Unlocking The Paradox of Choice: How Dating Apps Increase Our Chances to Find Love
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A major obstacle to finding love online has been having too many options. A recent study shows that when people are presented with more options, they become more likely to reject potential partners. With hundreds of potential options, it’s easy to wait for your perfect match, foregoing perfectly good alternatives in the meantime. While people often prefer to have many options to choose from, there is strong behavioral science evidence that too much optionality can decrease satisfaction and increase the tendency to avoid making decisions. This phenomenon, known as “The Paradox of Choice,” was replicated in a variety of studies, from sales of jams and choice of prizes, and is the title of a book written by the psychologist Barry Schwartz.
However, popular dating apps have realized that reducing the paradox of choice, or making users think they have fewer potential partners, can increase the likelihood that they will successfully find one. This is not a simple task because dating apps want to attract users by making them think the app offers a large and attractive pool of potential partners while making them feel that their options are limited, preventing users from constantly thinking they can find a better match. Here are five examples of ways that dating apps combat the paradox of choice, and make users feel they have limited options:
1. Bumble: the popular dating app is known for two rules: women have 24 hours to send the first message after a match and men have 24 hours to respond to the first move. Otherwise, the connection expires. Disconnecting users who are inactive for 24 hours reduces the paradox of choice as it prevents users from viewing inactive conversations as opportunities to find a partner. While this intervention reduces the paradox of choice, it could also stop vibrant conversations between busy partners. People who work during the week and use the app only on weekends, for example, may miss potential matches.
2. Hinge: the dating app’s original model focused on matching singles with people they were already connected to by way of Facebook friends, up to three degrees away. Using this strategy, Hinge intended to make online dating less threatening. Although this model addresses the paradox of choice, in 2018 Hinge ditched its Facebook requirement to increase the pool of potential matches. This decision reveals Hinge’s desire to prioritize the number of options it offers over reducing the paradox of choice.
3. Raya: an exclusive dating and networking platform for people in creative industries. The app attracts celebrities across different industries including Lizzo, John Mayer, and Zac Efron, and is known for its celebrity success stories, such as Olympian athlete Simon Biles and NFL star Jonathan Owens. Users must apply to join the app, and with an acceptance rate of about 8 percent, Raya is a slightly harder nut to crack than Harvard Business School. The exclusive application reduces the number of potential partners but makes the group more prestigious. When Raya users contemplate if to swipe right, they are likely to have an acceptance mindset, both because they view the lengthy application process as a filter and because the pool of partners is significantly smaller than in other apps, such as Bumble and Hinge.
4. Thursday: a dating app that only works a day a week. Every Thursday, the app comes to life with people near you who also want to meet that day, creating a perception in users’ minds that Thursday is the day for dating. The app, which currently operates in London and New York City, aims to reduce dating fatigue. The limited time on the app nudges users to meet immediately instead of swiping hundreds of times throughout the week.
5. Looop: an app that believes that the future of finding your person is community-based. The app itself doesn’t match users; human matchmakers do. While Bumble and Thursday reduce the paradox of choice by limiting time, Looop does so by providing a more personal, suited matchmaking process. When humans put time and effort into the matchmaking process, the feeling that there are limitless options becomes less of an obstacle to finding love.
Dating apps understand the need offer an abundance of choices without overwhelming their users with too many options. As the online dating industry continues to expand, it is just a matter of time until more businesses in different industries adopt similar techniques to limit the overwhelming optionality their users face. Perhaps making users think they have less, will enable them to have more.
