The Psychology of Dating Apps: And What People Are Really Using Them For

The Attachment Project asked 44,435 people about what sits behind their swiping, and explored how this relates to attachment patterns, self-esteem, and emotion regulation.

The dating scene has changed radically over the last 20 years, with the emergence of dating apps as a popular way to search for love. You don’t have to think long to remember someone you know who met their partner on a dating app. Regardless of whether they’re in a long-term, loving relationship or one of the earlier stages, it’s still a common way for partners to meet. But success on dating apps is variable; while it is possible to find love, there are increasing complaints that dating apps are not adapting to meet the needs of the next generation of ‘daters’.

In 2025, researchers systematically reviewed the literature regarding dating apps and well-being impacts published between 2016 and 2023. They found that across 45 studies, most found negative impacts of dating apps on users’ body image, and around half reported negative impacts on health and psychological well-being [1] (Bowman et al., 2025).

We at The Attachment Project are specialized in understanding how attachment patterns influence and shape adult relationships. And so this question has been on our mind for quite some time:

How can so many people use dating apps to find love, but instead find themselves disappointed?

This question sits at the heart of the psychology of dating apps: why are tools which are seemingly designed for building connections, found to create confusion, frustration, and emotional burnout, for so many people? [9,10] (Thomas et al., 2022; 2023).

We decided that we needed to investigate the question further, so we asked over 40,000 people about their favorite dating app and the real reasons behind why they use it.

What did we find? Dating Apps Bring Connection and Confusion

The rise of apps has radically changed the conditions that we date in. Dating used to rely on moments of serendipity, bumping into someone in the line for a coffee or at the bar, and posting an ad in the newspaper under the “lonely hearts, looking for love” column. With dating apps, we get access to a greater number of potential partners, and a system that aims to filter profiles so we can get a successful ‘match’ quicker than we would in real life [2] (Finkel et al., 2012).

Given this high-choice environment, we can easily feel a sense of rejection or failure when we don’t get what we’re looking for on dating apps. But before you go assuming that you’re undatable, it’s worth noting that people are using the same tool for many different purposes. Dating apps may have started out as a tool for finding ‘the one’, but our research finds that today, daters are on apps for a multitude of reasons – and not all of them are related to dating.

We discovered that the average person uses dating apps for more than just romantic connection. The gamification of these apps can also serve a more unconscious purpose. Many might say they’re on there “looking for a long-term partner”, but in reality their swiping habits point to a deeper need to be seen, boost self-esteem, or to escape boredom. Our research also identifies patterns in the kinds of users across different dating apps – their motives, how attachment-secure, confident, and emotionally regulated they are.

In this article we discuss the different motivations behind dating app use, the psychology behind these motives, the psychological profiles of users from the Big Three Dating Apps (Hinge, Tinder, and Bumble), ending with some tips and guidance on how you can use dating apps in a more secure (and healthy) way.

Our Large-Scale Dating App Study

This research is part of The Attachment Project’s broader work that explores how modern dating environments (such as dating apps) interact with attachment patterns, self-esteem, and emotion regulation. Our analysis comes from 44,435 people, of whom 31,676 respondents were active dating-app users. They were invited to answer the following questions:

Q1: Which is your favorite dating app? (one option)
Q2: What do you / have you used dating apps for? (multiple options)

In addition to dating app preference and motives, we also explored the relationship between people’s dating app use motivations, their attachment patterns (ECR-RS), self-esteem levels (RSES), and emotion regulation (DERS-16) skills.

Data note: It is important to note that our findings show associations and do not suggest any causation of attachment patterns, self-esteem, or emotion regulation patterns. The sample sizes will vary at times due to some respondents skipping certain questions or measures.

*’The Big Three Dating Apps’ – the 3 most popular apps used by our sample, based on responses to the question “Which is the favorite dating app you use of the following?”.

Dating Motives: Beyond Casual Hook-Ups Or Finding Love

Before you get to view a single profile, most (if not all) dating apps ask you to define what it is that you’re looking for. This helps build an algorithm that shows profiles better suited to a user’s preferences. People seeking “fun and casual dates” get more of those profiles shown to them, while “long-term partner” seekers are presented with like-minded users who are looking for something serious. A handy hack… if it was all that accurate.

