Digital Desires - Digital Culture Final Project

DIGITAL DESIRES

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can we identify a sociology of swiping? josephine o’brien jonathan rose shereen abdul-razak

INTRODUCTION

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Emile Durkheim, in his seminal work On Suicide, did something revolutionary: he took something which was traditionally thought of as profoundly personal, the act of killing oneself, and sought instead to analyse it according to different social trends demonstrating measurable correlations and conclusions.

In this project, we sought to see if Durkheim’s framework could apply in a more modern field. While we’ve always thought that our matches on dating apps indicate a personal preference for who we find attractive, is this necessarily true? Is the act of swiping truly individualised, or can we find–in a sense–a sociology of swiping?

Literature on the subject of dating apps yields a few generalisable insights. Regarding the patterns of self-representation on dating apps, young men emphasise sport, young women their bodies, older men luxury activities or possessions, and older women luxury goods (Leigha et al. 2016). Racism is shown to be pervasive on dating apps; Black men and women are 10x more likely to message whites than whites will message black people (Barocas and Levy).

Indeed, while we found this literature helpful in grounding our central question, we felt our inquiry needed to be tested for ourselves.

Jacobson, Leigha, Abbey Atkinson, Ladan Mohamed, et Jason Dorr. « Singles Looking to Mingle: An Analysis of Self-Presentation in Online Dating ». Concordia Journal of Communication Research 3 (2016). https://doi.org/10.54416/ZFWV7152. « Redesign Dating Apps to Lessen Racial Bias, Study Recommends | Cornell Computing and Information Science ». Consulté le 18 octobre 2023. https://cis.cornell.edu/redesign-dating-apps-lessen-racial-bias-study-recommends.

HYPOTHESIS

How will students’ preferences on a sample dating app differ according to the variables of gender and race?

ANALYSIS ON THE LINES OF GENDER IDENTITY We predict that participants who identify as cisgender males will have (1) swiped right on more profiles than other participants (2) a wider age range on their swipe rights that skew younger than other participants

ANALYSIS ON THE LINES OF RACIAL IDENTITY We predict that: (1) white-passing Tinder profiles will have a higher number of right swipes than non-white passing ones (2) Participants will show a preference towards their own racial group in their swiping practices

Profile Creation

METHODOLOGY

Using publicly available Pinterest photos to make 18 “Tinder” profiles for each gender, aligning with common dating app archetypes: simply meaning that each profile will represent common types of people that one would find on any dating app: your outdoorsy person, your gym-goer, and (of course) the ubiquitous finance bro. Each type of person will have a white and non-white equivalent to ensure sample diversity. Profiles will include randomised ages and ‘bio’ sections.

Our Google Form This was set up to mirror, to the greatest possible extent, any dating app that students would use. Participants can choose before swiping, as in all dating apps, which set they would like to see: male, female, or both. They are then presented with the profiles and prompted to swipe either left or right.

Data Collection The form is completely anonymous, but we collect some forms of demographic data to aid in analysis. Examples of this include the indication of one’s gender identity, their race, their age, and their sexuality (both with an optional question as well as the question of which kinds of profiles they’d like to see).

RESULTS

GENDER 32.5%

42.4%

% of profiles men swiped right on

% of profiles women swiped right on

7 average age range for profiles men swiped on

DID MEN SWIPE RIGHT MORE THAN WOMEN? Men swiped right 32.5% of the time, while women actually swiped right 42.4% of the time.

8.5 average age range for profiles women swiped on Did men have a wider age range on their swipe rights that skew younger than other participants?

No. The average age range for profiles men swiped on was 7 years, compared to 8.5 years for women. The average # of years younger for youngest swipe for men was .55 years, compared to .68 years for women

RESULTS RACE Did participants show preferences towards their own racial group? white respondents

non-white respondents

177 right swipes for white profiles 128 right swipes for non-white profiles

57 right swipes for non-white profiles 55 right swipes for white profiles

Did white passing profiles have a higher number of right swipes than non-white passing ones?

33.5%

46.7%

average swipe rights for white profiles

average swipe rights for non-white profiles

LIMITATIONS

& ANALYSIS However, we must caution that the presentation of our final data and conclusions are not without their own limitations. First of all, we must cite the artificiality of our environment: despite our best efforts, a Google Form is simply not the same as a real-life dating app. People could have subconsciously treated this as something more clinical than they would have otherwise, which could have skewed our data.

Second, the smaller male sample size could also have played a role. Men only represented under a quarter of the sample, or around 15 people, while women were vastly over-represented.

Third, the characteristics of our young sample made it impossible to measure the full extent of age diversity, as it was not possible for people to swipe on much younger profiles than they were (our median age was 19, and the legal minimum age is 18 to use such apps).

Finally, we posit that people’s account bios or their “vibe” could have been a confounding factor in our analyses of gender, age, and race. While we tried to standardise as much as feasible, it is possible that some were unduly swayed by our descriptions.

CONCLUSIONS Sciences Po students exhibited less racial bias in their “Tinder” preferences than the general population. Furthermore, both male and female students treated the variable of age with approximately the same consideration.

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Potential causes of this are varied. We theorise that the younger generation of our sample (uni students), along with the highly international character of our school, made them more cognisant of any sort of bias in their preferences.

Furthermore, perhaps we prefer conventional attractiveness or “vibe” over such superficial characteristics.

Finally, the limitations of our dating app environment could have played a role.