From Academia: Tinder Doesn’t Increase Casual Sex

A study from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) has found Tinder use does not cause users to have more casual sex.

The study ‘Individual differences in sociosexuality predict picture-based mobile dating app use’ was published in Personality and Individual Differences.

It found users of apps like Tinder tend to be more open to casual sexual relationships than people from the general population, but that causality only ran one way.

That is to say, non-users who are open to casual sexual relationships have the same success in finding partners as users.

“Apps have become the new public arena for dating. But to a large extent, the people using them are the same ones you find dating other ways,” says NTNU psychology professor Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair.

The study also found gender differences in how men and women use dating apps.

While both genders use apps to find long term relationships, men are more likely to seek short term relationships as a high priority and women are more likely to use matches for self-affirmation.

Only eight participants of 600 were in relationships while using the apps, suggesting Tinder was not often used as a tool for infidelity.

Read more here.