Past Research on Dating App Motives

Dating app research has consistently shown that daters use apps for more than just casual hook-ups or finding love. One such study explored the motives of one app’s users [8] (Sumter, Vandanbosch & Ligtenberg, 2017). A total of 163 Tinder users were invited to share their motivations across six broad categories, as well as their success at connecting with matches in real life. They found that amongst the six motives, swiping to ‘boost confidence’ was a greater predictor of heavier app use, but users motivated by finding ‘love’ were more likely to take these matches offline.

In that same year, another study by Timmermans and De Caluwé [11] validated the Tinder Motives Scale which identified 13 categories in total, including ‘belongingness’ and ‘developing social skills’. More recently a meta-synthesis of 21 qualitative studies examining the motives of dating apps users indicated only eight categories. This study found similar patterns as previous ones, including motives such as to ‘pass time’ or ‘relieve stress’ [5] (McPherson et al., 2025).

Guided by these findings, our research went beyond the standard categories that dating apps give you and asked respondents to be totally honest about some other (perhaps less obvious) motives behind dating app use:

Data note: More people responded to the first question “Which is your favorite dating app” (n=31,676), as some respondents skipped the second question “What do you / have you used dating apps for?” (n=31,431).

Fortunately, across all dating apps, the majority of people still swipe in search of love (80.6%) – which is good news for anyone trying to find a meaningful connection or build a serious relationship.

The next most common motive was linked to boredom, with over 45% of our sample using dating apps to pass the time. Next came the desire to get validation and boost confidence (36.4%) closely followed by the excitement and novelty of swiping and getting matches (35.8%). Despite the characterisation of dating apps as being an easy way to have sex or get a casual hookup, this motive came much lower down in the list of reasons (34%) than we expected.

What does this mean?

Taken together this suggests that although many app users are seeking a solid pathway to lasting love, there are other also unexpected motivations lying behind those swiping habits. So if you’ve ever second-guessed the motives of someone you’ve matched with, that’s because there is likely a mismatch between what they’re saying they want, and what they really want – something they may not even be aware of.

Dating Apps Are Not ‘One Game’

There are many factors that influence a user’s decision to match with someone – but dating apps are set up to make these decisions happen faster than they would in real life. You are given small amounts of information about a person – a profile picture, short bio, interest tags – and assess ‘compatibility’ in a matter of seconds. It is therefore no surprise some dating app research finds early swipe decisions are based primarily on how a user looks. For example, Witmer and colleagues published a study in 2025 [13] which found that overall, the physical attractiveness of a user is the most predictive of swiping behavior, compared to all other traits such as job status, their bio, or intelligence levels.

Once you have a match, the next step is about getting to know the other person and evaluating whether they’re someone you would be open to meeting in real life. For some users, this may involve asking a series of almost interview-like questions to assess compatibility in interests and intentions. Other users prefer skipping the virtual communication back-and-forth and immediately propose grabbing a coffee, or going for a drink to have these conversations in real life (IRL).

It is at this stage that many users encounter ‘friction’ – where everything points to genuine compatibility but the conversation seems to go nowhere. Ghosting can occur where messages go unread or unresponded to [12] (Timmermans, Hermans, & Opree, 2021), and users continue to swipe and collect more matches, but hesitate to bring the encounters off of the app into the real world [6] (Rosenfeld, Thomas & Hausen, 2019). In other cases, users may continue to exchange messages but infrequently, or avoid any agreement to meet IRL.

Although we did not look at the factors contributing to friction directly, our research showed that most people selected more than one motive for their dating app use, with a large number also swiping for boredom relief, novelty, and self-esteem boosts.

Taking a look at how this looks across users who prefer the Big Three Dating Apps:

• Tinder has the most “mixed motives”. Even though 72% of users who prefer Tinder say they’re looking for love, 50% also use it to pass time, and 41% use it for validation and 42% for novelty.
• Hinge seems more about long-term commitment (85% serious), but it still carries users with other motives: 48% boredom, 41% validation, 39% novelty.
• Bumble is similarly relationship-first (82% serious) with some other motives, though less so compared to Hinge and Tinder (43% boredom; 32% validation; 32% novelty).

