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expanding the number of people that you can meet that um just creates the opportunity of meeting someone you might
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like who's not necessarily in your immediate social circle. But as we start to increase the the pool size even
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further especially in the mobile world where we have um virtually endless number of potential candidates that we
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can meet that's going to to effectively ultimately uh reflect on the the likelihood of a match likelihood of you
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meeting someone who will also meet you and and like you back and as a result actually increasing the pool size can
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have a negative impact on the on the match likelihood or the likelihood um finding or and and forming a positive
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relationship. >> Welcome to the Ripple Effect, the podcast that takes you on a journey
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through the minds of Wharton faculty. I'm your host, Dan Looney, and in each
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episode, we'll be diving deep into the inspiration behind the groundbreaking
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research that Wharton professors have conducted and exploring how their findings resonate with the world today.
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In the digital age that we live in, even dating has found its place with various
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websites for people to potentially connect in a way different than maybe historically we know that it has been
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the case. But how have those sites impacted things like marriages and the outcomes of those unions? Wharton
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professor Pinar Yilderum has been part of a group researching these components in a brand new study just released and
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she joins us right now. Penar, great to talk to you again. How are you? >> I'm great then. Thanks for having me.
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>> Just in general, these sites are obviously growing in usage. So understanding the types of impact that
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they are having, that's a very important component, a kind of a logical next step
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to understand just how much impact they're having. Yes, absolutely. The the impact of
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online dating apps, online dating platforms have been massive. If we look at the the technologies through which
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people meet. In fact, uh if you were to just go back about 20 years ago, online dating apps would be considered pretty
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much a stigma. Uh fast forward another 10 11 years around 2011 online dating platforms have uh taken over as the the
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majority way through which people meet and couples are formed. In fact in United States today about 50% of couples
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are formed through online dating platforms. So it's important to understand the the effects of these
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platforms on especially how relationships are formed and how the relationships uh might come to an end.
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So take us through the research and how you kind of went about it. >> So yeah, I mean we got curious naturally
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about the effects of these platforms on what kind of relationships are formed, what uh its impacts these the platforms
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impacts are on marriage and divorce rates as well as some health outcomes. We collected data from majority of the
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online dating platforms going back to about uh 2002. again focusing first on the the
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platforms that might have primarily operated through desktop and then later on focusing on the the mobile uh
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platforms, mobile apps. >> How important is it to make that differentiation between what we saw
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maybe two decades ago when we were basically living on our computers but it was a desktop to now where we are where
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the digital our smartphones uh are so important to us in our lives. It's important because we have uh seen
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significant changes as we went from the desktop platforms to to mobile phones where we have a very limited small
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screen. And I think the important question one needs to ask is especially compared to the offline methods of
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dating. How did these new technologies change the the way people interact with each other? And how does the desktop
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version of desktop technology of meeting others differ from the the mobile uh technology of of meeting romantic
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partners? And uh from an economic perspective, we have decided we have identified at least three ways through
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which we can think of these technologies to differ from the offline world. Of course, one is the the sort of the size
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of the pool of individuals that you might be able to reach out to through these platforms relative to the offline
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world. If you're only constrained in terms of meeting others um in in real world, that's going to reduce the number
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of people that you could interact with and the types of people that you can interact. You typically will be uh or
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you'll be more much more likely to meet individuals who might be nearby you and
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who might be much more similar to you. Whereas of course with the desktop platforms first and later on with the
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mobile apps we have dramatically expanded the pool size of whom we can meet and the number of people we can
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meet and and that has both positive and and negative effects. On the one hand of
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course expanding the number of people that you can meet that um just creates the opportunity of meeting someone you
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might like who's not necessarily in your immediate social circle. But as we start
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to increase the the pool size even further especially in the mobile world where we have um virtually endless
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number of potential candidates that we can meet that's going to to effectively
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ultimately uh reflect on the the likelihood of a match likelihood of you meeting someone who will also meet you
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and and invite you back. And as a result, actually increasing the pool size can have a negative impact on the
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on the match likelihood or the likelihood of um binding or and and forming a a positive relationship. Um it
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second factor is of course the the the noise or the uh potential information that you can identify about the
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individuals that you are meeting with. Even though we could meet endless number of people, the amount of information,
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the amount of true information that we can gather about these individuals is going to be fairly limited, especially
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because um in the the mobile world where we have very limited short profiles, the
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number of information pieces, the the amount of information that you can consume about a single individual is
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quite limited. So as we went from the the offline world into a desktop world, even though we could gather potentially
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more information about individuals in a short period of time, as we moved back to the mobile world, that information
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has significantly shrunk. So now we're looking at a potentially noisier world
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in terms of gathering information about people. At the same time a third factor this is how much time or how much effort
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we have to put into when it comes to trying to to g information about individuals or trying to source the
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profiles in real life if you wanted to meet I don't know 10 20 people in a single day that would be a very costly
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thing to do going meeting exerting effort to to get to learn about these individuals in uh the desktop world as
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well as the mobile world this has dramatically gone down the cost and effort uh in in fact in mobile world of course
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the test simply became a finger act just a simple swipe of trying to to interact
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and and learn about robots. So those factors um play a role when it comes to shaping relationships and that's one of
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the the things that we try to to address in our >> and so it's important obviously when
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you're trying to meet somebody is you want to get to know them as well as you
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can and part of getting to know them are kind of their behaviors and I'm wondering if if people's behaviors when
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you go from the desktop to the mobile have kind of advanced or adjusted as we've moved through the years as well.
