The Social Science of Online Dating - Kevin Lewis, University of California San Diego

The Social Science of Online Dating

Big data are increasingly used to answer longstanding social scientific questions. These "digital footprints" of human interaction often provide unusually nuanced information on an unprecedented scale-but they may also obscure as much as they illuminate. In this talk, I draw on the example of online dating to illustrate a few basic fallacies in how big data are often framed for social science research; suggest some alternative (and potentially more constructive) paths moving forward; and attempt to take my own advice by presenting some useful results about mating preferences.