What Tinder does to your brain.

A new study explains how dating apps are changing people.

Source: Diego Cervo/Shutterstock

Dating Apps and websites have made it easier than ever to meet new people. A study has found that around a third of all marriages are concluded online. 72 percent of students already use Tinder, and 80 percent of Tinder users are millennials. It's worth taking a look at the social and personal consequences of getting to know people through our screens.

We like to look at hot people. When users open Tinder, they are confronted with a series of images. A study led by Vasily Klucharev from the F.C. Donders Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging in the Netherlands found that activity in the nucleus accumbens, a brain region involved in reward processing, is more active when people see attractive faces.

People believe that attractive people are more intelligent, sociable, competent, friendly and trustworthy. Even mothers are influenced by their appearance: A study by developmental psychologist Judith Langlois found that mothers show more affection to attractive babies.

Due to this Bias there are now services that allow users to upload photos that are rated by anonymous people. Services such as Photofeeler offer rating services for those who want to look attractive or professional or funny.

And consider the element of unpredictable rewards associated with using Tinder. Unpredictable Cause rewards more activity in the reward regions of the brain than rewards that we know are coming. Casino slot machines are an example of this effect. Players don't know when they will hit the jackpot when they pull a lever or press a button. They play knowing that at some point, but not exactly then, someone who pulls the lever will win.

Tinder works on the same principle: users do not know when they will meet a person they consider attractive when they swipe. And users do not know when a person they have been talking to will reply. In addition, a person's profile also appears in the apps of other users who are swiping, even if the person has not opened the app. This means that when users check their apps after a long period of time, they often find that they have received new matches. This unpredictable quality keeps users curious and addicted.

Recently, researchers have hypothesized that a single evaluation stream controls our decisions. There is a part of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) that seems to control how we evaluate our options.

After the value-based decision model the amygdala and the ventral striatum are activated in response to decisions. At the same time, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex records the subjective value, and the DLPFC modifies the weighting of each value. These modifications depend on a variety of factors, including delay discounting, diminishing marginal utility and cognitive biases. Therefore Self-control is not necessarily a question of impulse or deliberation. Rather, our brain integrates different values and assigns a weight to each value that is determined by our Targets depends.

For those who are eager to meet new romantic partners, their DLPFC assigns a higher weight to checking Tinder frequently.

Another potential problem with Tinder is the overload of choices. The psychologist Barry Schwarz has claims that too many options make it less likely that a decision will be made at all. Too much choice also reduces our certainty that a particular choice we make is the right one.article continues after advertising

One Study found that consumers were more likely to buy a jam if they were offered six flavors than if they were offered 30. And of those who bought a jam, those who were offered fewer flavors were more satisfied with their choice.

The phenomenon of the "Ghosting" has become widely known. It involves a person withdrawing from another person's life and ignoring their attempts to communicate. In a new study led by Gili Freedman at Dartmouth College, researchers surveyed 554 men and women about their dating experiences.

A quarter of respondents said they had been ghosting in the past, while a fifth said they had ghost someone else. With more opportunities to pursue a partner and less risk of reputational damage in one's social circle, it is possible that ghosting is on the rise.

In the past, when people met their partners through their peer groups, ghosting may not have been as common due to the social cost. Today, people no longer have to incur such costs.

If you interact with Tinder long enough, your brain's reaction to Tinder changes. Neurobiological models have Suggestions made that the algorithm of reward learning with Dopamine is connected.

When people receive a reward for the first time, the firing of dopamine neurons increases in response to the pleasant feeling they experience. Over time, the firing of dopamine neurons no longer increases in response to the reward itself, but to the reward predictor.

In other words: Once an association between cue and reward has been established, the cues that predict the reward increase dopamine release even more than the reward itself. The knowledge that something good will happen makes us feel more pleasure than the good thing itself.

Tinder makes use of the brain's reward system to get people hooked. Tinder sends notifications when a user has a new match. When users first receive such a notification, the firing rate of dopamine neurons only increases when the user sees the profile of the person they have matched with. Over time, however, the user may experience a reward response from the notification alone.

With the advent of dating apps, it's easier than ever to meet new romantic partners. In an essay on moral outrage on the internet, the Yale Neuroscientist Molly Crockett noted that technology companies claim that they merely provide platforms for social behavior without changing these behaviors.

The developers of dating apps also claim to make our lives easier without changing them. They don't seem to ask themselves whether they are changing our dating behavior or hijacking our neurobiology.

If users meet their true love on Tinder, delete the app and never use it again, Tinder's business model would be less successful. The company relies on users continuing to swipe.

It's up to tech companies and researchers to find ways to use dating apps safely and responsibly.

People can do what they can to avoid becoming addicted. Nevertheless, technology companies are spending vast sums of money to trick users.