Dating apps are still a total disaster for most guys, with nearly every woman on the app competing for the same top 20% of men.
April 13, 2026
Original Paper
Women do not select "laterally": a percentile-normalized re-analysis of Topinkova & Diviak (2025)
SocArXiv · u46qh_v1
The Takeaway
This research corrects a previous theory that people tend to pick partners with similar attractiveness levels. It turns out that when you account for the lopsided number of men on these apps, the data reveals a much more intense focus on a small group of high-status users.
From the abstract
Topinkova & Diviak (2025, PLOS ONE) analyze directed contact networks from a Czech dating app and conclude that women express interest in men of similar desirability--a finding widely interpreted as evidence of lateral or homophilic mate selection. We re-analyze their published replication data and show this conclusion is an artifact of comparing standardized indegree across genders without accounting for the radically different distribution shapes produced by the 76-80% male user ratio. After c