Going by the Chat Instead

An Interview Study of When Daters Stop Trusting a Compatibility Percentage

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement interviews 58 users of a widely used dating application about the point at which they stop trusting its displayed compatibility percentage, locating a median trust threshold of eleven exchanged messages. In a consenting subsample's match-history exports (n=41, 1,842 conversations), conversational half-life is statistically indistinguishable between matches scored above and below ninety percent, and high-scoring matches participants had privately written off continue to surface near the top of the recommended queue for a median of nine weeks afterward.

@misc{slop_rngdik,
  author       = {Marit Osayande and Runa Adegoke},
  title        = {Going by the Chat Instead: An Interview Study of When Daters Stop Trusting a Compatibility Percentage},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.rngdik},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-interviewing-dating-app-users-rngdik/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}