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What makes you swipe right a profile on Tinder or any other dating apps? May be attractiveness and the race of a potential partner, a new study reveals.

The findings indicate that people's reason for swiping right is based primarily on attractiveness and the race of a potential partner, and that decisions are often made in less than a second.

"Despite online dating becoming an increasingly popular way for people to meet one another, there is little research on how people connect with each other on these platforms," said researcher William Chopik from Michigan State University in the US.

"We wanted to understand what makes someone want to swipe left or swipe right, and the process behind how they make those decisions," he added.

For the study, published in the Journal of Research in Personality, the team used two studies to measure how dating app users from different walks of life interacted with available profiles.

The first study focused on college students, while the second focused on middle-aged adults, averaging 35 years.

Participants were given a choice to either view profiles of men or women, depending on their dating preferences.

Male participants, on average, swiped right more often than women, and it was also found that individuals who perceive themselves to be more attractive swipe left more often overall, proving to be choosier when picking out potential partners.