study shows. But the study also makes clear what we all “know”: people who find themselves more attractive swipe left more often. As a result, they are more selective in choosing potential partners.
“It’s also surprising how little anything beyond attractiveness and race matters in swiping behavior,” Chopik says. “Your personality doesn’t seem to matter, whether you’re open to hooking up doesn’t matter, how you approach relationships, and whether you’re looking for something short-term or long-term doesn’t matter either.”
Attractiveness played a big role in participants’ decisions to swipe left or right . But the race of the person behind the profile was also a leading factor. Users were more likely to swipe right on users of the same race, for example, white on white. Profiles of users of color were rejected more often than those of white users.
“The differences were quite shocking,” Chopik says. “Profiles from black users are rejected more often than those from white users, highlighting another way that people of color face prejudice in everyday life.”
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