Meeting prospective partners via the Internet is a growing trend, but can we trust the information that people provide about themselves via online dating websites? Somewhat surprisingly, people looking for romance online actually behave very much as they do in face-to-face dating and relationships. "Our findings dispel the myth that people using online dating are that different than any one else who might find a relationship through friends, school or work," explained Jeffrey Hall, author of a paper on internet dating that appears in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.
Hall's team investigated over 5,000 individuals dating online in search of long-term partners, from all walks of life and over a wide age range (18 to 60). The survey included questions on personality traits such as openness, extroversion, education and income.
"We also asked a series of questions on an important trait that we call self monitoring," Hall said. "Self monitoring is about how we try to present ourselves in a favorable light to others, to make people like us." Someone who scores as "low" on self monitoring is usually very authentic when describing themselves, while those who score "high" are more prone to white lies.
Self-monitoring evaluations turned out to be a major factor in the likelihood of people "changing" their presentation to others across all dating indicators (topics such as previous relationships, likes, dislikes, appearance).
Whether a person is likely to lie about themselves online also depends on what kind of person they are: Someone who is very open to new experiences is highly unlikely to misrepresent themselves about their experiences - because they are naturally interesting people. On the other hand, extroverts are more likely to misrepresent themselves when describing past relationships. Extroverts tend to have many past relationships because they meet new people easily, but may play this down when looking for a new relationship.
But according to Hall, the likelihood of people misrepresenting themselves overall is actually very low. He added that women were somewhat more likely to fib about their weight, whereas men were more prone to tell white lies on other subjects, such as how many previous partners they had had, or how serious they were about finding a long-term relationship. "Men and women aren't as different from one another as we might believe," Hall says. Hall and his team are now planning on developing an inventory of flirting styles, which they want to publish this year.
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Source: Journal of Social and Personal Relationships
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