[2603.26727] The Nonverbal Gap: Toward Affective Computer Vision for Safer and More Equitable Online Dating

Computer Science > Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition arXiv:2603.26727 (cs) [Submitted on 20 Mar 2026] Title:The Nonverbal Gap: Toward Affective Computer Vision for Safer and More Equitable Online Dating Authors:Ratna Kandala, Niva Manchanda, Akshata Kishore Moharir View a PDF of the paper titled The Nonverbal Gap: Toward Affective Computer Vision for Safer and More Equitable Online Dating, by Ratna Kandala and 2 other authors View PDF Abstract:Online dating has become the dominant way romantic relationships begin, yet current platforms strip the nonverbal cues: gaze, facial expression, body posture, response timing, that humans rely on to signal comfort, disinterest, and consent, creating a communication gap with disproportionate safety consequences for women. We argue that this gap represents both a technical opportunity and a moral responsibility for the computer vision community, which has developed the affective tools, facial action unit detection, gaze estimation, engagement modeling, and multimodal affect recognition, needed to begin addressing it, yet has largely ignored the dating domain as a research context. We propose a fairness-first research agenda organized around four capability areas: real-time discomfort detection, engagement asymmetry modeling between partners, consent-aware interaction design, and longitudinal interaction summarization, each grounded in established CV methodology and motivated by the social psychology of romantic communication. We ...