Algorithm awareness in online dating: associations with mate-searching difficulty and future expectancies among U.S. online daters

ABSTRACT

Prior research has produced contradictory findings regarding online daters’ potential to navigate the algorithmic systems to find compatible matches. Drawing upon a structuration algorithm media effects model, we examine whether online daters with a higher level of algorithm awareness experience less online mate-searching difficulty and report more optimism and hope after using online dating services. Analysing data from a national representative sample of American online daters (N = 871), we found that, in general, algorithm awareness was negatively related to mate-searching difficulty, which was negatively related to optimism but not hope. In addition, the relationship between algorithm awareness and mate-searching difficulty was stronger among female users than male users in our sample. The findings suggest a potentially positive role of algorithm awareness in promoting immediate online mate-searching experience on current dating platforms used by American online daters. We further discuss the implications on the role of algorithm awareness and positive immediate mate-searching experience in relation to more long-term outcomes, which calls for a dialectic view of algorithm awareness and immediate online success.

KEYWORDS:

• Dating app
• explainable artificial intelligence
• platform
• digital intimacy
• emotion
• well-being

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank Dr. Amanda Holmstrom, the handling editor, and the anonymous reviewers for providing valuable feedback for the earlier versions of this manuscript.

Data availability

The data used in this study is from the Pew Research Center and is publically accessible at https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/dataset/american-trends-panel-wave-56/

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 While acknowledging that there can be other attributes of sex than male and female, this exploratory study builds on previous literature to first propose and examine differences between the aforementioned two attributes and encourage future studies to expand on the scope of investigation.

2 As the norms on sex roles may be exerted on only heterosexual users but also non-heterosexual users, the aforementioned differences can be extended to non-heterosexual online daters. For example, studies found that gay men can be more sensation-seeking and less interested in monogamy than lesbian women while lesbian women can be more focused on intimacy and monogamy (Klinkenberg & Rose, 1994; Potârcă et al., 2015). The group comparison analysis was also run without non-heterosexual cases in the dataset. The results of hypothesis testing (i.e. regarding which hypotheses were supported and which not) remained the same.

3 In online dating research, researchers tend to assume that individuals are aware of how dating apps or online dating sites make them feel, thus adopting similar measures to what was used in this study. For example, Her and Timmermans (2021) and Hu and Rui (2023) assessed post-dating app use affects (e.g. “How frequently do you feel sad after using dating apps?’).