Online Dating: Playing Mind Games

With all the technology accessible in our day and age it makes sense that people have put aside the traditional way of dating others so that they can hide behind a screen, making their life seem more hot and glamorous than it actually is. This new study reveals people’s perception of other dater’s personality traits, trustworthiness, and interpersonal attraction. Two groups were formed in order to understand the crucial components that go into what online daters find the most suitable in other daters. The two groups were split into open/free-spirited dater profiles and traditional/uptight dater

profiles. The subjects were then asked to view both profiles and asked about their perception of how credible the profiles of other daters were. The focus of the study provided necessary information to examine self-presentation and the presentation of others. Ultimately the results provided varied based off of whether the subjects were looking for long-term or short-term relationships.

Goffman identified self-presentation as people managing their manner and appearance in direct relation to the person that they are interacting with, while the other person examines and interprets their first impression of that person. It was found that when making first impressions, daters would become more upset to find out later that a male was presenting himself as a female rather than saying he was six-foot tall and being a little shorter. Self-representation was the bases for all the informations from the study, because with online dating websites you can only making impressions based off of characteristics that daters display on their individual profiles. The whole idea of online dating is to “sell” yourself so interpersonal trust which is defined as “reliance upon the communication of another person in order to achieve a desired but uncertain objective in a risky situation,” cannot be created without source credibility perception. When just participating in regular outside dating you have a little more control over the situation. You usually meet people through references from friends or family, which already creates a source of reliability and credibility. With online dating you are at risk with believing information in front of you on the computer screen. This could easily lead to a waste of money and time so this study showed that the only credible source is believing what you see. 

IDT or the Interpersonal Deception Theory relates to daters trusting other online daters. Their perception relies on judgements of competence, composure, sociability, and dynamism among many other variables. Throughout the study their is no wrong or misinterpreted information because trustworthiness and worthiness overall depend on the subjects mentality going into dating others. It was found that daters found the conservative profiles more credible because they seemed less suspicious. People tend to believe profiles that aren’t completely elaborate. Open and free-spirited online profiles were construed more as strategic like they were looking for something like more of a hook-up than a relationship. The open online daters seemed to express more interest in a lot of different followers while the conservative profiles managed to only be following around 10 other daters. It was assumed that conservative daters might appear less deceptive because they displayed no attempts at luring other daters due to sexuality based off the profiles shown in the study. Another assumption that was made was that online daters could easily perceive the open and free online daters as trustworthy if they were to base their opinions on the others sociability and dynamism. Although this is a controlled study it is easily relatable to actual real world examples. Daters outside of this study base their opinions off of what they are most intrigued or interested in so it is plausible that both types of profiles, although significantly different, can both be perceived reliable depending on the viewers desires. 

Ultimately, online daters create relationships with other daters based off of interpersonal trust. Outside online dating people like to be able to form relationships based off of trust they have for the other person, so why wouldn’t be the same for online dating. The difference and complication of the situation is that instead of having a face to face conversation with the other person they can only rely on what the dater has put on their profile page. The formula to meeting the person that you have been waiting for is a combination of what you see on their profile, their attractiveness, and they final but key component, trustworthiness. 

Essentially the study is only telling of kids our age because it was done on college students. Online dating websites have users of all ages and age varies how you utilize the online dating sites due to preferences. Older people in their 30’s and 40’s are most like using sites to find a long-term relationship while college students are looking for quick and easy one-night stands. Nonetheless, in order to have a grasp on the effects free-spirited profiles vs. uptight profiles’ effect on other users perception of trustworthiness, interpersonal attraction, and personality studies need to expand to a broader spectrum.