Can Dating Apps Solve the Issue of Nash’s Equilibrium?
Game theory is a concept that can be applied across many different areas, as nearly any time someone is making a decision that will affect others, it is considered playing a “game.” One aspect of life that people often refer to games as a negative thing is in dating. “Playing games” is another way of saying that your (maybe potential) romantic partner is purposefully not expressing complete interest in you in order to appear more desirable. However, whether you like it or not, it is actually a certainty you will be “playing games” when you enter the dating field. Makers of dating apps have had success in motivating people to use their apps, however their inability to account for Nash equilibria proves they haven’t yet mastered the dating space. In a Nash equilibrium, individuals make decisions for on themselves based on what they think others will do, which ends up being negative for the collective group. Any unbalance completely throws off a Nash equilibrium.
In an article about Nash’s equilibrium and dating apps by “Hackernoon,” they use the “marriage supermarket” example to illustrate this extreme imbalance. They use the marriage supermarket to essentially say that, “in non co-operative markets with shared resources, small changes can trigger massive changes to individual incentives, leading to a mutually bad equilibrium state.” For users in a dating app, the “shared resource” is the attention of female users. With 60% of users being male and only 40% female in the United States, the equilibrium in these dating is greatly skewed. The great male/female imbalance on dating apps deters them from achieving their goal of matching as many men and women (in an example of a purely heterosexual app) together as possible. Men, being the heavy majority on the apps, often strategically contact as many women as possible in hopes to eventually get lucky. With no limit on how many women they can contact, this actually makes logical sense for men to do. However, this imbalance, which incentivizes men to contact more and more women, like the marriage supermarket exemplifies, creates a cycle that further worsens the equilibrium state.
Popular dating apps have not yet successfully conquered this issue of the Nash equilibrium, though many have begun trying. A newly emerging dating app called “Bumble” tries to combat this issue by only allowing women to send the first message. Another app called “Aisle,” only lets users connect with one another by purchasing “invites” in packs of 3 (for $33), 5 (for $50), and 7 (for $66). By monetizing invites, users are forced to think carefully about who they contact, making it much more meaningful to send/receive invites. Aisle clearly appeals more to users looking for something serious, prioritizing the quality of matches over quantity. The first app to successfully solve the issue of the Nash equilibrium could finally give users what they have been waiting for in a balanced dating app.
https://hackernoon.com/why-we-need-a-dating-app-that-understands-nashs-equilibrium-2dc4a862b47e