Tinder users find love at second swipe

Posted on March 19, 2016 by Staff Writer - RN1 in Australian News, Science // 0 Comments

James Brown, Masters Student (School of Psychology, University of Sydney). Profile picture previously used for online social networking.

New research has found people using online dating sites and apps including Tinder are more likely to rate a face as attractive if they thought the preceding face was attractive.

University of Sydney’s School of Psychology conducted experiments with sixteen female undergraduate students and found the participants were strongly biased by the face seen immediately prior.

Anonymous. Profile picture previously used for online social networking

The study sourced 60 male profiles from the Hot or Not dating app and gave participants a choice between two options: attractive or not attractive.

Co-author of the study, Postdoctoral Research Associate Jessica Taubert said ““Love or lust at first sight is a cliché that has been around for years. Our research gives weight to a new theory: that people are more likely to find love at second swipe,”

PhD candidate Huihui Zhang, running the experimental task on herself and thinking about its implications and future experiments. Credit: Jessica Taubert, University of Sydney

How the study was conducted:

Each participant was presented a profile picture on a screen for 300 milliseconds which was then replaced with a white fixation cross which remained visible until the participant rated the picture as attractive or unattractive.

The researchers concluded the binary judgements are subject to rapid adaptation, meaning a face will look more attractive when the previous face was attractive.