1. Christian women are more selective than Christian men
On average women only liked 17% of profiles they viewed, while men liked 33% of profiles they viewed.
Women only replied to 47% of messages they received, compared to men who replied to 57% of messages they received.
2. Christian women are less forward than Christian men
On average, women tended to send shorter opening messages (17 characters) compared to men (37 characters). Likewise, women were less likely to ask a question in their opening message, doing this 48% of the time, compared with men who did this in 66% of their opening messages.
3. Christian men are less forward and more selective than non-Christian men
While the above statistics suggest that Christian men are less selective and more forward than Christian women, compared to the norm for secular dating apps these men are significantly less forward and more selective than men on apps such as Tinder. For Tinder (the most popular dating app) men typically like 46% of the profiles they viewed, and women like 14% of the profiles they view.
This slight difference could be for a variety of factors, but a likely cause is the imbalanced gender ratio for single Christians. The ratio of single Christian women to single Christian men is 2:3. This means that men are likely to be more selective and harder to be satisfied. As our report explained, “This is not to suggest that men can't commit. They can, but they have to do so today in an environment of such rich choices. It makes it difficult for them.” (Regnerus, 2010:28).
4. Christian women prefer to date Christian men who are older, Christian men prefer to date women who are younger
Interestingly, the older the user, the wider the average age preference for their matches. For men and women between the ages of 18-21, the average age preference range was 6 years, while for men and women between the ages of 31-35, the average age preference range was 13 years. For men, this increase in age preference range was almost exclusively towards younger women. In other words, the older men get the less likely they are to want to date older women. In comparison, for women, the increase in age preference range was mostly towards older me.
Tips for success
Finally, there was some insight into ways to increase the chances of matches as well as replied.
Similar to other dating apps, the more photos a user uploaded the higher the chance of being liked. Likewise, the chance of a match responding to a message almost doubled if the message contained a question.
Samuel Verbi is the co-founder of Eido Research
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