What does this mean?

We describe this pattern across dating apps as demonstrating an environment of mixed-motives. People seeking connection may be interacting with others who are actually using dating apps to regulate their mood, boredom, or self-esteem. This may go some way to explain why these apps leave daters confused and disheartened. People are carrying different motives, and we don’t know which of those are driving someone’s interactions with us at any given time.

It seems like dating apps position themselves as helpful tools for finding love, when in reality the dating ecosystem is full of mixed motives which can leave you feeling rewarded and excited one day, emotionally drained and disappointed another day.

Dating motives will likely change depending on the person you’re speaking to, the day you’ve had, or even the mood you’re in. This is because dating apps tend to treat our intentions as stable. “I am a serious relationship kind-of-person” or “I am just here for casual hookups“. Yet when we consider this through a psychological lens, intentions are much more fluctuating than dating apps can make them out to be. Our findings confirm what is observed across the academic literature: What we want from a dating app is likely to change based on the mood we’re in, affected by how lonely we feel, our levels of self-esteem, stress, recent encounters with rejection, or our capacity to actively date (e.g., time, energy, money).

Connection-Building vs Mood-Regulation

Through the lens of psychology, the dating app motives we explored can be broken into two distinct motivational systems: connection-building vs mood-regulating motives:

Connection-Building Motives

For this bucket, we focus on motives that lead to relational contacts – either in real life, or a deepening virtual connection within the app itself. Seeking long-term, stable connection is what dating apps were originally designed for, and is the motive most clearly linked to connection-building of those we studied.
Additionally, there are users who are seeking connection through contact with others, but not seeking long-term commitment. As such, we placed ‘sex and casual hookups‘ in the bucket of connection-building dating motives, on the assumption that it reflects a desire for respectful relational contact versus emotional coping.

Across all apps in our dataset:

• Love / Serious relationships (80.6%)
• Sex / Casual hookups (34%)

Data note: It’s important to note that users could select more than one motive.

Comparing the Big Three Dating Apps on love / serious relationship seekers:

• Hinge: 85% (n = 10,675 of 12,624)
• Bumble: 82% (n = 4,813 of 5,886)
• Tinder: 72% (n = 4,557 of 6,335)

Based on these findings, Hinge scores the highest for people looking for long-term relationships. Taking into account other dating apps, the highest scoring for long-term relationships was Match.com (90%) and eHarmony (89%), and lowest scoring were Happn (58%) and Grindr (66%).

Our research found sex and casual hookups was a relatively popular motive across the Big Three:

• Tinder: 45% (n = 2,844)
• Hinge: 33% (n = 4,110)
• Bumble: 28% (n = 1,644)

With 45% of its users looking for sex and casual hookups, Tinder scored the highest in this category, followed by Taimi (39%) and OkCupid (33%). In contrast, the apps least likely to attract people looking for casual connections are eHarmony (11%), Coffee Meets Bagel (12%) and Match.com (16%).

Mood-Regulating Motives

While on the one hand, connection-building motives are driven by a desire to make relational contact (whether that’s long-term or casual), we define mood-regulating motives as more concerned with managing your internal state. In this category, we included motives such as boredom and passing time, seeking excitement, or a boost to one’s confidence.

Across all apps in our dataset:

• Boredom / passing time (45.4%)
• Validation / boosting confidence (36.4%)
• Excitement / novelty (35.8%)

Data note: It’s important to note that users could select more than one motive.

Comparing the predominance of boredom / passing time across the Big Three Dating Apps:

• Tinder: 50% (n = 3,157)
• Hinge: 48% (n = 6,060)
• Bumble: 43% (n = 2,536)

This suggests that users who prefer Tinder are more likely to be motivated by boredom relief, when compared with Bumble. Among the highest scoring for boredom / passing time was Grindr (60%), followed by Tinder (50%) and then Hinge (48%) and lowest scoring were eHarmony (16%) and Match.com (21%).

