Does Your Education Level Matter On Tinder?
Are you more swipe-worthy because of a degree?
More and more couples are getting to know each other online.
However, the online dating game seems to be rigged against the average man.
Statistics show that significantly more men than women are active on dating platforms. Another complicating factor is that women hand out far fewer likes. To have a chance with the relatively few and choosy women, a man has to look good. That’s all that matters on Tinder.
Or maybe it isn’t? Maybe the level of education also plays a role?
Researchers have investigated this in a study.
The Study
The researchers from Belgium created 24 made-up Tinder profiles that differed only in the criterion studied: the education level.
In the publication, the different education levels are described as follows:
The four degrees of education level that were used, i.e. the four treatments, were the following, ranked from highest to lowest:•
Master (5 years) in Business Engineering (hereafter: ‘Ma+’)
Master (4 years) in Public Administration and Management (hereafter: ‘Ma–’)
Bachelor (3 years) in Business Management (hereafter: ‘Ba+’)
Bachelor (3 years) in Office Management (hereafter: ‘Ba–’).
In Flanders, the region of Belgium where the study was conducted, Master’s degrees are earned at universities while Bachelor’s degrees are attained at less prestigious colleges.
The ranking of the different degrees is based on the expected salary. People with a master’s degree in business engineering earn the most and those with a bachelor’s degree in office management the least.
Results
In fact, it turned out that men with a better degree and thus a higher income did better. However, this was not the case for women.
It seems like women care about a man’s education but men don’t really care about the education of women when it comes to dating.
The publication states:
Based on a sample of 3600 Tinder profile evaluations, we found that education level matters only substantially when female Tinder users evaluate male Tinder profiles, and not vice versa. This finding is in line with previous literature from multiple fields that found that women have a higher preference for a highly educated partner who in turn has a higher earnings potential.
Evolutionary Preference For High Earning Men
Various statistics show that women want a partner who earns more than they do. So you could call them hypergamous.
This is not a bad thing, but rather an evolutionary preference that is anchored in our genes. In the times in which we have evolved as a species, this preference was pretty beneficial for the survival of the children.
This article deals with this phenomenon in more detail.
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