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Hook, Line and Sinker: Do Tinder Matches and Meet Ups Lead to One-Night Stands?

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Abstract

Several recent papers have established a link between personality and Tinder use, particularly with regards to sociosexuality and motivations for use. Following up our recent publication on dating apps and the studies linking Tinder and sociosexuality, we provide a more detailed investigation of the efficiency of using Tinder to acquire one-night stands or meet potential long-term committed relationship partners. Using self-reported data from 269 students (62% women), we find that a very large number of matches are required for a relative small number of meet ups, and result in a very limited number of hook-ups or potential romantic partner meetings. Merely 20% of the Tinder users in the sample have had one-night stands following Tinder use, and the majority of these only had one extra partner. The primary individual difference predictor of achieving casual sex using Tinder is unrestricted sociosexual attitudes, and this also predicts fewer potential romantic partner meetings.

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Notes

  1. Because this is a sub-sample of current and prior Tinder users, we compared the SOI-scores with those of non-users. The analyses suggest that Tinder current users reported far less restricted sociosexuality (SOI-R) than current non-users (Cohen’s d = 1.00). For the separate SOI components, these differences were d = 1.07, d = 0.74, and d = 0.47 for SOI-behavior, SOI-attitudes, and SOI-desire, respectively.

  2. Because the response alternatives for SOI behavior items are categorized, we applied the following recoding of scores: 0 = 0, 1 = 1, 2 = 2, 3 = 3, 4 = 4, 5 = 5.5, 6 = 8, 7 = 15, and 8 = 25. Three participants reported one more one-night stand following Tinder than the total number of one-night stands. For these instances, we adjusted the total number up to match the number following Tinder use.

  3. When we dichotomized number of meet ups (None/1 or more), 62% of those who met reported neither one-night stands nor any meetings with an interest for a long-term relationship. Among the remaining 38%, participants who met a partner with an interest for a long-term relationship reported three times more often to have had a one-night stand following the meeting, OR = 3.0, 95% CI [1.4–5.6].

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Correspondence to Trond Viggo Grøntvedt.

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Grøntvedt, T.V., Bendixen, M., Botnen, E.O. et al. Hook, Line and Sinker: Do Tinder Matches and Meet Ups Lead to One-Night Stands?. Evolutionary Psychological Science 6, 109–118 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-019-00222-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-019-00222-z

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