Who makes better and quicker online dating decisions?

Evolutionary psychology suggests that overall, men are less selective than women when it comes to mate selection.  The current study sought to test this assumption within an online dating environment. We predicted that men would take less time to make a date preference compared to women, and secondly that men would make a greater number of positive choices compared to women.  We also predicted that the attractiveness of potential dates would have a greater effect on men's decisions than on those of women.  A 2 (gender) x 3 (attractiveness level) mixed design, was employed with choice decision time and number of positive and negative responses to potential dates as dependent variables with impulsivity scores included as covariates. Participants were presented with 30 photographs and asked to indicate whether they would be interested in dating that person, responding yes or no.  The results showed that when controlling for impulsivity men made significantly more positive choices compared to women yet took significantly longer to make decisions comparted to women.  The findings are consistent with existing research in this area and increase our understanding of male and female behaviour on dating apps.