Psychological profile dating

Online Dating: 10 Psychological Insights

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Does mate selection differ when those looking are presented with an almost overwhelming number of potential partners, but limited to a few photos, statistics, and an introductory paragraph about each one? What information do online daters focus on? Is it all about the photo? A study in which participants rated actual online profiles confirmed this, but also explored the criteria that made certain photos attractive Fiore et al.

Men were considered more attractive when they looked genuine, extraverted, and feminine, but not overly warm or kind. Although feminine male photos were seen as attractive, whole male profiles were rated more attractive when they seemed more masculine, a perplexing result worthy of more study. Women were deemed more attractive when they looked feminine, high in self-esteem, and not selfish.

Researchers believe that users make up for the lack of information in online profiles by filling in the blanks with guesses based on small pieces of information. Some theorize that online daters may be wearing rose colored glasses when looking at potential dates — filling in the information gaps with positive qualities in a potential partner Gibbs et al. In one study, knowing more information about a potential date generally led to liking them less, possibly because it called out inconsistencies and reduced opportunities to fill in the blanks with positive inferences.

But, with a particularly compatible partner, more information led to more liking. For online daters, this means that a very detailed profile might attract fewer, but more compatible suitors Norton et al.

#2 Show Emotional Availability

Research has also revealed gender differences in both preference and messaging behavior on online dating sites. In particular, women and men differ in the relative importance they assign to various attributes of potential partners. Interestingly, these differences persist even when reproduction is no longer a factor. In a nine-month study of participants on a dating site in and , Andrew Fiore, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues examined stated preferences and actual messaging behavior Fiore et al.

In general, women really are pickier than men — listing smaller ranges in their preferences for age and ethnicity. Women also initiate and reply to contact less than men.

They were contacted much more than men and, hence, generally had their choice of who to reply to. In light of these findings, the researchers presented some advice to potential online daters: More popular users are contacted more and, therefore, are less likely to respond to any one user.

In a study, Fiore and Judith Donath Massachusetts Institute of Technology examined messaging data from 65, users of a United States-based dating site. They found that users preferred sameness on all of the categories they tested a variety of features from child preferences to education to physical features like height. But some factors played a larger role than others, with marital status and wanting or already having children showing the strongest same-seeking. Fiore has also found that women responded more frequently to men whose popularity on the site a measure based on the average number of people contacting the user per day was similar to their own Fiore, Hitsch and colleagues found that similarity was strongly preferred in a variety of factors, including age, education, height, religion, political views, and smoking.

They also found a strong same-race preference. Interestingly, women have a more pronounced same-race preference, and this preference is not always revealed in their stated preferences Hitsch, et al. Online dating service users tend to contact people who are about as attractive as they are, but does your own attractiveness level influence how attractive you believe others to be? The site was launched in purely for users to rate each other on how attractive or, obviously, not they were. Later, the site added an online dating component.

Consistent with previous research, this study, published in Psychological Science , found that people with similar levels of physical attractiveness indeed tend to date each other, with more attractive people being more particular about the physical attractiveness of their potential dates. Compared to females, males are more influenced by how physically attractive their potential dates are, but less affected by how attractive they themselves are when deciding whom to date.

#1 Write About What You’re Looking for in a Partner

But these findings about gender bias in attraction are being challenged in other studies — more on this later. Assessing potential partners online hinges on other users being truthful in their descriptions. Psychological scientists have turned to online dating to examine how truthful people are in their descriptions of themselves, both with themselves and to others.

Online daters walk a fine line — everyone wants to make themselves as attractive as possible to potential dates, making deception very tempting. Catalina Toma, Jeffrey Hancock both at Cornell University , and Nicole Ellison Michigan State University examined the relationship between actual physical attributes and online self-descriptions of online daters in New York.

They found that lying was ubiquitous, but usually fairly small in terms of magnitude. Men tended to lie about height and women tended to lie about weight. Another modern dating innovation may provide a better solution: Since then, speed dating has spread around the world, giving millions of singles a chance at love. It also gives savvy researchers an unprecedented chance to study attraction in situ.

This hunch was confirmed by a speed dating outing with several other Northwestern colleagues, and the researchers embarked a new track of speed dating work.

No word on whether the outing was a success from other standpoints. As Finkel and Eastwick point out in a study published in Current Directions in Psychological Science , the popularity of speed dating allows the collection of large, real world samples across cultures, ethnicities, and socioeconomic levels. The speed dating design also lets researchers to study both sides of a dyadic process.

Also, speed dating allows for exploring reciprocity effects. A Psychological Science article Eastwick et al. Speed dating empowers researchers to study interactions as they happen, rather than post-hoc reports. It also allows for testing actual versus stated preferences.

5 Ways to Optimize Your Online Dating Profile According to Science | Science of People

One speed dating study showed that stated preferences do not match actual preferences and called into question the gender biases in attraction that have been well-documented elsewhere i. Speed dating studies also allow researchers to study the implications of simple changes in dating paradigms. In fact, quite the reverse.

Internet daters are more likely to be sociable, have high self-esteem and be low in dating anxiety Kim et al. When this data was compared with their profiles, it showed that nine out of ten had lied on at least one of the attributes measured, but the lies were only small ones. Daters were more truthful about their age 1. As expected women tended to shave off the pounds, while men gave themselves a boost in height. These lies make little difference in the real world because the vast majority of fibbing would have been difficult to detect in person.

Online Dating: 10 Psychological Insights

Most people want to meet up eventually so they know big lies are going to be caught. Even without Photoshop to iron out the wrinkles, camera angles and lighting can easily change perceived attractiveness. People instinctively understand this when choosing their profile photo so Toma and Hancock took photographs of internet daters, then judges compared these to the real profile photos. Although less physically attractive people were the most likely to choose a self-enhancing photo, overall the differences were tiny.

Clues to which types of profile photos work come from one online dating site which has analysed 7, photographs in its database oktrends, They then looked at which photos were associated with the longest online conversations. These were where it showed the dater:.

The photos associated with shorter than average conversations were in increasing order of conversational deterrent:. Even amongst a diverse population of online daters, people still prefer someone who is similar to themselves. When Fiore and Donath examined data from 65, online daters, they found that people were choosing based on similarity to themselves. In this respect online dating is no different from offline dating. On average people are looking for someone about the same as themselves. Indeed there are now many dating sites aimed at narrower demographics such as sports fans, Jewish people or those with particular medical conditions.

To examine internet dating diversity, Dutton et al. In this sample internet daters were more likely to have a greater disparity in age and educational background compared with those who had met in more traditional ways. The authors argue that it is changing the face of marriage by bring together types of people who previously never would have met.

Getting a response online can be a hit-and-miss affair.

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