Introduction
Have you ever wondered why those dates you matched with on Tinder never turned into anything much after the first date? Game theory can be used in analyzing dating. Dating apps like Tinder have been increasingly more popular in more and more digitally connected age. We are seeing more people using than ever before to find the one. On Tinder, you can either swipe left and reject a profile or you can swipe right and choose to connect with a person. It is commonly known that men tend to swipe right more on more profiles than women when selecting partners. This is due to evolutionary biology which has been shown to exist but we will not go into it much.
Analysis
Game theory is useful since it helps us in understanding the rationalities behind the moves of different players in a game using a mathematical model. In this case, the players are the Tinder users and the game is dating. When we talk about game theory, there is a concept of Nash Equilibrium. This occurs when we have two people who are playing the game and no one person can get an advantage by changing their original strategy without a consequence of the other player gaining an advantage by making a response to that move. This happens when we have two players constantly trying to make the better move than the other and they reach a final point where they cannot get a better position by changing their moves. In terms of dating, we know that we have a two players, male and female, who are constantly trying to constantly trying to find strategies to find a mate. The dating strategies of men affect women as they would need to react to the new strategy and vice versa. This shows that there could be a strategy for men and women to become better daters. When women date, they are usually much more selective than men. Men on the other hand tend to swipe right on all dates and only put in energy into considering the relationship once there is a match. This is due to the aforementioned biological rule that men are much more likely to say yes to a woman than the other way around. The only way that this strategy would backfire for men would be if the guy was getting so many matches that it would actually waste his time if he were to look at all of the matches. Let’s say that this case never happens and that the biological laws still hold. Then this would mean that women would need to spend more time filtering the men and be even more selective with all the options they have in order to not waste time on the matches that they are not interested since they would get the match anyways.
| | men | |
|-------------|------------|-------------|
| women | swipe left | swipe right |
| swipe left | 5,5 (*) | 0,-5 |
| swipe right | -5,0 | 10,10 (*) |Here the women are on the left and men are on the right. In this table, if we have a limited number of swipes, we cannot waste a swipe on someone who will not swipe right on us. Thus if a guy swipe right on a girl who swipe left, he will be in the loss. This means that there are two examples of Nash Equilibrium with a star (*) beside it, so you either both swipe left or both swipe right. This shows that there is definitely an element of understanding what the othe r person will pick before chosing your pick is important. It is clear that being more selective with who you pick is important for men and women.
| | men | |
|-------------|------------|-------------|
| women | more selective | less selective |
| more selective | 6,3 | 10,4 |
| less selective | 10,4 | 3,3 |
Here the women are on the left and men are on the right. In this table, if we have men and women being selective, we see that men would lose due to the competition of the other dudes who will likely not filter, leading to much less matches. This is the result we are seeing now where men are getting far less matches than women and are forced to make more swipes with women they are not necessarily attracted to to get matches. Women are matched with guys who are not necessarily interested in them.
Conclusion
It is clear that online dating does not really provide a great solution to building real connections with the people you want. Apps like Tinder only reinforce the natural behaviours for men to swipe right more and women to swipe left more. People are incentivized to go for shorter term hookups based on swipes. It is evident that for men and women, there is no way to get around the fact that as more men spam, the more women will have to filter. This makes it really hard for people who actually want to find a longer term relationship. Tinder is not for everybody and there are definitely better ways of securing a longer term relationship such as through matchmaking and social circles.
Sources