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So people's behaviors might have changed and it might have changed in response to
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a number of different factors. Of course the design of these these uh platforms have changed as we moved from desktop to
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mobile. In the desktop era we have seen uh much uh much more information. When you looked at the profiles, typically
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you had uh many different pieces of information where people could write long essays about themselves, go into
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details about their personality, what they are looking for, and that created a perhaps um a a more informationful
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environment that might have changed how you interact with someone. If you can read and if you
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can learn a lot about somebody, of course, you might be much more likely to go into a maybe an interaction because
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you feel more comfortable in the mobile world. Now, our our attention was simply
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complying to this small screen that we have and whatever we could consume in that small screen um was practically the
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information that these apps demanded from us. they did not uh give the opportunity to to consumers or they did
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not necessarily ask consumers to fill in these very long profiles about themselves. They made it easier for
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people to to easily look at profiles but at the same time that reduce the amount
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of information that one can present about about themselves. So as a result of that you will anti you will expect
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it's normal to anticipate that the interactions between individuals are are naturally going to change and in the
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mobile world it might have disproportionately focused on some of the small pieces of information that
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became a little more salient maybe for instance the the image of the person or the educational background of the
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individual or the the job profile of the individual as these are commonly the type of information that are made a
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little more salient compared compared to some of the other therapists. I >> Is there a difference then in the
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behaviors when you're talking about who you're connected with, the the sex of
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the person you're connecting with, male versus female? >> Um, in terms of the the behaviors or the
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interactions, the outcomes that we can observe, we do not have data on the the the gender of the individuals. What we
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know is that when we look at just purely usage, we are able to observe that there
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are disproportionately more males on dating platforms compared to to females almost an 80 20% ratio. And this is
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something that again when you look at at least the anecdotal uh studies and and evidence you will typically see uh these
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these statistics um also confirm. But what we have seen at least uh or what one of the outcomes that we looked at
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was how relationship formation or the type of couples that are formed uh look like as online dating or dating
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platforms become more prevalent. So we looked at for instance um the the idea of uh a a female and a male again in a
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heterosexual couple how the characteristics of the the husband and how the character characteristics of the
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wife look like um in in regions where online dating was much more prevalent. And one of the things that we have seen
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was that um despite the fact that over many many decades we have seen increasing examples increasing evidence
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of sorting in uh marriage formation. What do I mean by that? We have seen over the years um more and more
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marriages where the wife and the husband would have similar educational profiles.
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>> They would have also more similar uh employment profiles. for instance, more
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and more couples would be both employed. We've seen actually that with online
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dating, the this trend is not necessarily followed or a a defying trend emerges uh from the couples that
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seem to be formed more likely to coming from the online dating environment. What
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do I mean by that? We have seen um lesser sorting in education where women seem to now be more comfortable marrying
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uh individuals who have lesser education that lower uh maybe a degree lower and we have seen also uh more and more
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formation of couples where both parties are not necessarily in labor force. We do see fewer uh dual earner couples
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coming out of the the dating profile. So that reflects a degree of asymmetry between the experiences of men and
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women. Um even though we do not observe exactly how these differences are reflected when individuals are engaging
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uh with with others on the dating platform. >> So having done this research now is
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there kind of a next logical step that you would like to take this research going down the road?
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>> So there are many questions that we still don't have answers to. We have
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answers to some questions about marriage. We have answers to some questions about the the sort of
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potential health outcomes. For instance, we observe that um especially in the mobile era. Marriages are are declining
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regions where online dating has become more prevalent and partially as a result of the declining marriages. We also know
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that we've also seen that divorces are declining. Um that was not necessarily
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the case when we looked at online dating in the desktop era. in the online in the
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early days of online dating seems like there are disproportionately more older users who seem to be driving higher
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levels of divorce. So what we would like to understand in some sense is this for
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instance uh decomposing this effect of declining marriages. What does that really mean? Do they mean um do we see
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potentially a delay in the marriage? Do we see uh couples becoming maybe more uh
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skeptical of of getting into a marriage or or forming relationships that may not
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necessarily result in a marriage and then also the implications of this. Just because marriages are declining that
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doesn't mean people are are less happy or they are not necessarily feeling good
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about their relationship outcomes. We don't unfortunately have right now a data to be able to link the the marriage
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and divorce outcomes to to people's well-being and how they feel about themselves, how they feel about their uh
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relationship status. We would love to be able to to also um have additional evidence, additional information,
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additional findings related to how uh the marriage and divorce outcomes are reflecting on people's status.
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>> Great PR, great to talk to you. Thanks very much. All the best. >> Thank you. Thank you as well.
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>> You You got it. Pinar Yodum who is a professor here at the Wharton School.
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>> Thank you for listening to the ripple effect. We hope you found this episode
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informative and engaging. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review so
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that we can continue to bring you the best insight from the Warden School.