
Study: Tinder is making us behave like cave people - mudil
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/tinder-mating-habits-reinforce-dating-app-sex-study-men-women-communicate-find-others-reproduce-a8008446.html
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bbctol
It's interesting how a modern system that lines up with evolutionary theories
can either be framed as "the natural, healthy way we were meant to to do x"
(if you're pushing a paleo diet) or "the pre-civilized, caveman way of doing
y" (if you don't like Tinder.)

For the record, I think those sorts of evolutionary histories are usually
poorly supported anyway, so there's a double layer of nonsense here; you can
speculate a lot about how our prehistoric ancestors behaved, and then modulate
whether or not your speculated behavior seems good or bad, so any argument can
be justified in some direction with appeals to our evolutionary past.

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jm__87
Well, you can actually measure the effects that the Paleo diet has on
biomarkers, so it isn't nearly as subjective as dating norms..

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falcolas
Given how controversial the various diets are, even between nutritional
specialists, I'm not sure it can be claimed as less subjective than dating
habits.

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H1Supreme
Nutritional claims are as fragmented as it comes. Plant based vs Paleo vs
Ketogenic vs whatever. All with supporting research! The only commonality most
of these share is: refined sugar is a plague.

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rflrob
The fact of the matter is that we don't know a lot about how our ancient
ancestors behaved—what they ate is on the firmest footing, but most of the
evidence there is based on residues found on the teeth of skeletons. Just
about the only thing we can firmly say about how our ancestors chose mates is
that, at some point circa 50,000 years ago, some mated with Neanderthals.

There's long history of people speculating about our early ancestors, and the
consistency with which they reflect the biases of the era in which the
speculation is done, rather than being based on strong empirical evidence
(which, I'll grant, is really hard to come by) makes me deeply skeptical of
the whole endeavor.

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eternalban
> The fact of the matter is that we don't know a lot about how our ancient
> ancestors behaved

But we know for certain what they came up with in reaction to whatever they
were doing before. The reaction appears to have been nearly universal:
Patriarchal family.

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blacksmith_tb
Nearly universal may be overstating things somewhat, judging by recent human
history[1]. Common, though.

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_matrilineal_or_matrilo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_matrilineal_or_matrilocal_societies)

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baron816
> She explained that the findings might come down to the “McDonaldisation” of
> dating that Tinder perpetuates, given that we expect speedy and satisfying
> results like we would at a fast food restaurant.

This is something I've long suspected. I read these stories of people going in
100+ dates in three months or whatever, and it's clear that people are
expecting too much from a single interaction with someone. Movies and TV shows
have definitely given people the idea that deep connections can be formed in
60 to 120 minutes.

I'd also like to see statistics on the distribution of matches and likes on
dating apps. I suspect 90%+ of likes are received by <1% of people.

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aaron-lebo
The other aspect of that is not only is it hard to make a connection that
fast, but if you've got another dozen attractive options, why bother
stretching that out into multiple dates?

It's lots of window shopping. Maybe we have too many options?

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kungito
I suppose the problem is that we are more aware of all the options so it's
harder to settle. In a village you have 3-4 choices so not settling means
getting your favorite out of 4. Now you watch movies and porn with most
beautiful and charming people and they are displayed in their perfectly
engineered best moment and then you have to go back to not being able to
"have" them

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kolbe
Which evolutionary theory maintains that women naturally seek intelligence?
And I don't know what Tinder results they were looking at, but for every "must
keep up with me intellectually" I saw, there were about 50 "must be 6'4" (i
like to wear heels)" comments.

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Mikeb85
Women (and men for that matter) seek intelligence/personality for
relationships, but you don't go on Tinder for a relationship, it's a hookup
site...

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kolbe
They often seek a compatible personality type. And for intelligent women, that
often includes intelligent men. But I don't think your statement is accurate
for that vast majority of the population.

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tessierashpool
Translation:

When people use Tinder, they behave in the way that the user interface
encourages them to. Because Tinder was built with assumptions about dating
that are socially conservative, the behavior that the app encourages is
behavior which conforms to socially conservative ideas about dating. Because
the people who promote these socially conservative ideas like to wrap them in
a veneer of pseudoscience, they claim that Tinder reinforces “ancient”
behavior.

(Great source on the pseudoscience part: “Delusions of Gender” by Dr. Cordelia
Fine. Plenty of others exist. And while I know the pseudoscience part might be
controversial to some on here, I hope at least the idea that user interfaces
guide user behavior is not.)

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jerf
"Because Tinder was built with assumptions about dating that are socially
conservative"

Really? I suspect that most of the people who built Tinder would probably get
personally offended if you called them "socially conservative", just going off
of basic statistics.

I think the "socially conservative Tinder" is the Tinder that never existed at
all because the founders laughed the idea off, or a company that pivoted to
something else _hard_ once they realized they accidentally built a hookup app.
Not the Tinder that exists.

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eternalban
Per the "gender" input in the GP, socially "conservative" likely means
"enforcing the social construct of gender".

These are interesting times.

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llamaz
Terrible title. Tinder isn't the cause, it's just a medium, and we're all
acting like cave people in every aspect of life if you follow the logic
"evolutionary instincts=cave people"

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ravenstine
> Men favour beauty whilst women look for brains

I must seem really dumb.

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jrs95
Yeah...based on what I've actually seen in studies about this topic before
that weren't Tinder specific, there's essentially no chance that this is true.

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fallingfrog
The author of the article doesn't seem to have any background in anthropology
or frankly any clue at all how "cave people" behaved. Experts don't agree on
everything but I'd suggest reading Sex at Dawn as a good starting point.

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chisleu
Study was in the UK, which may explain that difference in what I've seen from
years of tinder use. American woman are certainly as superficial as men.

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sidlls
Why the "American" qualification? Superficial attitudes are certainly not
specific to that country, or to gender.

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jrs95
The article specifically portrays women as less superficial, which OP was
saying didn't match personal experiences (in America) but that it could be
because it was done in the UK. Cultural differences could definitely cause
something like that. Although personally I think it's probably just bullshit.

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debt
Tinder seems to be the paleo diet of dating.

