Do Women Make Quicker and Better Online Dating Decisions Than Men?

Decision making in online dating.

Reviewed by Abigail Fagan

Key points

• A recent study investigated the number of choices and speed of making choices in online dating.
• Men are likely to make equal numbers of positive choices for all levels of attractiveness.
• Men took longer to make a partner choice, on average, by one and a half seconds.

Online dating typically involves users being presented with photographs of potential dates to which the user makes a decision and chooses dates, depending on whether they judge them as being attractive. Women are the choosier sex when it comes to selecting a partner, and in online dating, women select fewer profiles compared to men. For example, on Tinder, women select around 0.6% of men compared with men selecting around 10.5% of women (Tyson et al, 2016). Furthermore, women make partner choices based on criteria other than physical attractiveness. For example, women evaluate potential partners on intelligence, wealth potential and indications of willingness to invest in children (Buss, 1989, Das & Relojo-Howell, 2021). Therefore, it is likely that women will take longer to decide on date choice compared to men.

In terms of speed of making a choice, we know that impulsive people tend to make faster decisions compared to less impulsive people. Indeed, impulsive individuals spend less time speaking to potential dates before arranging to meet. Therefore, in online dating, impulsive individuals should take less time to reach such a decision compared to less impulsive individuals.

In our research, we attempted to investigate the number of choices made and the speed of making a choice in online dating. We employed 80 heterosexual participants between 18 and 29 years old, and created a simulated dating site environment, where participants were presented sequentially with a series of photographs of potential dates, to which they responded ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as to whether they would choose the photograph presented to them as a date. One version of the dating environment featured male photographs presented to women and a second version used female photographs which was presented to men. The photographs we used were prejudged on attractiveness and categorised as either above average attractiveness, average attractiveness or lower than average attractiveness.

We then recorded the number of positive choices made (would go on a date with them) and the time taken to make a response. We also recorded and then controlled for each participant’s impulsivity score.

Number of Choices

Firstly, we found that males made more positive choices compared to females, which is consistent with an evolutionary psychology explanation where males are more likely to engage in more risk or pursue multiple partners. The parental costs to males are low compared to the costs incurred by females. This result is also consistent with the finding that men make more positive choices than women on Tinder.

Furthermore, we found that men were likely to make equal numbers of positive choices in all attractiveness conditions, whereas women increased the number of positive choices made according to attractiveness levels, making more positive choices when attractiveness level was higher.

Decision Times

We initially thought that women would take longer to make a decision on date choice compared to men, because of the amount of information women generally need to consider in order to make a judicious date choice. However, our results revealed that men took longer to make a choice, which on average was one and a half seconds — 10 times longer than our brains generally take to judge the difference between an attractive face and an unattractive one (Schacht et al, 2008). The explanation is that men may take longer to process attractiveness compared to women because they place far more emphasis on this in mate selection compared to women.

The findings from our study provide additional information on how men and women behave on dating apps. Consistent with previous research, men were less choosy in mate choice compared to women. Furthermore, women seemed to make more logical decisions in choosing more potential mates as attractiveness levels increased, which was not the case for men.