When looking at the proportion of users who selected feeling validated and getting a confidence boost as a motive across the Big Three:

• Tinder: 41% (n = 2,607)
• Hinge: 41% (n = 5,205)
• Bumble: 32% (n = 1,881)

Among the highest scoring for feeling validated / confidence boost was Grindr (48%) followed by Tinder and Hinge (41%), and lowest scoring were eHarmony (10%) and Match.com (14%).

Finally, the mood-regulating motive that craves excitement / novelty through swiping scored:

• Tinder: 42% (n = 2,633)
• Hinge: 39% (n = 4,908)
• Bumble: 32% (n = 1,911)

Across the dataset, the highest scoring for feeling excitement/novelty were users who prefer to use Grindr (44%), followed by Tinder (42%), and lowest scoring were eHarmony (12%) and Match.com (16%).

What does this mean?

These findings point to a high prevalence of motives that are not solely focused on seeking relational contact or connection-building, across dating apps. Mood-regulating motives reflect using dating apps to change how you feel in a given moment. They focus on meeting psychological needs for validation, entertainment, or comfort. Users who preferred to use Grindr, Tinder, or Hinge, were more likely to score higher in mood-regulating motives. Though a smaller sample, users who prefer to use apps like eHarmony and Match.com were found to score lower on mood-regulating motives.

Such motives are not inherently bad in and of themselves, but the presence of mixed-motives (connection-building and mood-regulating) will inevitably lead to some friction and reduced user satisfaction. Whether you are someone who is looking for a life partner or a casual sexual encounter: Dating apps with higher mood-regulating motives mean it’s more likely you’ll match with users whose profiles say they’re looking for love, but in reality – boredom, self-esteem, needing a dopamine hit – could be the main character behind the match, or the hidden reason why they’re talking to you on a given day.

The Different Psychological Profiles of Dating App Users

In this section we take a deeper look at these two dating app motivational systems, and map the reasons behind why people use dating apps to patterns in attachment, self-esteem, and emotion regulation.

Which Apps Attract The Most Secure Attachers?

Alongside their dating app motives, we also collected responses to questions about users’ romantic attachment patterns [3] (ECR-RS, Fraley et al., 2011). Our findings show similar attachment patterns across the Big Three Dating Apps (with slight differences!):

Tinder:

• Anxious-Preoccupied Style: 44%
• Dismissive-Avoidant Style: 5%
• Fearful-Avoidant/Disorganized: 16%
• Secure: 35%

Hinge:

• Anxious-Preoccupied Style: 44%
• Dismissive-Avoidant Style: 4%
• Fearful-Avoidant/Disorganized: 15%
• Secure: 37%

Bumble:

• Anxious-Preoccupied Style: 45%
• Dismissive-Avoidant Style: 4%
• Fearful-Avoidant/Disorganized: 14%
• Secure: 37%

What does this mean?

This suggests that of the three, Bumble scores highest in secure attachers (37%), and lowest across all insecure attachment styles. Hinge comes in very close second with 36% of its users attaching securely, with Tinder third in line (35%). Overall, anxious-preoccupied users were most common across all dating apps (44%) with secure attachment styles coming second.

Comparing the Big Three to other dating apps, Match.com and eHarmony (42% secure for both) were highest scorers for secure attachment styles, and Happn (28%), Badoo (27%), and Facebook Dating (29%) scored lowest. Finally, we noticed a significantly smaller group of dismissive-avoidant attachers across all dating apps.

Turning to the literature, this seems to align with current studies on dating apps. Namely, researchers have found that those with the anxious attachment style are more likely to use dating apps and when they do, they are the most frequent users. According to such studies, people with the anxious attachment style claim to use these apps to meet people due to their desires for long-term relationships. In contrast, those with the avoidant attachment style are less likely to use dating apps.

How Does Self-Esteem Differ By Dating App?

We measured levels of self-esteem by asking users to respond to Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) [7]. We categorised users into either high, medium, or low levels of self-esteem, based on their responses to 10 questions exploring their self-competence and self-liking.

