This Writer dreams of Roses on his Hinge profile

Ethan Loh Wen Hao

The subject of love is one that humankind has waxed poetics and dissected its complexities since, well the start of humankind. It seems to hit especially hard when you are in university –  a turbulent, transitional period in your life where it seems like one of the many complex questions you have to tackle on top of so many others on your plate. 

Thankfully, as with many complex issues, Economics saves the day by helping to simplify the topic. After all, for all the complications of love, it can still be simplified down into a desire, a want. And isn’t Economics at its most fundamental level an attempt to allocate our limited resources to satisfy our wants and needs? Thus, the power of market forces can help untangle some of the complexities behind our quest for love, particularly with a modern tool in its arsenal: dating apps.

A unique problem

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Let’s clarify a few things about the dating market. It is a unique market, less similar to the grocery stores and shops we browse through and more similar to markets like the job market.¹ This is because of a few distinctive features. Most markets operate by allowing us to browse through a range of different items, and purchase the one that maximises our happiness given our fixed budget. However, the issue with forming a relationship with someone is that you are simultaneously a consumer and a producer. You might be looking for a relationship to fulfil desires you have, but the person you’re on a date with is also evaluating whether you are a suitable candidate to fulfil their own wants and desires. So it is not just about picking the person you feel satisfies your standards and desires, but also finding a person who views you as an attractive enough commodity to desire being in a relationship with you. In short, there needs to be a Double Coincidence of Wants for the relationship to occur.

Economists reading this might immediately recognise the issue, because this was how the Barter system operated and why it eventually needed to be replaced with Money. When humans used to trade by swapping goods with one another, an inefficiency arose in finding someone who had exactly what you wanted and wanted the exact things you could offer. The problems of the barter system were eventually solved with money — a medium of exchange that provided a standardised value for every good in terms of every other good, saving time on having to find a person willing to trade with exactly what you wanted.

But here’s an obvious issue with applying this solution to dating markets - there is no perfect substitute for any individual, because the beauty of being human is that we are all unique people who value different things in people. What is the value of one person’s kindness and loyalty to their friends compared to another person’s passion for the environment? It is impossible and frankly, unwise to attempt to implement a currency on the dating market to simplify our search, because in the end the object of this valuation is other people.

The seduction of more, faster, easier

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This is where the power of dating apps comes in. The fundamental issues with dating markets mean the search costs for finding love are especially high, and dating apps primarily work by lowering these costs, with their convenient access to millions of other users with the literal touch of a finger (Tinder alone had over 75 million users as of 2023).² This access to a significant pool of potential partners from the convenience of our devices conserves a large chunk of time that may be spent attending social activities and deliberately putting ourselves in places to meet potential partners. With dating apps, we have dedicated sites to browse through eligibles we know are also looking for relationships. Not just that, there are even preference systems on many dating apps that allow us to filter for characteristics we desire.

The use of dating apps are also particularly useful to marginalised or minority groups who may struggle to find others with similar backgrounds in daily life. For example, according to the Economist, the Internet is how about 70% of same-sex pairings occurred as of 2018, due in part to social constraints in many countries making it easier and safer to meet online.³ There are online dating groups for even the most idiosyncratic preferences, such as bikers, Furries, mullet enthusiasts, etc. (I mean, it is the Internet.) This abundance of choice also means we aren’t limited to people within our social circle and can look for connections that may matter more: things like shared values and attitudes to life. According to a 2013 study from Harvard and the University of Chicago, marriages that started online were even less likely to break up and associated with higher satisfaction levels.⁴

The thorns in digital roses?

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So it seems like dating apps are wholly a net positive - a tool that makes the difficult search for love more convenient and accessible by providing a resource to connect with people beyond their social circle, particularly benefitting the marginalised. 

