Why Dating Apps Might Be Jamming Up Your Love Life
How too many choices can lead to choice overload and dissatisfaction in dating.
Wherefore Art Thou?
We are a world so connected! Buzzing with dating apps, social media, and a never sleeping internet. Why then, can it feel so hard to find a long-term relationship? Many adults, drunk-off-Disney movies, fed a steady diet of rom-coms, turn to online dating. Inwardly hoping their prince or princess is just one swipe away! Dating apps advertise love as if it’s up for sale. You can find your perfect partner if you just keep shopping! But getting clear about the intersection of human psychology and technology, and the paradox of having so many choices, is the first step to understanding your current “single” status.
Have you heard of the Jam Theory?
Conducted by social psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper, the researchers wanted to know: Does an increased number of choices benefit or impede a potential consumer’s decision-making process? It might be natural to think the technological ease of swiping on dozens of bios would make it so. Along with your grandmother’s sage advice, “There’s someone out there for everyone”. But when Iyengar and Lepper published their results, an amazing discovery was made. Too many choices jam up the brain!
It went like this: consumers were shown a display table filled with a variety of jams. When deciding to buy, people were ten times more likely to purchase more when the choices went from 24 jars to 6. Upon making this connection, the experiment outcomes were replicated with many different products. This perplexing phenomenon consistently indicated- the more choice a consumer has- the fewer purchases they will make.
Known today as Choice Overload or the Paradox of Choice, it seems counterintuitive. But parallel if you will, the table of different jams, to any one of us picking up our phone. Flipping through dozens of profiles on a dating app. So many varieties of people, beckoning us to choose! The jam theory might explain why your matches haven’t turned into the person of your dreams.
Sealing The Lid
After the jam theory was published, many studies were conducted about the Paradox of Choice. Some didn’t have the same strong outcome. Then, famously, Kellogg researchers at Northwestern University went back to the data and reanalyzed 99 of the studies. Their paper, Choice Overload: A conceptual review and meta-analysis came up with specific criteria that revealed which conditions sealed the lid on this Paradox of Choice dilemma. Let’s compare those findings to singles and their dating app behaviors.
Northwestern University researchers found Choice Overload is most strong when:
People want to make a quick and easy choice
With the technological interface and void of an actual human, scheduling dates sometimes feels like you’re ordering a pizza. Women don’t want to waste a lot of time texting. After all, meeting men IRL helps determine if the man is only interested in sex. Men are often motivated to meet sooner. But worry their choice might only be available Friday night because she wants free drinks and a meal. Feeling you have unlimited choices makes us more apt to find fault with a potential love interest. Tomorrow we can just unmatch! And start the whole process over again.
When making the right choice is important and complex
For some people, nothing is more important than finding a life partner. Or even just a date for a national holiday. Yet, courtship these days has become so complex! We have new words to explain the different situationships people experience. Despite this increased vocabulary, experiencing dead-end text conversations seems to be a modern rite of passage. In fact, as a species, we may be talking less to each other, about things that really matter, more than any time in our dating history. So when we decide we are ready to settle down, we may feel choice overload getting through all the steps. The illusion of endless choices makes us feel even more pressure to get it right.
When the display shows options that are difficult to compare
Just as there were many jams to choose from, dating profiles vary by an astronomical degree. The internet connects us to people with different cultures, backgrounds, and locations. But this type of technological interaction requires several skill sets just to get to a get face-to-face! First, there is the person your match projects themselves to be with their pictures and music spotlights. Then there is the person they are who sends you witty texts and perfectly themed memes. And lastly, of course, is the person who shows up IRL for your first meet. All of these factors can lead to many outcomes, we may end up not making any choice at all! There is the fear we may be wasting all those other options, waiting for us, on our smartphone.
When customers are unclear about their preferences
When dating, it’s always helpful when people take the time to get to know themselves before inducing someone to be their mate. Pre-technology that is everywhere, all of the time, we had more time to reflect. Our preferences were often cultivated from our immediate family and surrounding communities. Now, with many humans living online from a young age, developing solid preferences can be interrupted by so much choice. Maybe, in seeking love, people don’t mean to be unclear about what they want. But many go through the frustration of falling for someone on a dating app that ends up telling us they just aren’t sure what they are looking for.
Choose to Choose
If we are serious about finding a partner we must realize dating isn’t about finding the perfect person. It’s about choosing a partner who will treat us with the respect we deserve. It’s about becoming the best person we can be and making a commitment. In older generations, if you met someone wonderful, people generally didn’t keep “shopping around”. They were grateful for the new connection and took time to cultivate it. Whether you choose to use a dating app or meet people in a different way, combatting choice overload and understanding the Paradox of Choice is an important tool you can use to help stave off dating app fatigue. Although the Jam Theory was first discovered through consumer psychology, it holds information for us! Knowing about these experiments, and recognizing the way dating apps are designed, can help some singles stop jamming up their love life.