Across the Big Three, Hinge ranked as having the highest overall average and greatest % of people scoring ‘high self-esteem’ who completed the RSES:

• Hinge: M = 34.13 (High: 38%, Medium: 32%, Low: 30%)
• Bumble: M = 33.32 (High: 35%, Medium: 32%, Low: 33%)
• Tinder: M = 31.83 (High: 29%, Medium: 31%, Low: 40%)

Bumble came in close second with a more equal distribution of ‘high’, ‘medium’, and ‘low’ self-esteem scores across their users. Users who favor Tinder scored lowest in their levels of self-esteem, with a highest % of people scoring in the ‘low’ category (40%) than in the medium (31%), or high (29%).

Beyond the Big Three, the highest levels of self-esteem appeared in eHarmony (High: 42%, Low: 25%), and Match.com (High: 49%, Low: 22%). Apps where users were more likely to demonstrate low levels of self-esteem include Taimi (50% low self-esteem), Badoo (45% low self-esteem), and Grindr (43% low self-esteem).

Which Apps Attract Users With Higher Emotional Stability?

To explore emotion regulation patterns in dating app users, we administered the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale [4] (DERS-16, Gratz & Romer, 2004) which involves answering 16 questions about how you regulate your emotions when upset.

The DERS-16 gives an overall profile of difficulty, as well as a breakdown of different emotion regulation dimensions. The measure assesses the amount of difficulty you experience in:

• Emotional Clarity – higher difficulties indicate confusion about what you’re feeling when upset
• Goal-Directed Behavior – higher difficulties indicate struggling to stay goal focused under stressful situations
• Impulse Control – higher difficulties indicate taking sudden emotionally-driven actions when stressed
• Acceptance of Emotions – higher difficulties indicate judging negative emotions when they come up
• Access to Regulation Strategies – higher difficulties indicate a lack of tools available to manage negative emotions

Across the Big Three Dating Apps, these percentages represent how many users scored as having high-difficulty with emotion regulation:

Tinder:

• Clarity (high confusion about feelings): 34%
• Goals (high difficulty staying goal-directed when upset): 28%
• Impulse (high difficulty controlling impulses when upset): 38%
• Nonacceptance (high difficulty accepting emotions): 34%
• Strategies (high difficulty accessing helpful strategies): 36%

Hinge:

• Clarity: 27%
• Goals: 24%
• Impulse: 29%
• Nonacceptance: 28%
• Strategies: 28%

Bumble:

• Clarity: 29%
• Goals: 22%
• Impulse: 32%
• Nonacceptance: 29%
• Strategies: 29%

What does this mean?

Taken together, our findings offer a number of insights about the patterns of emotion regulation across apps. Across the Big Three, Hinge seems to attract users with fewer emotion regulation difficulties, users who prefer to use Tinder show the highest prevalence of emotion regulation difficulties, and users who prefer Bumble are positioned in the middle.

Emotion regulation is our inner capacity to understand, manage, and respond to negative emotions when they come up. Because dating can trigger intense emotional experiences (both the highs and lows), having good regulation skills is a resource for anyone joining the dating scene.

It is important to note that we are not suggesting any given dating app causes or induces emotion regulation difficulties, rather describing the profile of users who are drawn to using a given app.

How Do Dating Motives Influence Psychological Patterns?

So far we have an overview of the patterns across dating apps in relation to attachment, self-esteem, and emotion regulation. But how does this relate to the two motivational systems (connection-building vs mood-regulation)?

What Do Connection-Building Motives Signal Psychologically?

Across apps, users who selected connection-building dating motives were more likely to have:

• A secure attachment style
• Higher levels of self-esteem
• Lower emotion-regulation difficulties

How this looks across the Big Three Dating Apps:

Tinder

Respondents who selected Tinder as their preferred app and selected “Long-term/serious love”:

• Attachment: 35% secure, 45% anxious, 16% fearful-avoidant/disorganized, 4% avoidant
• Self-esteem: 29% high, 31% medium, 40% low
• Emotion regulation (high difficulty): Clarity 32%, Goals 28%, Impulse 34%, Nonacceptance 33%, Strategies 35% (avg high-difficulty across domains ≈ 32%)

