Believe it or not, the behavior of users who use the Internet or various online applications is increasingly valued by Psychology as an important source of data about how we are and how we act. If, in addition, this online behavior is related to our most emotional and instinctive side, so much the better.

Tinder is one of the most popular linking applications at the moment. The simplicity of its use, added to the large number of users who use it around the world, makes it a recurring option for those people who want to meet people for sexual or romantic purposes.

But just because Tinder is popular doesn’t mean it’s fair or equitable. In fact, there is evidence that for most men with high expectations about their chances of finding someone they find very attractive, this application could be a waste of time. This is because Tinder is one of the most unequal ecosystems depending on whether you are a man or a woman, as we will see.

Why Tinder is unfair to men, according to one study

What is done in Tinder is, basically, to make a quick filtering of users, separating those that interest us from those that do not with a simple finger movement (left or right). This way, we can chat only with the people we have “accepted” and who, in turn, when our user profile appears, have selected us.

On the other hand, Tinder can be understood as an economy . Here, instead of monetary units, there are “likes”, and the richer people are those who have been accepted by a larger number of users, which means a greater chance of meeting someone interesting.

Well, a recent research shows that women make “like” 12% of the men whose profile appears to them in Tinder. However, this does not mean at all that every man will be accepted at least once in 10 times that his picture appears to a user, since the vast majority of “likes” go to a minority of men: only the most attractive ones. This is a pattern that does not occur in reverse, in the selection behavior that men use.

To what extent is there inequality in this application to link?

From what can be estimated in this simple study, the inequality between the “likes” received by less attractive men and the most attractive ones is absolutely overwhelming even if we compare it with those received by women at each of the beauty extremes (estimated according to the opinions of the people in charge of selecting them).

In particular, the conclusions of this research show that, if we order the men using Tinder making the first ones the most attractive and the last ones the least attractive, 80% of them starting from the end (less attractive) compete for 22% of the women starting also from the end , while 78% of the women starting from the most attractive compete for the “top” 20% of the men.

Thus, the minority of men who are rated as especially attractive will be accepted by 20% of women, while those who are slightly less attractive will have significantly less “wealth in likes”. This decline will continue to be pronounced as we move on to men who are considered not especially attractive, and will be especially bait for the less attractive 50% .

Tinder’s Gini coefficient

The Gini coefficient is a widely used tool for measuring the degree of inequality in the world’s various economic systems. Its value is between 0 and 1, with 0 being the number that corresponds to systems in which there is no inequality and 1 being what is obtained when analysing economies in which all the wealth belongs to one individual and the rest have nothing.

What is Tinder’s Gini index taking into account the data obtained by this research? Its value is 0.58, which makes its economy more unequal than 95% of all countries in the world, sharing position with nations like Namibia, Angola or Botswana. Fortunately, the ability of a population to find food and shelter does not depend on the mechanics of this application to link.

Why does this difference occur?

There are several ways of understanding this difference between the behavior of the two sexes. However, the one that usually has more force when explaining this kind of differentiation is the one that starts from evolutionary psychology . From this perspective, there are many researchers who maintain that both in our species and in the vast majority of animals that reproduce sexually, males compete for females because the reproductive value of the latter is always greater.

The reason? In addition to playing their part in the formation of the zygote, they carry the hardest part of reproduction on their backs: creating the largest, most expensive and therefore limited number of gametes, and in many cases remaining in a vulnerable situation during pregnancy .

In this sense, the males must be the ones who compensate for their lack of commitment to reproduction by competing hard with the rest of the males in terms of the number of females, while the latter concentrate on selecting according to the quality of each male.