User:Jackie1236/Overchoice

Lead
People are faced with more options today than ever before, whether someone is choosing between grocery items, a health insurance plan, or a romantic partner. Although having more options to choose from may seem enticing at first, extensive choice can lead to paralysis, being unable to make any decision, and decreased satisfaction People tend to experience less benefits when they have more choice, which can be related to the economic principle of diminishing returns, which posits that each unit that is added to the production process results in less profits. Choice overload, the process of becoming overwhelmed and even paralyzed while making a choice, occurs most often when choice sets are excessively large. Online dating apps are one of the top most common ways for people to meet romantic partners, and they offer users the chance to interact with thousands of potential partner options almost instantly. The extent of this access to dating options can incur processes like choice overload, leading users to be unable to pick an unsatisfactory partner.

Commitment
Commitment is important to interpersonal relationships, as it is associated with relationship persistence, well-being, and satisfaction. Commitment readiness, described as how ready an individual feels for a committed relationship, is shaped by perceived frequency of available partners, and people are generally less ready to commit to a romantic relationship to the extent that they perceive they have many potential partners available to them. Dating apps such as Tinder boast more than 75 million monthly active users, meaning that any one user has access to thousands, if not more, potential partners. Additionally, the availability and access someone has to attractive alternatives, potential romantic partners, reduces their level of commitment to their current relationships.

Uses of online dating apps, why choice matters in online dating
Online dating and use of dating apps are the second most common way for people to meet a romantic partner, and exploring the behaviors, intentions, and processes that underly online dating. There are four primary motivations for using Tinder, a popular dating app, including for validation, in search of a relationship (both platonic and romantic), for casual sex, and for entertainment. Women are more likely to use Tinder and dating apps for entertainment and validation, while men are more likely to use the app for relationships and hookups. Despite peoples' intentions, the majority of Tinder users never meet their matches face to face, and if they do, the in-person interaction is a 'one-time-thing'.

Without capturing and maintaining users' attention, mobile dating app companies are unable to build their consumer base. Dating apps utilize gamification strategies to increase and retain users, such as the physical act of swiping on profiles or counting matches as points. These mobile applications are designed to elicit "fleeting way[s] of perceiving the world", and may unintentionally encourage automatic responses from users that escape processes of critical thinking, detailed analysis, and careful attention to the presented profiles. Due to the nature of dating apps as lacking verification of information, all of the information presented on individuals' profiles is what game theorists refer to as "cheap talk", or information that is costless for the sender to provide. This costless "cheap talk" combined with dating apps' gamification that encourages inattentive searching leads consumers to exhibit automatic responses and passively search through potential partner options.

Swiping behaviors
Swiping through countless profiles of potential partners can have adverse effects on partner choice, satisfaction with options, and personal fit of the chosen partner. While searching through profiles in an online dating scenario for the best partner, individuals spent more time searching through the profiles and evaluating poor choice options. They also had a lower likelihood of selection a potential partner that had the best personal fit to themselves when they were presented with more partner profiles compared to fewer profiles. More searching behaviors lead to unsatisfactory choices while online dating by reducing users' cognitive resources, distracting them with irrelevant information and reducing their ability to screen out inferior options. Individuals that have high maximizing tendencies show more pronounced searching behaviors than individuals with low maximizing tendencies, called satisficers. The negative effects of excessive searching on decision making was found to be more prominent for maximizers than for satisficers in terms of final choices and selectivity. Additionally, satisficers may search minimally through their options not because they are less particular or simply care less about their choices, but because they feel incapable of choosing from so many options, and experience choice overload or choice paralysis. When people care about a decision they are making, their heart rate increases and beats harder, and the degree to which people are confident in their choices is represented in the degree to which their blood vessels dilate. When using online dating apps with a large number of profiles to choose from, peoples' heart rates and blood vessels revealed that they were experiencing their choices as more important and more overwhelming than a sample of few options.

In fact, minimal searching and fast decision making may act as defense mechanisms from having to think critically about the choices being presented. Furthermore, these processes may result in consumers ultimately choosing dissatisfying partners. Despite having very clear preferences for characteristics of an ideal partner, most dating app users contact people who bear no resemblance to the ideal partner characteristics that they say they want when posed with too many options.

Rejection Mindset
A rejection mindset is a documented phenomenon that occurs with an excessively large choice set, and entails frequent rejection of options despite actual benefits or characteristics of the options. While using online dating formats, people become increasingly likely to reject potential partners, especially after the first dozen profiles are viewed. Additionally, people experience decreases in satisfaction with the profile options, and decreases in perceptions of their dating success. A set of potential partner choices ideally consists of 20 to 50 options. This rejection mindset tends to be stronger for women than men, despite the fact that women are more likely to reject partner options due to evolutionary pressures.