Humans like looking at people we find attractive. When someone opens a dating app, they're presented with a variety of images of potential love interests.
If someone holds a strong goal of finding a romantic partner, the DLPFC part of the brain assigns greater weight to checking the apps regularly.
The reward and learning pathway in the brain has been linked to the chemical dopamine in the brain. Dopamine releases a pleasant sensation in response to a reward.
Unpredictable rewards cause even more activity in reward centers of the brain than those we know are coming. An element of unpredictability keeps users curious and hooked.
Another big issue on dating apps is the sheer volume of choices available. Some psychologists claim having too much choice makes it less likely a decision is made at all.
A study by F.C. Donders Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging in the Netherlands found activity in a brain region involved in reward processing is more active when people view attractive faces.
In some studies, it's been suggested that the longer the interaction with dating apps, the more the brain adapts in response to them.
However, over time, more and more dopamine neuron firing occurs in response to the reward predictor instead of the the reward itself.
For many, dating apps are convenient and a way to get rid of boredom, temporarily at least. They offer at worst temporary gratification and, at best, a shot at finding someone special. Their appeal might rise and fall, and they might be hacking the brain's reward pathways, but they're more than likely here to stay.
Sources: (National Geographic) (Psychology Today) (The Guardian) (Pew Research Center)
When users swipe right on people on an app, they don't know if they'll match with someone they find attractive. Even if a conversation begins, they don't know if/when a person will respond.
Consider this effect when using an app like Tinder: similar to a casino slot machine, you never know when you might hit the jackpot.
Even when they don't have the app open, others can swipe on them, so if the app is opened after a prolonged period of time, there are new matches potentially waiting.
This area of the brain, known as the nucleus accumbens, acts as the neural interface between motivation and action. It plays a key role in food, sex, and stress-related and drug-taking behaviors.
Another part of the brain, called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), seems to be what we engage to regulate options.
Factors including delay discounting, cognitive bias, and decreasing satisfaction as consumption increases modify the weight of each value.
Depending on our goals, our DLPFC weights higher value to certain choices that we can make. In other words, self-control may not be a simple case of impulse vs. deliberation.
When responding to choices, the amygdala and ventral striatum are activated. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex holds subjective value, while the DLPFC weights each value against each other.
For example, one study by Columbia University found people were more likely to buy a jam when faced with six options instead of 30.
Of those people who had made a purchase, people who had been given fewer options reported greater levels of satisfaction with their choice afterwards.
In other words, the cue that predicts the reward gets more dopamine firing. Knowing what's going to happen releases more happy chemicals than the actual reward itself.
Dating apps can hijack a user's reward-learning brain pathway. At first, a release of dopamine is likely to occur once the person has viewed who the match is.
Does this process mean dating apps are addictive? They're run by companies, whose goal is to make money. The more time spent on the app, the more money is made.
But, over time, it becomes more likely the person will experience a surge of dopamine just from receiving the notification. The brain has adapted to associate it with learning about a match.
Dopamine is involved in a number of addictive processes, but there is still much we don't know about the outcome of what takes place on dating apps and their effects on users.
On Valentine's Day in 2024, a group of six people filed a lawsuit against Match Group (owner of Tinder, Hinge, and other popular dating apps and sites) claiming their "addictive, game-like" features were made to "lock users into a perpetual pay-to-play loop."
Molly Crockett, a neuroscientist at Yale University, wrote a paper about dating applications in response to recent outrage. In it, she noted these apps provide a platform for existing human behavior, rather than altering it.
Match Group denies the allegation, saying they strive to "get people on dates every day and off our apps," according to a company spokesperson.
Dating app creators, likewise, claim they are making people's lives easier without changing them or hacking our neurobiology.
However, if this was truly the case, many of the app's business models wouldn't make any money. They survive as long as users keep swiping.
It's hard to believe that just a decade ago "swiping right" was a brand new phenomenon. How much has changed in the meantime! According to Pew Research Center, around 10% of straight respondents met their long-term, committed partners on a dating site or app. Interestingly, the research showed dating app users were divided about whether their experience on these platforms was positive overall. But what is the gamification of the search for love doing to our brain? Humans are hardwired to seek a mate, and the same pathways that light up when people take drugs are activated by the feeling of falling in love. Could companies be capitalizing on our addiction to our own dopamine supply?
Click on to discover what dating apps are actually doing to your brain.
What dating apps are actually doing to your brain
Are you addicted to potential love?
LIFESTYLE Relationships
It's hard to believe that just a decade ago "swiping right" was a brand new phenomenon. How much has changed in the meantime! According to Pew Research Center, around 10% of straight respondents met their long-term, committed partners on a dating site or app. Interestingly, the research showed dating app users were divided about whether their experience on these platforms was positive overall. But what is the gamification of the search for love doing to our brain? Humans are hardwired to seek a mate, and the same pathways that light up when people take drugs are activated by the feeling of falling in love. Could companies be capitalizing on our addiction to our own dopamine supply?
Click on to discover what dating apps are actually doing to your brain.