Swiping right: face perception in the age of Tinder

Antonio Olivera-La Rosa; Olber Eduardo Arango-Tobón; Gordon P D Ingram

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e02949

Swiping right: face perception in the age of Tinder

Heliyon. 2019 Dec 2;5(12):e02949. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e02949. eCollection 2019 Dec.

Authors

Antonio Olivera-La Rosa^{1

2}, Olber Eduardo Arango-Tobón¹, Gordon P D Ingram³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology and Social Sciences, Universidad Católica Luis Amigó. Transversal 514A #67B 90, Medellín, Colombia.
² Human Evolution and Cognition Group, associated group to IFISC (University of the Balearic Islands - CSIC), Carr. de Valldemossa, km 7,5, Palma de Mallorca, 07122, Spain.
³ Department of Psychology, Universidad de Los Andes, Cra. 1 #18a-12, Bogotá, Colombia.

Abstract

With an estimated 50 million or more users worldwide, Tinder has become one of the most popular mobile dating applications. Although judgments of physical attractiveness are assumed to drive the "swiping" decisions that lead to matches, we propose that there is an additional evaluative dimension driving behind these decisions: judgments of moral character. With the aim of adding empirical support for this proposition, we critically review the most striking findings about first impressions extracted from faces, moral character in person perception, creepiness, and the uncanny valley, as they apply to Tinder behavior. Drawing on this research and the evolutionary theory of biological markets, we formulate several hypotheses that offer directions for future studies of Tinder and other dating apps. We conclude that research on face perception of novel targets supports the plausibility of moral character as a potential factor affecting the swiping decisions and subsequent behavior of Tinder users.

Keywords: Face perception; Moral character; Psychology; Tinder; Uncanny valley.

Publication types

Review