In the search for a potential date, more and more people are switching to less traditional methods. Online dating is really popular. Using the internet is really popular.

With the rise of apps like Tinder and the various copycat models , who could blame them? With the popularity of sites like eHarmony, Match. com, OkCupid, and countless others, the stigma of online dating has diminished considerably in the last decade.

According to the Pew Research Center , the overwhelming majority of Americans suggest that online dating is a good way to meet people. Online dating services are now the second most popular way to meet a partner. The popularity of online dating is being driven by several things, but a major factor is time. Online dating presents an effective solution to a serious problem. Statistics suggest that about 1 in 5 relationships begin online nowadays.

Before you throw caution to the wind and empty your wallet into the pockets of an online app with the reckless abandon of a love-struck teenager , there are a few things you should know. OK, this is hardly an earth-shattering revelation. Well duh, people want to be appealing. A study of over 1, online daters in the US and UK conducted by global research agency OpinionMatters founds some very interesting statistics. Women apparently lied more than men, with the most common dishonesties being about looks.

But men were only marginally better. Their most common lies were about their financial situation, specifically about having a better job financially than they actually do. In both the US and UK samples, dishonesty declined with age. Maybe older people are just more interested in projecting their real self, rather than an imagined or ideal version.

One of the big problems with online dating for women is that, although there are genuine relationship-seeking men on the sites, there are also plenty of guys on there simply looking for sex. Not quite, but it is full of unscrupulous vendors looking to separate you from your money by whatever means possible in other news, have you heard about the secret to getting killer abs in less than 7 minutes using this 1 weird trick…?

There are pitfalls and tripwires in every sphere of life, but this may be particularly true in the context of online dating. It might even be advisable to follow these general guidelines:. If something feels off, trust your gut. Never mind the fact that more than one-third of all people who use online dating sites have never actually gone on a date with someone they met online , those that somehow do manage to find someone else they are willing to marry and who is willing to marry them a vanishingly tiny subset of online daters face an uphill battle.

And it gets worse. Couples who met online are nearly 3 times as likely to get divorced as couples that met face-to-face. According to the Association for Psychological Science, reviewing multiple candidates causes people to be more judgmental and inclined to dismiss a not-quite-perfect candidate than they otherwise would be in a face-to-face meeting. It also gives savvy researchers an unprecedented chance to study attraction in situ. This hunch was confirmed by a speed dating outing with several other Northwestern colleagues, and the researchers embarked a new track of speed dating work.

No word on whether the outing was a success from other standpoints. As Finkel and Eastwick point out in a study published in Current Directions in Psychological Science , the popularity of speed dating allows the collection of large, real world samples across cultures, ethnicities, and socioeconomic levels. The speed dating design also lets researchers to study both sides of a dyadic process. Also, speed dating allows for exploring reciprocity effects.

A Psychological Science article Eastwick et al. Speed dating empowers researchers to study interactions as they happen, rather than post-hoc reports. It also allows for testing actual versus stated preferences. One speed dating study showed that stated preferences do not match actual preferences and called into question the gender biases in attraction that have been well-documented elsewhere i.

Speed dating studies also allow researchers to study the implications of simple changes in dating paradigms. This idea holds true at speed dating events, where women generally stay seated while the men rotate. This set-up stems from vague notions of chivalry, but also from more mundane purposes — according to one speed dating company executive, women tend to have more stuff with them, like purses, and are therefore less efficient movers.

Could this set-up in itself affect attraction? Turns out that it can. In most speed dating scenarios as in most attraction scenarios in general women are more selective. But, when women rotated, this effect disappeared and they became less selective than the men. he search for love is never easy and attraction is never simple. Research into online matchmaking and speed dating is providing valuable insight into the human quest for romance, and this is only the beginning.

Most of the research in this area to-date focuses on dating behavior of heterosexuals in the United States. More work is necessary to determine if the findings so far also apply to international daters and to understand the dynamics of homosexual pairings.

Emerging methods may also bring new insight into dating dynamics. Finkel and Eastwick have begun using a coding scheme to study exactly what participants are saying during their dates, allowing them to potentially code what exactly makes a date great or awkward.

