Study: Tinder is making us behave like cave people | Hacker News Reader

Study: Tinder is making us behave like cave people

independent.co.uk

38 pointsmudil33 comments

It's interesting how a modern system that lines up with evolutionary theories can either be framed as "the natural, healthy way we were meant to to do x" (if you're pushing a paleo diet) or "the pre-civilized, caveman way of doing y" (if you don't like Tinder.)

For the record, I think those sorts of evolutionary histories are usually poorly supported anyway, so there's a double layer of nonsense here; you can speculate a lot about how our prehistoric ancestors behaved, and then modulate whether or not your speculated behavior seems good or bad, so any argument can be justified in some direction with appeals to our evolutionary past.

Well, you can actually measure the effects that the Paleo diet has on biomarkers, so it isn't nearly as subjective as dating norms..

Given how controversial the various diets are, even between nutritional specialists, I'm not sure it can be claimed as less subjective than dating habits.

Nutritional claims are as fragmented as it comes. Plant based vs Paleo vs Ketogenic vs whatever. All with supporting research! The only commonality most of these share is: refined sugar is a plague.

The fact of the matter is that we don't know a lot about how our ancient ancestors behaved—what they ate is on the firmest footing, but most of the evidence there is based on residues found on the teeth of skeletons. Just about the only thing we can firmly say about how our ancestors chose mates is that, at some point circa 50,000 years ago, some mated with Neanderthals.

There's long history of people speculating about our early ancestors, and the consistency with which they reflect the biases of the era in which the speculation is done, rather than being based on strong empirical evidence (which, I'll grant, is really hard to come by) makes me deeply skeptical of the whole endeavor.

We also have neanderthal coprolites.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/06/140625-nean...

> The fact of the matter is that we don't know a lot about how our ancient ancestors behaved

But we know for certain what they came up with in reaction to whatever they were doing before. The reaction appears to have been nearly universal: Patriarchal family.

Nearly universal may be overstating things somewhat, judging by recent human history[1]. Common, though.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_matrilineal_or_matrilo...

> She explained that the findings might come down to the “McDonaldisation” of dating that Tinder perpetuates, given that we expect speedy and satisfying results like we would at a fast food restaurant.

This is something I've long suspected. I read these stories of people going in 100+ dates in three months or whatever, and it's clear that people are expecting too much from a single interaction with someone. Movies and TV shows have definitely given people the idea that deep connections can be formed in 60 to 120 minutes.

I'd also like to see statistics on the distribution of matches and likes on dating apps. I suspect 90%+ of likes are received by <1% of people.

The other aspect of that is not only is it hard to make a connection that fast, but if you've got another dozen attractive options, why bother stretching that out into multiple dates?

It's lots of window shopping. Maybe we have too many options?

Hence apps like "ONCE" where you have only one match per day.

I suppose the problem is that we are more aware of all the options so it's harder to settle. In a village you have 3-4 choices so not settling means getting your favorite out of 4. Now you watch movies and porn with most beautiful and charming people and they are displayed in their perfectly engineered best moment and then you have to go back to not being able to "have" them

https://twitter.com/SteveStuWill/status/903902395352080385 was making the rounds recently, which claimed it was the top 20%, but there's so many factors like twice as many men using Tinder, and men are 6x more likely to +like anyone, I can't really make sense of it.

Yes, this is exactly what I’ve been thinking. And this is where so many in the media have gotten the notion that Tinder makes it easy for guys to sleep around. Tinder makes it easy for great looking, highly successful guys to sleep around. Everyone else, not so much. All these women are chasing after the elite men, and wonder why they can’t get them to stick.

Which evolutionary theory maintains that women naturally seek intelligence? And I don't know what Tinder results they were looking at, but for every "must keep up with me intellectually" I saw, there were about 50 "must be 6'4" (i like to wear heels)" comments.

Women (and men for that matter) seek intelligence/personality for relationships, but you don't go on Tinder for a relationship, it's a hookup site...

They often seek a compatible personality type. And for intelligent women, that often includes intelligent men. But I don't think your statement is accurate for that vast majority of the population.

> but you don't go on Tinder for a relationship, it's a hookup site...

Yeah? I know two couples who met on Tinder. (FWIW, second marriages)

Which is why women put the "not here for a hookup" disclaimer on their profile even more than their height requirements.

Translation:

When people use Tinder, they behave in the way that the user interface encourages them to. Because Tinder was built with assumptions about dating that are socially conservative, the behavior that the app encourages is behavior which conforms to socially conservative ideas about dating. Because the people who promote these socially conservative ideas like to wrap them in a veneer of pseudoscience, they claim that Tinder reinforces “ancient” behavior.

(Great source on the pseudoscience part: “Delusions of Gender” by Dr. Cordelia Fine. Plenty of others exist. And while I know the pseudoscience part might be controversial to some on here, I hope at least the idea that user interfaces guide user behavior is not.)

What notions of dating on Tinder are socially conservative?

At least 50% of the people on there are on there to get laid (the women, too). I'd say about 10% of the profiles you come across are polyamorous/transgender individuals, which would have been unheard of 10 years ago. And that's in the middle of the Bible Belt.

(I'm not advocating, just explaining)

The person you're replying to is referring to the study, which found that men rated women on appearance, while women rated men on career prospects. This is the "socially conservative" aspect they're referring to.

When I first read the comment, I assumed they meant "conservative views on dating", like the disapproval of sex before marriage, which is opposite to what Tinder enables / advocates.

"Because Tinder was built with assumptions about dating that are socially conservative"

Really? I suspect that most of the people who built Tinder would probably get personally offended if you called them "socially conservative", just going off of basic statistics.

I think the "socially conservative Tinder" is the Tinder that never existed at all because the founders laughed the idea off, or a company that pivoted to something else hard once they realized they accidentally built a hookup app. Not the Tinder that exists.

Per the "gender" input in the GP, socially "conservative" likely means "enforcing the social construct of gender".

These are interesting times.

Your comment isn't very clear, as it's not clear what "socially conservative" assumptions you're alluding to. (As others have pointed out, casual sex, which as I understand is Tinder's main use case, isn't generally looked highly upon by those of a conservative stance.)

If you're saying that Tinder's interface in some way encourages the assymetries the article mentions--men judging more on appearance and women judging more on career prospects, etc.--then perhaps you should explain how, because as far as I know the interface works the same for men and women.

Terrible title. Tinder isn't the cause, it's just a medium, and we're all acting like cave people in every aspect of life if you follow the logic "evolutionary instincts=cave people"

> Men favour beauty whilst women look for brains

I must seem really dumb.

Yeah...based on what I've actually seen in studies about this topic before that weren't Tinder specific, there's essentially no chance that this is true.

The author of the article doesn't seem to have any background in anthropology or frankly any clue at all how "cave people" behaved. Experts don't agree on everything but I'd suggest reading Sex at Dawn as a good starting point.

Study was in the UK, which may explain that difference in what I've seen from years of tinder use. American woman are certainly as superficial as men.

Why the "American" qualification? Superficial attitudes are certainly not specific to that country, or to gender.

The article specifically portrays women as less superficial, which OP was saying didn't match personal experiences (in America) but that it could be because it was done in the UK. Cultural differences could definitely cause something like that. Although personally I think it's probably just bullshit.

Tinder seems to be the paleo diet of dating.

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