Despite a growing population of single older adults, past research and theory on romantic relationship formation has primarily focused on younger adults. Online dating has become an increasingly prevalent context for both older and younger adults to form romantic relationships. Nonetheless, adults of different ages may have different motivations for seeking dating partners. Using a framework of agency and communion to synthesize disparate literatures on personal goals, evolutionary motivations, and socioemotional motivations across the lifespan, the current research focuses on age differences in self-presentations in 4000 online dating profiles sampled from two popular online dating websites. Themes in these profiles were identified using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software (LIWC; Pennebaker, Booth & Francis, 2007). Regression analyses revealed significant associations between age and word use. Older adults were more likely to use first person plural pronouns (e.g. we, us, our), reflecting a focus on connectedness as well as words associated with health and positive emotion. Younger adults were more likely to emphasize the self, using more first person pronouns and were more likely to use words associated with work and achievement. Results suggest younger adults focus on enhancing the “self” when seeking romantic partnership. Consistent with theories of adult development, older adults are more positive in their profiles and appear to focus more on the “self” as embedded in relationships. / text

Using the internet to meet dating partners is increasingly popular and may have ramifications that are not yet fully realized. Although many dating sites have been operating for years, new online dating platforms continue to draw millions of new users. By using a large sample of people who use online dating platforms (n=1,286) we identified similarities and differences in what motivates people to use geosocial apps and dating sites. Motivations previously considered in the literature were supported and brought together in a single theory driven confirmatory factor analysis for each type of dating platform. A motivation to seek amusement was a latent factor unique to geosocial app use. Implications for researchers, clinicians, and dating platform users and developers may include helping users be better matched to others who have similar motivations to improve the online dating experience.

Prior research has found a connection between dispositional factors such as rejection sensitivity and introversion and online dating behaviors including likelihood of use (Blackhart et al., 2014) and experience of use (Finkel et al., 2012; Whitty, 2008). The present study expands upon prior research to examine the relationship between these dispositional factors, and the impact of the possibility of explicit rejection on self-disclosure in participant-created dating app profiles. Adults between the ages of 18 and 60 will be introduced to an online dating app manipulated to contain either high or low potential for obvious rejection. Participants will then be asked to create a personal online profile. Participant perceptions of their own self-disclosure in the self-created profile as well as their disposition (introversion and rejection sensitivity) will be measured. It is hypothesized that rejection sensitive individuals as well as those rating lower in extraversion will report higher levels of self-disclosure in a non-explicit rejection dating app setting in comparison to an explicit rejection setting. The present research has implications for the field’s understanding of the experience of online dating app use for individuals as related to varying dispositional factors.

Sociologists have long studied mate choice patterns to understand the shape of stratification systems. Romantic pairing involves intimacy and trust, and is therefore a prime indicator of the extent to which members of different social groupings (race/ethnicity, social class, education, religion) accept each other as social equals. The majority of this literature focuses on marriage, given the commitment marriage implies and the availability of nationally-representative data. In this dissertation, I examine the opposite end of the relationship spectrum: The initial screening and sorting process whereby strangers consider each other as potential mates; express interest in some subset of this population but not others; and find that this interest is or is not reciprocated. This beginning stage in mate choice is particularly important for our understanding of social boundaries because personality factors are likely to matter less and social characteristics to matter more. Yet because these initial forays into relationships are typically unobserved, we know very little about whom people consider as potential mates in the first place. I ask the following questions, corresponding to three empirical chapters: First, how do individuals from different status backgrounds vary in the types of strategies that they pursue and the degree of success that they achieve? Second, what underlying dynamics of homophily, competition, and gender asymmetry give rise to observed patterns of interaction, and under what circumstances do some of these boundaries break down? Third, how do strategies as well as preferences vary at different stages of selection, and at what point is homogeneity created? To answer these questions, I use detailed longitudinal data from a popular online dating site. These data are particularly useful for the study of social inequality not only due to the unique quantity and nature of information that is available, but also because online dating has become one of the primary ways that singles meet and marry today. / Sociology

Guided by a conceptual framework regarding how relationships experience points of transition, this research explored individuals’ perceptions of their online romantic relationship’s transition from a casual to serious relationship in comparison to how individuals in face-to-face romantic relationships experience points of transition. Participants were asked to answer questions regarding their perceptions of relational characteristics during different points in their relational transition. Perceptions regarding intimacy, relationship uncertainty, partner interference, directness of communication, topic avoidance, turmoil, deception and met expectations were assessed. Additionally, individuals in both online and face-to-face relationships responded to questions regarding their relationship status, commitment, length, proximity and other demographic questions. Results indicated that individuals in online relationships perceive more intimacy and less uncertainty prior to a transition while perceiving less intimacy and more uncertainty after a transition than face-to-face relationships. Relationships uncertainty was associated with topic avoidance and turmoil in online romantic relationships. Further results and the relevance of perceptions of relational characteristics on online transitioning relationships are discussed. / text

The purpose of this creative project is to report on the beginning stage of a heuristic analysis project. The purpose is to examine the problem of declining marriage numbers that face the Protestant Evangelical community, and address that dilemma in the design criteria of an online dating website. Clarifying values will be part of the analysis of the Evangelical culture inequities. In particular, by assessing Evangelical culture to form the basis of site design, and making recommendations of action that can free it from its current constraints with respect to online dating. A study of the Marry Well Website will include investigating the perceived problems by the laity in connection with online dating. The research here is predictive in nature, in that the study creates a set of questions that can set in motion further research. / Department of Telecommunications

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2009. / On title page, [heart] is represented by a graphic art symbol. Open access. Includes bibliographical references (p. 42-44).