Is it better to communicate independence from or interdependence with your partner? Eastwick, P. Selective versus unselective romantic desire: Not all reciprocity is created equal. Psychological Science , 18 , — Sex differences in mate preferences revisited: Do people know what they initially desire in a romantic partner?

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 94 , Finkel, E. Arbitrary social norms influence sex differences in romantic selectivity.

Psychological Science , 20 , Current Directions in Psychological Science , 17 , Fiore, A. Homophily in online dating: When do you like someone like yourself? Short Paper, ACM Computer-Human Interaction Online personals: An overview. Fiore, A T. Assessing attractiveness in online dating profiles. Gibbs, J. Self-presentation in online personals: The role of anticipated future interaction, self-disclosure, and perceived success in Internet dating.

Communication Research , 33 , Hitsch, G. in press. Matching and sorting in online dating. American Economic Review. What makes you click: An empirical analysis of online dating.

Working Paper, retrieved Jan. Lee, L. Psychological Science , 19 , Norton, M. Less is more: The lure of ambiguity, or why familiarity breeds contempt. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 92, Sears-Roberts Alterovitz, S. Partner preferences across the life span: Online dating by older adults, Psychology and Aging , 24 , Toma, C.

Separating fact from fiction: An examination of deceptive self-presentation in online dating profiles. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34 , APS regularly opens certain online articles for discussion on our website.

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com, to hit an all-time high. Whilst Generation Y and Z prove to be doing significantly better than their parents were at their age, perhaps as a result of their economic and social climates, the simple fact that their upbringing has coincided with the development of smartphones and social media, has given way to them being attached to more than a few unsavoury stereotypes. Features of it can be described as a never-ending turnover of throw-away internet slang, a cult following for low-taste memes, a dedication to the curated lives of social media influencers and Youtube celebrities, and the ritual of eating innumerable slices of avocado toast.

Dating apps have also become a staple of impatient, hectic and autonomous generation Z life. The majority of us are used to hearing stories from our friends about their romantic escapades and humorous first dates, and anticipate regular updates about the happenings on their Tinder profiles. This is now normalised and regarded to be a healthy and lighthearted topic of conversation within a friendship group.

Alternatively, however heartwarming it may be to hear of our close friends romantic successes, research suggests that the world of online dating should be entered at caution and taken with a pinch of salt.

The popular dating app, Bumble, has close to 40 million users worldwide and claims that it has led to 15, marriages. Some reports note that the average online dating site user spends 90 minutes per day on a dating app. Although an alarming amount of us use dating sites, and the importance of physical attractiveness and appearance only marginally trumps personality and conversation, it is comforting to hear from experts that no amount of tech usage can change basic aspects of face-to-face flirtation.

Online dating clearly seems to be a corporate success, and a social phenomenon, but is it safe? Are there core similarities between the psychology of attraction in online and traditional dating? Or does technology affect what qualities are perceived as important in a partner?

And does the nature of these online interactions affect our behaviour and how we behave with one another? Consequently, perhaps dating apps can inflate an individuals ego and thirst for compliments, whilst emphasising appearance over personality, subsequently, fuelling into our sense of vanity and unrealistic desires. Jessica Strübel PhD, also of the University of North Texas, conducted a study alongside Petrie, in which, 1, women and men, predominantly undergraduate students, were asked to complete questionnaires about their usage of Tinder, their body image, socio-cultural factors, perceived objectification, and psychological well-being.

However, only male users reported lower levels of self-esteem. Overall, Tinder users reported having lower levels of satisfaction with their faces and bodies and having lower levels of self-worth than the men and women who did not use Tinder. Furthermore, this could potentially relate to the fear of frequent and regular rejection that many experience when using dating apps, according to research presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association.

Tinder finished in 9th place on the unhappiness ranking. This casual and disposable way in which we utilise dating apps can also contribute to negative feelings. It often seems as if we are not valuing one another as human beings, with desires and hopes and emotional needs, but as statistics to tally up our match total. Of course, as earlier statistics have suggested that many people use dating apps for a laugh or to have some fun, but for many people, especially those with full-time work it can seem like the only way that they can secure the partner and relationship that they desire.

Sites such as match. com or eHarmony, often feature comprehensive questionnaires and detailed biographies, which demand more investment and interest from the user.

