From Academia: Low Sexual Disgust Predicts Tinder Hook-Ups

2017 Research published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences has outlined the extent to which sexual disgust and sociosexuality are predictive of certain Tinder behaviours.

The study, entitled ‘Exploring the hook-up app: Low sexual disgust and high sociosexuality predict motivation to use Tinder for casual sex’, analysed survey responses.

Participants were 169 Amazon Mechanical Turk workers, and the investigation found different models were appropriate for men and women.

A range of previous studies have investigated the motivations for Tinder use, but this study (to the authors’ combined knowledge) was the first to look at motivations for casual sex use in particular.

Participants with high levels of sexual disgust reported less inclination to use the app for casual sex, whereas users high in sociosexuality were more comfortable using it in this way.

Sociosexuality is defined as an individual’s attitudes, behaviours and desires pertaining to casual sex.  

Both sociosexuality and disgust were direct predictors of casual sex motivation in men, while sociosexuality was more of a mediating factor in women.

The gender difference, the authors suggest, is likely attributable to men being more happy to ‘risk take’ for evolutionary reasons.

Read the full study here.