If you’re on Tinder, you’ve probably come across a fair share of dudes who are looking for an easy hookup and are clearly in a relationship outside of the dating app. It sucks when you’re legitimately looking for love and come across unfaithful jerks who are looking for some side action, but it’s more than just annoying—turns out, it can actually be kinda dangerous.
A new study published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior discovered a link between people on Tinder who are actually already in committed relationships and psychopathy. Study author Elisabeth Timmermans of Erasmus University Rotterdam was shocked by the statistic that roughly 18-25% of Tinder users actually have partners already and was interested in the motivations of that portion of users.
To find out, they surveyed 1,486 Tinder users to find out why they were on the app. A rather high 22% of users admitted that they were already in a relationship, and roughly 50% of that 22% actually want to see what all the fuss of dating apps is about. In other words, they seem to be suffering a bit of FOMO.
“They reported significantly lower scores on using Tinder to find a romantic partner (probably because they are already in a relationship), using Tinder to find new friends or broaden the social circle, using Tinder while travelling, using Tinder to forget about the ex-partner, to increase their social and flirting skills, and out of peer pressure, compared to single users,” Timmermans explained.
“Interestingly, no differences were found for using Tinder as an ego boost, entertainment, or to find casual sex. Such findings indicate that partnered Tinder users are as likely as single Tinder users to use a dating app to boost their ego and look for casual sex!”
More important were the personality differences between the single and partnered users, with partnered users scoring consistently lower on qualities like agreeableness and conscientiousness and far higher on negative traits like neuroticism and psychopathy. Those same people were way more likely to be using the app to look for an easy hookup compared to single users. WTF?
That being said, Timmermans admit the study wasn’t entirely foolproof.
“One major limitation here is that we did not specifically ask these users whether they reported on these outcomes while in a committed relationship. It thus might be possible that they are also reporting on these behaviors while being single. As we did not measure this and did not have information on relationship length either, we are a bit cautious about claiming that partnered Tinder users are more likely to cheat on their partner. Yet, we are currently working on follow-up research to address these issues and provide a better answer to this question. Especially as dating apps are relatively new it is important to better estimate their influence on committed relationships and infidelity.”
Either way, be safe out there—you never know who might be on the other end of your right swipe.
