Research

From Academia: Tinder and Infidelity in College

2017 research published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences has investigated the possibility of a link between Tinder and infidelity.

The study, entitled ‘Swiping right: Sociosexuality, intentions to engage in infidelity, and infidelity experiences on Tinder’, surveyed 550 undergraduate participants from a major US public university.

The researchers claimed that the study was the first to explore whether college students use Tinder outside of exclusive relationships.

It found that 1 in 11 had used Tinder for extradyadic physical intimacy, and that 17% had messaged someone on the platform while in a committed relationship.

66% of respondents reported seeing someone they knew to be in a committed relationship on Tinder.

Further, men were more likely than women to message someone on Tinder, be physically intimate with someone from Tinder and have sex with someone from Tinder while in a relationship.

The gender difference disappears, however, once sociosexuality and intention to engage in infidelity are controlled for.

Texas Tech University Professor Dana Weiser told PsyPost: “There has not been a great deal of research on whether Tinder is actually used to facilitate infidelity.

“Many people assume so but as we know, not all assumptions regarding relationships are accurate so it is important to conduct scientific research to test these lay people hypotheses.

Tinder and other mobile dating apps have changed how we meet partners so it is essential that researchers understand what these changes are precisely.”

Future research, the authors note, may consider whether these extradyadic activity rates are constant across different age groups / different geographical distances between partners.

Read more here.

Scott Harvey

Scott is the Editor of Global Dating Insights. Raised in Dorset, he holds a BA from The University of Nottingham and an MSc from Lund University School of Economics and Management. Previously he has written about politics, economics and technology for various online publications.

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