Tinders Case Study Psychology

Brittany Desatnick is a graduate student at Fordham University and she has been immensely distracted due to her addiction to a dating app called Tinder. Tinder is a dating app that finds potential matches near you. This target behavior can be defined as opening up the app, swiping right (if interested) or left (if uninterested), mutual right swipes will indicate Brittany has a match and then she can engage in a conversation. This behavior is a behavioral excess because the behavior occurs too frequently. Brittany has been a good friend of mine and has been dealing with this problem for a very long time. In order to assess her situation, I began a lengthy functional analysis to understand the problem and how we together, can come up with a few solutions. By explaining the process with Brittany, she …show more content…
Every day at noon, Brittany will receive a highly curated match based on her profile, preferences, and mutual friends. If she is interested in the “bagel” she presses the “like” feature. If the feelings are mutual, like Tinder, a conversation window will come. I felt this app is a way to go because it implemented stimulus control. There are only five options a day, and the notification comes at noon so every day she can spend a few minutes at lunch time checking out her options, making the effects of reinforcement situationally specific. This way she is not distracted during important periods of time and she is still out there in the dating world. When meeting with Brittany after implementing this change, she seemed very pleased. Her interpretation of this app was she enjoys having a more limited selection. This resulted in her feeling stable, calm, and excited. She feels this strategy is far more beneficial because it has a reputation of people who are looking to date the way she is looking to. Along with the benefit of having less matches, makes it easier to get less carried