The more fruitful array of information on both sides makes the process seem far more authentic and human than the likes of Tinder, Grindr, and Bumble, where people are often rated over how cool they look in a selfie or how accomplished they can make themselves seem through their character limited bio. Much like Instagram, dating apps can appear shallow and lacking in genuine substance or purpose.

Dr Jennifer B. Rhodes, a licensed psychologist believes that this culture of looking for the next best thing can create problems when we eventually do settle down into the relationships that we searched for online, as we apply this same attitude of dissatisfaction to our partner.

This can manifest in problematic ways, with Tinder Expert, Dr. Timmermans Ph. and her colleagues discovering through research that a significant number of people who are in committed relationships continue to use dating apps, for casual sex, or simply for an ego boost.

Many users of dating apps also report that first dates or meetings of their online suitor are often awkward, crude or unrewarding. The overwhelming sense of choice that we are greeted with when venturing into the realm of online dating can be problematic and lead to self-questioning. In The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less , Barry Schwartz explores the phenomenon of cognitive overload, which is a situation in which our brain is overwhelmed with choice or information, and this can lead to stress, difficulty processing or indecision.

This is strikingly similar to the application of dopamine in the success of social media apps. The neurochemical, dopamine gives us a yearning to seek rewards, and the instant gratification that we receive from social media, through likes, comments, views, shares, reactions, and messages can make us addicted to this immediate attainability of happiness.

The HBO documentary, Swiped: Hooking Up in the Digital Age , in particular does little to depict dating apps in the positive light that marketing agencies do. In the documentary, social psychologist at New York University, Adam Alter, aligned the dating app experience to playing on a slot machine, alluding to matching through the allegory of feeling joyous after a win on a machine, with lights flashing and bells ringing to accompany the mood.

In fact, Tinder co-founder, Jonathan Badeen, has stated that the number one reason that people use Tinder is for entertainment, as opposed to looking for a relationship.

Timmermans started the Big Tinder Project in , where she developed the Tinder Motives Scale, and through four independent studies found that there were 8 primary Tinder motives. Love was actually the fourth most common motive, which followed, amusement, curiosity, and the desire to socialise. It seems like the main principle of dating in the modern age, which is predominantly online, is to treat it as a game, which must be fun, and suits our impatient lifestyles.

This has moved away from purpose dating where the principle motive for many people was to get into a stable relationship and eventually marry.

This captures the many attitudes and debates that concern modern life, and highlight the changes that our society has experienced in recent years. The recent tragic death of Grace Millane saw Britain and New Zealand mourn the University of Lincoln graduate who was murdered by a man that she is widely reported to have encountered on a dating app.

It comes as no surprise that dating apps can lead to violent or dangerous encounters, problematic situations or the sharing of indecent and graphic images which, the latter as of this week has been banned by Instagram, following the death of 14 year old Molly Russell from the glamorisation of self-harm on the photo-sharing app.

Armed with research that paints a pretty bleak picture of online dating, I asked two of my closest friends about their experiences on Tinder. Neither of them found that it brought them the perfect partner or even just some fun, stating that the app was shallow, with too much emphasis on appearance. Interestingly, one of my friends pointed out that Tinder forces you to subconsciously judge on appearance and style because you have to click on a users image to read their bio, therefore, at first glance you are only able to see their image.

Their opinions highlight the disingenuous and vapid mood that surrounds aspects of social media usage. The Psychological Effects of Online Dating. Much like everything else that we do, dating has also moved online. In early , an online dating service, called match. com went live, since then online dating has become a social phenomenon that has intercepted our smartphones, our daily routines, and our relationships, forging a 2.

The bank, TSB has discovered that dating apps now contribute £ Previous Feature Back to All Features Next Feature. Find Your Closest Store. Use our store finder to locate your closest tmrw stockist. Open Store Finder.

com which provides independent reviews and research of online services for consumers and small businesses , told me that online dating sites are becoming better at matching you to potential dates and online dating is increasingly being done on mobile phone dating apps. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. There is a small "about" section on Tinder which is optional. Trying out Tinder The hottest mobile app is Tinder. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. CONSENT 2 years YouTube sets this cookie via embedded youtube-videos and registers anonymous statistical data.

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