Search

• Women on Tinder are more selective than men on Tinder. • Women on Tinder have a preference for highly educated men. • Men on Tinder are not intimidated by highly educated women.* • On Tinder, preferences for educational assortative mating are absent. In this study, we examine the impact of an individual's education level on her/his mating success on the mobile dating app Tinder. To do so, we conducted a field experiment on Tinder in which we collected data on 3,600 profile evaluations. In line with previous research on mating preferences from multiple fields, our results indicate a heterogeneous effect of education level by gender: while women strongly prefer a highly educated potential partner, this hypothesis is rejected for men. In contrast with recent influential studies from the field of economics, we do not find any evidence that men would have an aversion to a highly educated potential partner. Additionally, in contrast with most previous research – again from multiple fields – we do not find any evidence for preferences for educational assortative mating, i.e. preferring a partner with a similar education level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous literature has identified assortative mating as the most frequent deviation from random mating both in offline dating and on classic online dating websites. However, several recent studies have suggested that assortative mating is fading due to the advent of mobile dating apps. Therefore, in this study we examine whether preferences for assortative mating are still present on the most popular mobile dating app of the moment, Tinder. For this means, we analyze experimental and survey data on 7846 Tinder profile evaluations. We unambiguously find that Tinder users prefer a potential partner whom they perceive to be similar in the personality traits agreeableness and openness to experience. With respect to similarity in perceived age, we find either no assortment or positive assortment, depending on whether we condition on other participant characteristics. Finally, we do not find any evidence for preferences for assortative mating based on attractiveness. We examine heterogeneous preferences by the gender and age of the experiment participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]