Respondents who selected Tinder as their preferred app and selected “Casual sex / hookups”:

• Attachment: 38% secure, 42% anxious, 15% fearful-avoidant/disorganized, 5% avoidant
• Self-esteem: 29% high, 30% medium, 41% low
• Emotion regulation (high difficulty): Clarity 34%, Goals 28%, Impulse 35%, Nonacceptance 34%, Strategies 36% (avg ≈ 33%)

Hinge

Respondents who selected Hinge as their preferred app and selected “Long-term/serious love”:

• Attachment: 37% secure, 45% anxious, 14% fearful-avoidant/disorganized, 4% avoidant
• Self-esteem: 39% high, 32% medium, 29% low
• Emotion regulation (high difficulty): Clarity 25%, Goals 23%, Impulse 25%, Nonacceptance 26%, Strategies 26% (avg ≈ 25%)

Respondents who selected Hinge as their preferred app and selected “Casual sex / hookups”:

• Attachment: 38% secure, 43% anxious, 14% fearful-avoidant/disorganized, 5% avoidant
• Self-esteem: 36% high, 32% medium, 32% low
• Emotion regulation (high difficulty): Clarity 30%, Goals 25%, Impulse 28%, Nonacceptance 28%, Strategies 29% (avg ≈ 28%)

Bumble

Respondents who selected Bumble as their preferred app and selected “Long-term/serious love”:

• Attachment: 38% secure, 45% anxious, 14% fearful-avoidant/disorganized, 3% avoidant
• Self-esteem: 36% high, 32% medium, 32% low
• Emotion regulation (high difficulty): Clarity 27%, Goals 22%, Impulse 28%, Nonacceptance 28%, Strategies 28% (avg ≈ 27%)

Respondents who selected Bumble as their preferred app and selected “Casual sex / hookups”:

• Attachment: 41% secure, 43% anxious, 12% fearful-avoidant/disorganized, 4% avoidant
• Self-esteem: 33% high, 32% medium, 35% low
• Emotion regulation (high difficulty): Clarity 29%, Goals 24%, Impulse 31%, Nonacceptance 29%, Strategies 30% (avg ≈ 29%)

The most surprising finding to us was that across all apps, the casual sex/hookups motivated were not the most “unstable” group. In fact, this group was even more likely to have a secure attachment style. However, users who are more invested in finding a long-term partner showed less challenges with emotion regulation capacities than those seeking casual sex/hookups.

What Do Mood-Regulating Motives Signal Psychologically?

By comparison, users who selected motives linked to mood-regulation were more likely to have:

• An insecure attachment
• Lower self-esteem
• More difficulties regulating their emotions

How this looks across the Big Three Dating Apps:

Tinder

Respondents who selected Tinder as their preferred app and selected “Validation / boost confidence” (n = 2,607):

• Attachment: 31% secure, 47% anxious, 18% fearful-avoidant/disorganized, 4% avoidant
• Self-esteem: 22% high, 31% medium, 47% low
• Emotion regulation (high difficulty): Clarity 39%, Goals 33%, Impulse 41%, Nonacceptance 41%, Strategies 43% (avg ≈ 39%)

Respondents who selected Tinder as their preferred app and selected “Boredom / passing time” (n = 3,157):

• Attachment: 32% secure, 45% anxious, 18% fearful-avoidant/disorganized, 5% avoidant
• Self-esteem: 26% high, 32% medium, 42% low
• Emotion regulation (high difficulty): Clarity 36%, Goals 29%, Impulse 37%, Nonacceptance 36%, Strategies 38% (avg ≈ 35%)

Respondents who selected Tinder as their preferred app and selected “Excitement / novelty” (n = 2,633):

• • Attachment: 36% secure, 43% anxious, 16% fearful-avoidant/disorganized, 5% avoidant
  • Self-esteem: 28% high, 33% medium, 39% low

• Emotion regulation (high difficulty): Clarity 36%, Goals 31%, Impulse 38%, Nonacceptance 36%, Strategies 37% (avg ≈ 36%)

