THE COST OF SWIPING RIGHT: AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL SURVEY OF COLLEGE CAMPUS ONLINE DATING PATTERNS
Open Access
Author:
Gamel, Tori
Area of Honors:
Anthropology
Degree:
Bachelor of Arts
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Douglas Bird, Thesis Supervisor Douglas Bird, Thesis Honors Advisor Rebecca Bliege Bird, Faculty Reader
Keywords:
survey anthropology dating apps college students sexual selection mate selection human behavior signaling
Abstract:
Humans signal through every action they take, the clothes they wear, the people they associate with, and in the online dating community, the information they place on their profiles. For college students — a population captivated by their phones — most individuals care about their online presence more than their in-person appearance; as they update Facebook every few hours, post new Instagram photos or comment on what’s trending on Twitter. This obsession has blended into the dating culture as online dating apps have become the main sources of meeting potential partners. In this study we aim to understand the rationale for using dating apps instead of meeting people offline; through a comprehensive examination of the two most used applications — Tinder and Bumble. This paper will assess the creation, operation, and manipulation of dating apps, subsequently, allowing to fully explain the background and motivation of my study on perceived success and patterned behavior for college students who use online dating websites as a channel for mate selection. As I investigate the influence of sexual selection, sex ratio, senses, and signals on the decision-making process for mate selection in the online dating format through an anonymous survey.
