


At the University of Newcastle in Australia, researchers have been applying the systems model of creativity developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to different forms of media practice in an attempt to provide a more comprehensive view of communication. "This paper proposes that applying models from within creativity research to the discipline of communication will provide innovative ways of examining communication that pushes current knowledge of cultural production beyond established research programmes. Participants citing relationship-seeking purposes for app usage were highly disillusioned when heavily involved with explicit content. Contrary to EVT, participants with high enjoyment of explicit materials felt disillusioned with themselves. Participants who rarely exchanged and did not enjoy sexual content were most regretful, as even one bad experience might have violated their expectations. In each study, a latent class analysis sorted users into four groups, based on their dating app engagement with sexual content. Study 1 (n = 531 college students) focused on Tinder, whereas Study 2 (n = 209 Mechanical Turk workers) examined dating apps broadly. To test links between encountering sexually explicit materials and dating app disillusionment (with oneself, with others, and regret over app usage), we surveyed two samples of dating app users. Seeing unwanted content may produce adverse effects, consistent with expectancy violations theory (EVT), and disillusion some users. Some people send or receive sexually explicit images or messages when using dating apps.
