Many people searching for a partner use dating apps where they describe themselves, often noting their political affiliation there too - which could be making it harder to find someone, say scientists.
That information about politics in particular influences people's choice of partner, according to a new US study.
Many Democratic Party voters in the US reject Republican supporters, and vice versa. While Democrats in the study were almost as open to potential partners with no political preference as they were to other Democrats, Republicans showed a clear preference for other Republicans.
Some 1,097 Americans aged between 20 and 33 rated fictional dating profiles in an online experiment, similar to those offered by dating apps such as Tinder, Bumble or Hinge, for the study carried out by sociologists Ansgar Hudde and Shannon Taflinger from the Department of Sociology and Social Psychology at the University of Cologne in Germany.
The profiles included the designation "Democrat," "Republican" or no information on political orientation. The study shows, "Young Americans have little interest in getting to know people with different political views," says Hudde. "This is mainly because they think, 'we don’t match in terms of values and lifestyle'," he says of the study published in the European Sociological Review.
Respondents rated those with different political views consistently more negatively, “and without exception across all the dimensions we surveyed, from intelligence to character traits such as honesty and friendliness, right through to similarities in values and lifestyle.”
Political gender gap beyond US
Democratic women were most strongly guided by politics in their choices. Their rejection of the other political side was about four times as pronounced as among Republican women or men. “The study shows that people draw conclusions about a whole range of other characteristics – such as values, lifestyle and character – based on political orientation,” Hudde told dpa.
“And I believe this happens too hastily, because in reality people are usually not that stereotypical.”
Hudde sees parallels with dating behaviour in Germany.
German society is not as polarized as the US, and Germany's multi-party system allows for a wider range of views. “But here too, many people are likely to rule others out from the outset for political reasons,” he says.
This gives rise to the peculiarity that, in Germany, young women have recently been voting significantly further to the left than young men, Hudde says.
“This political gender gap has never been as wide as it is today, and that is likely to make finding a partner even more complicated here too.”