The Influence of Technology on Romantic Relationships: Understanding Online Dating.

A culture's social fabric is deeply dependent on how its members establish romantic bonds. What happens when the way those bonds are formed is radically changed over the course of a single generation? This is the case with the rise of online dating, which is now the second most common way for people to meet a romantic partner. Despite existing research exploring issues such as mate selection, self-presentation, and impressions, we still do not know how online dating systems affect people's perceptions-about technology, relationships, romantic partners, and themselves-and how these perceptions affect behavior. In this paper, we introduce and explicate the Source Multiplicity, Attribution, Recognition, and Transformation (SMART) Model of Online Dating. The SMART model is a comprehensive theoretical framework that has interdisciplinary roots in human-computer interaction (HCI), computer-mediated communication (CMC), psychology, and decision science.