Hinge

Respondents who selected Hinge as their preferred app and selected “Validation / boost confidence” (n = 5,205):

• Attachment: 30% secure, 48% anxious, 18% fearful-avoidant/disorganized, 4% avoidant
• Self-esteem: 29% high, 35% medium, 36% low
• Emotion regulation (high difficulty): Clarity 34%, Goals 29%, Impulse 33%, Nonacceptance 34%, Strategies 35% (avg ≈ 33%)

Respondents who selected Hinge as their preferred app and selected “Boredom / passing time” (n = 6,060):

• Attachment: 33% secure, 46% anxious, 17% fearful-avoidant/disorganized, 4% avoidant
• Self-esteem: 33% high, 34% medium, 33% low
• µEmotion regulation (high difficulty): Clarity 32%, Goals 26%, Impulse 30%, Nonacceptance 31%, Strategies 31% (avg ≈ 30%)

Respondents who selected Hinge as their preferred app and selected “Excitement / novelty” (n = 4,908):

• Attachment: 34% secure, 46% anxious, 15% fearful-avoidant/disorganized, 5% avoidant
• Self-esteem: 35% high, 33% medium, 32% low
• Emotion regulation (high difficulty): Clarity 31%, Goals 26%, Impulse 30%, Nonacceptance 31%, Strategies 30% (avg ≈ 30%)

Bumble

Respondents who selected Bumble as their preferred app and selected “Validation / boost confidence” (n = 1,881):

• • Attachment: 32% secure, 48% anxious, 17% fearful-avoidant/disorganized, 3% avoidant
  • Self-esteem: 25% high, 33% medium, 42% low

• Emotion regulation (high difficulty): Clarity 35%, Goals 30%, Impulse 39%, Nonacceptance 39%, Strategies 38% (avg ≈ 36%)

Respondents who selected Bumble as their preferred app and selected “Boredom / passing time” (n = 2,536):

• Attachment: 34% secure, 47% anxious, 15% fearful-avoidant/disorganized, 4% avoidant
• Self-esteem: 29% high, 34% medium, 37% low
• Emotion regulation (high difficulty): Clarity 33%, Goals 25%, Impulse 34%, Nonacceptance 33%, Strategies 33% (avg ≈ 32%)

Respondents who selected Bumble as their preferred app and selected “Excitement / novelty” (n = 1,911):

• Attachment: 37% secure, 45% anxious, 14% fearful-avoidant/disorganized, 4% avoidant
• Self-esteem: 30% high, 35% medium, 35% low
• Emotion regulation (high difficulty): Clarity 33%, Goals 26%, Impulse 34%, Nonacceptance 34%, Strategies 32% (avg ≈ 32%)

What does this mean?

Comparing psychological profiles of dating app users, based on connection-building and mood-regulating motives, our findings point to a number of insights.

Firstly, connection-building motives (especially “long-term / serious love”) are associated with: slightly higher secure attachment; higher self-esteem; fewer overall emotion regulation difficulties. This makes sense from the perspective of attachment theory. To engage in a long-term commitment requires feeling deserving of love, being ready for emotional intimacy, and having tolerance for the uncertainty that stable connections bring. It is easier to sustain these tendencies when your attachment is secure, you have the self-worth to receive love, and the emotion regulation skills to handle potential distress.

One of the most interesting findings is that users who select casual sex / hookups are not the most “unstable” group in our data. There is a common characterisation of casual daters as being unable to ‘settle down’ because of their issues or insecurities. Though some may use casual sex as a way to regulate their moods or insecurities, this is not true of all daters. Our data found that these users are in fact as or more secure than users seeking long-term commitment.

Mood-regulation motives go hand-in-hand with more vulnerable psychological profiles (insecure attachment, lower self-esteem, greater emotion regulation difficulties).

In particular, users who use dating apps for validation / confidence scored lowest on levels of self-esteem, and were also associated with greater emotion regulation challenges (e.g., more impulsivity, less emotional clarity, and fewer coping strategies when under stress). Overall, this motive group was associated with the most fragile of psychological profiles.

Although boredom and excitement motives were common among users with less secure profiles, these users seem to face less challenges with emotion regulation and had higher self-esteem than validation-seekers.

