It's Not You, It's Me: The Effects of Choice Overload and Multi-Attribute Decision Making in Online Dating

Abstract

Throughout daily life, we are constantly being asked to make decisions. Some decisions are harder than others, and sometimes we tend to feel overwhelmed or uneasy in the decision making process. Despite economic theories that suggest having more options to choose from increases satisfaction in decision-making, psychology research has shown different effects. When asked to choose from a large assortment, people often experience a phenomenon called choice overload. When choice overload occurs, people feel less motivated to make choices and are left feeling unsatisfied or regretful with their decision. Not only does a large number of options lead to people feeling overwhelmed, but a large number of attributes per option can have this same effect. This paper details the extensive research that has studied the causes and effects of choice overload and multi-attribute decision making. Specifically, this paper seeks to apply the underlying principles of choice overload to experiences in online dating. Online dating websites and applications are a recent evolution in the dating sphere, taking off in the 1990s. From these platforms, people have the ability to choose from a wide variety of potential romantic partners that they may not have been able to otherwise. Studies have found that candidate pools that are too large in online dating platforms can lead to dissatisfaction or low self-esteem, revealing the distinct impact choice overload has in online dating. The results of this study suggest that people need more time to process decisions with more alternatives and attributes. In addition, attribute number is shown to have a larger impact on the decision making process than the number of alternatives. This study fills in the research gap of how multi-alternative and multi-attribute decisions affect online daters by studying how long people take to make these decisions, their perceived choice satisfaction and choice difficulty, as well as how they can describe the factors that influenced their choice.