On the other hand, friends have often complained of the exhaustion of filtering through countless matches, sustaining conversations with multiple people, going on all these dates, and if the process doesn’t work having to redo the cycle all over again. They say it is overwhelming but strangely addictive, because it can be so fun swiping through profiles of attractive people and finding someone who matches with you, but it takes such significant work building a connection beyond that initial match. So why is that the case?

Earlier in the article I said that we often try to find people who fit our standards and desires when choosing the appropriate person to date, kind of treating people almost like commodities when swiping through dating apps. However, according to the Association for Psychological Science, such a marketplace mentality is likely to foster the belief that the characteristics of the potential partner before dating make a relationship successful, when research shows it is less about that and more about the context and interactions between the two parties that have a more significant impact on relationship success.⁵

The issue with this marketplace mentality within the context of dating apps is that it disincentivises romantic growth — the process of working through challenges in the relationship — that is one of the strongest factors behind a relationship’s longevity.⁶ It’s not hard to see why. With the abundance of people on dating apps and the ease of scrolling through hundreds of profiles daily, there is a strong temptation to exit a relationship whenever problems crop up because of the significant ease of finding someone else. The search costs are dramatically lowered and honestly, the opportunity costs of staying together  have never seemed higher.

However, the lowering of search costs might ironically cause more problems for the search for love. When going on dating apps, one rapid realisation is that there are simply too many fish in the sea. Thus, we often resort to time-efficient but minimally thoughtful strategies to filter through these vast amounts of information to match with people. Who actually listens to all those voice prompts on Hinge or looks up those obscure references to TV shows people make? I have been guilty myself on multiple occasions of swiping left and right solely based on a hot picture, which admittedly isn’t the best way to assess a potential partner.

In “How to Date like a Game Theorist”, Christian Gravert rightfully notes that dating is a game, and the dominant strategy (best strategy for all players) is usually to swipe right as often as possible to try and increase the probability of a match.⁷ However, this tactic can often mean it is hard to distinguish whether a person is genuinely interested or simply playing the numbers game. Ironically, this may also transform the convenience of dating apps into an inconvenience, as while the search costs of matching are significantly lowered, there are now additional costs associated with filtering through all those matches and suffering through the administrative work of countless dry conversations before finding one that genuinely clicks. This is the Paradox of Choice - the idea that having too many options can actually overwhelm us and make it difficult to choose.⁸

Good enough!

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Of course, many dating apps have attempted to solve this dilemma. One solution is using signalling strategies - designed to demonstrate interest in the other party by deliberately doing activities that cost a lot of effort. Think about Hinge, which makes you fill in at least 3 prompts and only gives you one free Rose a week. The implementation of this artificial scarcity helps signal to the other person you are especially committed to them, making you stand out. (Hinge also makes good money from these Roses. One of them costs $3.99, but what is that small sum compared to the priceless win of finding your soulmate?)

Conversely, maybe the problem is regarding our attitude towards dating in general. We established that the biggest predictors for relationship success had less to do with the person’s pre-existing attributes and personality traits, but more about the collective compromises and attitudes the 2 parties take into the relationship. In his article, “The Tyranny of Choice”, Barry Schwartz even points out the way out of this might be to adopt a mentality of “good enough”, where a person may fulfil an adequate amount of our standards to make us more happy being in a relationship with them than without, but not to suffer the anxiety that there might be someone else out there who may be a better fit for us, and thus neglect that willingness to grow and put in the work that is required for the relationship to succeed.

Then again love will forever be a challenging and complicated endeavour. Dating apps are just a tool to help us on this quest. Although they have a lot of benefits, such as drastically reducing search costs and helping many marginalised and minority groups find connections difficult to occur in daily life, they also come with their own flaws, such as the overwhelming choice they provide and the mentality they foster in people. I don’t see dating apps going anywhere anytime soon; if anything they seem to be increasingly an integral part of our modern day quest for love. The solution seems to be to accept it, and to soldier on in this fraught quest for love. I know I will, and although the journey won’t be easy, a rose from Hinge certainly wouldn’t hurt…