One interpretation of these differences in psychological profiles is that some may be turning to apps for their ‘state-management’ – to offer relief from boredom, feelings of low self-esteem, and perhaps escape feelings of loneliness.

Which Is The Best Dating App For Finding Love?

Whether you find love on a dating app or not relies on multiple factors. An important factor is what the ecosystem of daters with whom you are engaging with actually want from their dating app use. When it comes to motives, our findings reflect what existing research on the psychology of online dating already finds: that dating apps are not used for one single-purpose but are mixed-motive ecosystems. Daters across all apps are using the same tool for very different ends.

In this section we summarise all of our findings and provide our verdict on which dating app is most likely to find you love (based on motives alone).

It is perhaps reassuring to know that across all dating apps, connection-building is still the most common motive:

• Long-term and serious love seeks dominate (80.6%)
• Especially concentrated on less popular apps like Match.com (90%) and eHarmony (89%)
• And also in more popular apps like Hinge (85%) and Bumble (82%) also skew strongly relationship-forward

That said, daters often select mood-regulation motives alongside their desire to find and build connections:

• Nearly half of all dating app users partake in boredom swiping (45.4%)
• Over a third use apps for boosting their confidence (36.4%) and the excitement or novelty of getting a match (35.8%)
• The apps that scored lowest on mood-regulation motives were Match.com and eHarmony
• Of the Big Three, Bumble scores lowest on mood-regulating motives
• Tinder scores highest for mood-regulation motives

But what’s the verdict on which app will actually help you find love? Well that depends on the kind of love you’re looking for, and the dating ecosystem you’re looking for love in. Below we provide our verdict based on the Big Three Dating Apps for ‘finding love’:

Hinge: Most Serious-Love Seekers

• Users who selected Hinge as their favorite app were more likely to select serious love (85%, n=10,675) compared to both Bumble and Tinder.
• When it comes to other motives, Hinge still had a high proportion of users selecting mood-regulation purposes – more than Bumble, but less than Tinder.
• Still mixed-motive, but comparatively less dominated by mood-regulation than Tinder (48% boredom, 41% validation, 39% novelty).
• Users who favored Hinge were also more resourced on average (higher self-esteem; lower emotion-regulation difficulties). These resources are important for serious dating, to bring consistency, a tolerance for uncertainty, and supporting follow-through behaviors.

Bumble: Least Mood-Regulating Motives

• Overall Bumble comes in at a close second. Users who selected Bumble as their favorite app predominantly selected long-term and serious love as a motive behind their dating app use (82%, n=4,813).
• Of the three, users preferring Bumble as an app selected fewer mood-regulation motives across the Big Three (43% boredom, 32% validation, 32% novelty).
• Although some users will still swipe for boredom, validation, or excitement, overall Bumble’s dating ecosystem is ‘cleanest’ in terms of motives: if you’re using Bumble, you’re more likely to make contact with people whose actions align with connection-building – whether that’s long-term connection or casual sex.

Tinder: Most Mixed-Motive

• Of the Big Three, Tinder scored the lowest proportion of people seeking serious love (72%, n=4,557). This means that when compared with Bumble and Hinge, Tinder’s dating ecosystem attracts more users who place greater importance on motives aside from love and long-term commitment.
• Users who preferred Tinder scored the highest in mood-regulation motives (50% boredom, 41% validation, 42% novelty).
• It is therefore more likely (compared to Bumble and Hinge) that you will encounter active users on Tinder who say they are looking for love, when in fact another motive is driving their interactions. It is more likely to lead to ‘friction’ experiences, such as ghosting, hot-cold messaging, validation-seeking dynamics, and an overall hesitation to actually meet IRL.

Conclusion

This study was motivated by a desire to better understand the pattern of frustration, confusion, and emotional burnout linked to dating app use. As a first step we have focused on understanding the motives and psychological profiles of dating apps users. We are undertaking ongoing research into mapping patterns of satisfaction and success across dating apps, and will be sharing these findings, alongside a large-scale qualitative study of over 46,000 daters very soon.

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