Prior research suggests that rejection sensitive individuals may find it easier to express their true selves in an online environment. The purpose of the present study was to further examine the influence of true self, which is who a person believes he or she truly is, on the relationship between rejection sensitivity and online dating site usage. Additionally, the present study investigated the role of self-disclosure in online dating site usage. Five-hundred sixty one participants completed an online survey. Consistent with prior research, results indicated that rejection sensitivity and true self predicted online dating site usage. Further, true self partially mediated the relationship between rejection sensitivity and online dating site usage. Self-disclosure in online environments, however, did not influence the relationship between rejection sensitivity and online dating site use. In addition, for those who engaged in online dating, rejection sensitivity was not related to self-disclosure in online dating profiles or in communicating with individuals met through online dating sites. True self, though, was related to both self-disclosure in online dating profiles and in communication with those met through online dating sites. These findings suggest that rejection sensitive individuals are more likely to engage in online dating because it may facilitate representation of their “true” selves. Furthermore, rejection sensitivity may not facilitate individuals’ self-disclosure in online environments, whereas the desire to share one’s “true” self may facilitate self-disclosure in online environments.

Modern, technologically-enabled markets are disrupting many industry sectors, including transportation, labor, lodging, dating services and others. While the system operator is able to collect data and deploy various control levers, these systems are highly complex, marked by a large number of interacting self-interested agents, uncertainty about the future and imperfect demand predictions. There remain major challenges in optimizing these marketplaces. In this dissertation, I describe work designing novel algorithms and performing theoretical analysis of networked systems, including those that arise in marketplaces. I demonstrate how to use tools from applied probability, modern optimization, and economics to develop methodologies for online decision making in contexts such as queueing control, revenue management, and running a matching platform. The first part of the dissertation designs novel algorithms for dynamic assignment and revenue management. The work considers networked systems where agents or tasks arrive over time, which is broadly relevant to service platforms with heterogeneous services, for instance shared transportation systems. Firstly, we propose a near optimal ``mirror backpressure'' control methodology for joint entry/assignment/pricing control in a network where there are a fixed number of supply units (vehicles), and demands with different origin and destination nodes arrive over time. The MBP policy does not need demand arrival rate predictions at all, and we prove guarantees of near optimal performance over a finite horizon. Secondly, we study a special case of the network control problem where the geographical imbalances in demand are small enough such that, ignoring stochasticity, they can be corrected using assignment control alone. The objective is to minimize the fraction of customers who are ``lost'' (not served) because there is no vehicle at a nearby location when the customer arrives. We show that for this setting we can achieve a refined notion of optimality, i.e., the large deviations optimality. The second part of the dissertation analyzes equilibria in matching markets under different mechanisms. Firstly, we study the Gale-Shalpley ``deferred acceptance'' algorithm, which has been successfully adopted in contexts such as school choice and resident matching programs. Our research question is, ``Which Gale-Shapley matching markets exhibit a short-side advantage?'' I.e., in which markets does being on the short side of the market allow agents to obtain better match partners relative to a similar ``balanced'' market with equal numbers of agents on the two sides? We address this problem by looking at the ``random matching market'' model where each agent considers only a subset of potential partners on the other side, and sharply characterize the resulting (nearly unique) stable matching, overcoming significant technical challenges. Secondly, we study the waiting-list mechanism, which is commonly used in kidney assignment, public housing allocation, and beyond. We show that the waiting-list mechanism is near-optimal in terms of allocative efficiency for general systems with an arbitrary number of agent types and item types, and obtain tight bound on the efficiency loss. Comparing to existing works which could only analyze very simple systems, we tackle the general case by taking a completely different approach and establishing a novel connection with stochastic gradient descent.

Although prior research has examined how individual difference factors are related to relationship initiation and formation over the Internet (e.g., online dating sites, social networking sites), little research has examined how dispositional factors are related to other aspects of online dating. The present research therefore sought to examine the relationship between several dispositional factors, such as Big-Five personality traits, self-esteem, rejection sensitivity, and attachment styles, and the use of online dating sites and online dating behaviors. Rejection sensitivity was the only dispositional variable predictive of use of online dating sites whereby those higher in rejection sensitivity are more likely to use online dating sites than those lower in rejection sensitivity. We also found that those higher in rejection sensitivity, those lower in conscientiousness, and men indicated being more likely to engage in potentially risky behaviors related to meeting an online dating partner face-to-face. Further research is needed to further explore the relationships between these dispositional factors and online dating behaviors.