Navigating Dating in the Pandemic: Game Theory, Nash Equilibrium, and Dominant Strategies in the world of dating apps
With the COVID-19 Pandemic, the last thing many people wanted was to feel lonely with the already mandated isolation that came with the lockdown. People took to dating apps in order to fill the void quarantine created. Cristina Gravery wrote the article, “Online Dating like a Game Theorist” for those who wanted to effectively find a partner through one of these dating apps using game theory. Gravery is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Copenhagen.
In class we discussed the idea of games in order to optimize our costs and benefits. In this case the game is finding a partner in hopes of feeling less alone. The game is played between two rational (sometimes) decision-makers. There is limited information on the people that are being swiped on such as their name, three to four pictures, a quick description, and perhaps some demographics. There is also a limited set of actions (you swipe left or you swipe right).
Game theory is ultimately a game of decision: what will bring me the best results? The first step to choosing the best results for yourself is deciding on a dating app. Tinder is the most well-known dating app which offers a large user base and thus a greater number of potential matches. However, this leads to matching with people who may be less serious. Hyper-specialized dating apps such as Veggly where you can match with vegan singles is great as you meet people based off of an important interest of yours, but it narrows the dating pool greatly.
Next you need to set up a strategy for swiping and matching with the right match. After setting up your dating preferences such as geographic proximity, age, gender, and sometimes even race, it is important to identify the dominant strategy. If you’re looking to gain as many matches as possible (as one would if they’re lonely), the dominant strategy would be to always swipe right on everyone.
If we look at dating apps’ connection to game theory at the larger, de-personalized scale, we see that there is not an overall Nash equilibrium. There is an imbalance in dating apps as women are disproportionately reached out to while men rarely get a message. The dating app Bumble, founded in 2014, combats this issue by only allowing women to send the first message.