To most of you this will just seem like basic common sense and TRP theory.

But in a space primarily made up of anecdotes and personal experience, it's nice to find empirical studies that back up what many in the community have been saying for years.

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Highlights

  • Women on Tinder are more selective than men on Tinder.
  • Women on Tinder have a preference for successful or highly educated men.
  • Women showed a high preference for Hypergamy
  • Men on Tinder do not show any preference for successful or highly educated women
  • On Tinder, preferences for educational assortative mating (dating someone with the same education standard as yourself) are absent.

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The study "Are men intimidated by highly educated women? Undercover on Tinder" looked at the dating preferences of men and women on Tinder. The study is available for free as a downloadable PDF.

In this study, we examine the impact of an individual's education level on her/his mating success on the mobile dating app Tinder. To do so, we conducted a field experiment on Tinder in which we collected data on 3,600 profile evaluations. In line with previous research on mating preferences from multiple fields, our results indicate a heterogeneous effect of education level by gender: while women strongly prefer a highly educated potential partner, this hypothesis is rejected for men. In contrast with recent influential studies from the field of economics, we do not find any evidence that men would have an aversion to a highly educated potential partner. Additionally, in contrast with most previous research – again from multiple fields – we do not find any evidence for preferences for educational assortative mating, i.e. preferring a partner with a similar education level.

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Women on Tinder are more selective than men on Tinder

Not particularly surprising. The study found that women tend to be more selective in choosing their matches on Tinder than men are.

The study doesn't expand much on which metrics they're using to define selectivity. So we can only assume this relates to factors such as education level, success and appearance.

Women on Tinder have a preference for successful or highly educated men

As part of their selection, women tended to favor highly educated men over less educated men.

It would be interesting to know the age of the women looked at in the study, and whether there was any difference in preference for educated men that correlated with age.

It would also be interesting to know the correlation with physical appearance. I suspect the more physically attractive the potential partner, the less preference there would be for education.

Hypergamy

The women in the study showed a high preference for hypergamy (page 11).

Men who were more educated than the women, were nearly twice as likely to receive a match. Men who were less educated, or educated to a similar level received nearly identical chances of getting a match, with a very slight preference for similarly educated men.

Takeaway: Women prefer men better educated than themselves. Men of a similar education level, or less educated are treated almost identically.

Men on Tinder do not show preference for successful or highly educated women

This proved the hypothesis of the study to be false. Men do not show a preference or an aversion to highly educated women on Tinder. Men primarily appear to be indifferent to the woman's education when choosing partners.

Of course we know that for men the woman's age and physical appearance are going to play a much more important role, and again it would be interesting to see the age and physical attractiveness of the potential partners and how this correlated with the results.

On Tinder, preferences for educational assortative mating are absent

Neither men or women showed any preference for partners with the similar level of education to themselves.

For men this would make sense with the studies results - men do not show any preference for education level.

For women, this may indicate hypergamy. That they are looking for partners who are more educated than themselves.

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Well there you have it folks, red pills truths now supported by empirical evidence. Women prefer successful and well educated men, and men don't care. Who'd have thunk it?