Tinder: A Game with Gendered Rules and Consequences. (October 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Berkowitz, Dana; Tinkler, Justine; Peck, Alana; Coto, Lynnette
• Is Part Of: Social currents. Volume 8:Number 5(2021)
• Page Start: 491
• Page End: 509
• Publication Date: 2021-10
• Subjects: race -- gender -- and class -- sex and gender -- sexualities; Sociology -- Periodicals; 301
• DOI: 10.1177/23294965211019486
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2329-4965

Abstract

The popularity of Mobile Dating Applications has increased in recent years, with Tinder transforming the dating landscape for college students. Drawing upon 249 peer-facilitated interviews with college-age men and women, we explore how this population uses Tinder. Informed by social-psychological theory and research on impression management and stereotyping, we show how Tinder's marketing strategy and game-like platform appeal to college students' desires to reduce uncertainty and risk in forming romantic and intimate connections. However, by upending existing interaction norms, the Tinder environment creates new forms of ambiguity, which, in turn, incentivizes conformity to traditional heterogender norms and encourages racist and classist swiping behavior. Our study advances the literature on inequality and intimate marketplaces by generating insight about how contemporary dating and sexual scripts are constructed, accomplished, and negotiated when new technologies disrupt established patterns of interaction.