The Influence of Gender Stereotypes on the Decision of Tinder Users to Сhoose the Profile of a Potential Partner

Online Dating service as Tinder is a dynamically developing tool for romantic communication. The success of communication within the service largely depends on the way the user's profile data is presented. If there is a limited amount of information, it is needed to specify the most significant personal characteristics, which will maximize the popularity of the profile among service members. Creating a profile is a preliminary communication in the context of the Tinder platform. In the scientific environment, two main concepts of the emergence of romantic attraction are described, which are projected on the communicative strategies of preliminary communication: the strategy of similarity and the strategy of complementarity. These strategies are based on gender congruence, namely, the compliance of the profile description with stereotypes about traditional gender roles. However, there is no consensus in the scientific discussion as to which hypothesis is the dominant one. The purpose of the study was to test the hypothesis that gender congruence of a profile positively affects the attractiveness of a profile on the online Dating service Tinder. Two surveys were conducted for the study. In the first survey, a random sample of photos was evaluated in order to pre-evaluate their physical attractiveness. For the second survey, synthetic profiles with varying degrees of gender congruence were compiled. Also, for the purpose of creating a profile from sources, elements of the verbal description of the profile that are characteristic of gender roles were selected. According to the results of the experimental study, the original hypothesis was not confirmed: congruence in most cases negatively affected the attractiveness of profiles. The work consists of three chapters: the first two chapters provide an analysis of literary sources, and the third chapter describes the empirical part.