Use Tinder at your own risk

New York : Apart from helping you to find a partner, dating app Tinder may also increase the chances of getting you caught if you are cheating on your partner, revealed a study.

According to the researchers from Texas Tech University, US, many participants said they were not sure if Tinder was a good way to do so, as they saw a few profiles of people on the dating app who were already in a relationship.

“The participants are quite mixed though as to whether Tinder is an effective way to meet extradyadic partners,” said co-author of the study Dana Weiser from Texas Tech University in the US.

“This may be because, while it is easy to meet individuals via Tinder, it may also be very easy to get caught, as a percentage of our participants also indicated they saw people who they knew were in relationships on Tinder,” Weiser added.

For the study, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, researchers examined 550 undergraduate students who participated in the study.

Among the participants, 12.5 per cent had spent time with someone they met on Tinder, 17.1 per cent had messaged someone on Tinder, 8.9 per cent had been physically intimate and 7.2 per cent reported having sexual relations with someone they met on Tinder while in an exclusive relationship.

The researchers found two personality traits they said could predict a person’s likelihood to cheat on a partner: willingness to engage in sex outside of a committed relationship and intention to engage in infidelity.

“We expected these same personality traits that predict in-person infidelity would also be associated with engaging in infidelity via Tinder,” Weiser said.

“We found those traits were more important for predicting infidelity than gender. Basically, men and women looked very similar when we accounted for personality,” Weiser added.

IANS