Online daters with a traditional and conservative profile tend to be viewed as more trustworthy than online daters with an open and free spirited profile, study finds

Researchers from Emerson College tested the relationship between how an online dater's profile appearance affects the way that a viewer will perceive the target dater. Seunga Venus Jin and Cassie Martin concluded that users with a "traditional/uptight" dating profile were more likely to be seen as trustworthy and interpersonally attractive, whereas users with an "open/free-spirited" dating profile were viewed as being more open-minded to creating new relationships.

This study proved that the appearance of online dating profiles has a major impact in the responses of potential matches. Some of the main factors that attribute to the effectiveness of an online dating profile include the profile picture, the interest section, and the geographical location of each user.

Background information about online dating 

Increases in the number of online dating users can be attributed to factors such as "widespread availability of dating services" and "technological affordances such as real-time chat and digital cameras." Prior research focused on areas such as self-presentation, identity formation online, and perceptions of online dating profiles to test how they contribute to the overall effectiveness of online dating.

When engaging in online dating, users frequently engage in self-presentation theory, which states "individuals manage impressions by changing their appearance and manner in accordance with the person with whom they are interacting, while the others simultaneously attempt to obtain information about the individual and form an impression of the individual." More often than not, people tend to alter their outward appearance in order to become more relatable and easier to understand through the eyes of their peers.

The main goal of online dating is to connect with another individual and create a relationship that can later be taken offline and into the real world. A major risk of online dating is the tendency for users in an online setting to inaccurately represent themselves. If one's actual identity is not the same as their virtual identity, viewers will perceive the user to be "dishonest and undesirable."

The way that viewers will perceive the credibility of users depends on multiple "judgment dimensions." Interpersonal Deception Theory (IDT) states that there are three different possibilities that a viewer may encounter when viewing an online dating profile. The first, "composure and competence," claims that viewers link conservative profiles to individuals who have more credibility than other types of daters. The second, "sociability and dynamism," claims that viewers link open/free-spirited daters to individuals who are more credible than other types of daters. The third, which is based on "truth bias," claims that the viewer believes that both conservative and open/free-spirited daters are equally credible to one another. Truth bias is defined as "a natural human tendency to assume others are telling the truth" which is attributed to why large amounts of the population have very poor deception skills.

A brief overview of the study 

This study aimed to find answers to two exploratory questions in relation to the three ways in which a viewer could potentially examine a dater's profile in terms of his/her credibility; "Do online daters' profile types (traditional/uptight vs. open/free-spirited) influence other daters' perception of the target dater's trustworthiness? and "Do online daters' profile types influence other daters' perception of the target dater's interpersonal attraction and personality?"

The research was conducted after randomly giving 65 (heterosexual) undergraduate college students either the open/free-spirited dating profile or the traditional/uptight dating profile.

College-aged students were used in this experiment because they are seen as a "technologically savvy generation" with less of a concern for "inappropriate or unsafe" dating Web sites than older age groups may have.

The stimuli that were manipulated throughout the experiment consisted of four separate images; two girls and two boys with each gender group consisting of one traditional/uptight dating profile and one open/free-spirited dating profile.

Traditional/uptight
profile

Open/free-spirited
profile

The traditional/uptight profile contained information such as the number of followers the user had (five) and the number of people that the user was following (seven). In both of the male and female profile pictures, daters were dressed in non-revealing clothing. The dater was located in an upper-class suburban neighborhood, which indicates a secluded and reserved dating environment.

The open/free-spirited profile also contained information about the number of followers the user had (72) and the number of people that the user was following (76). In both of the male and female profile pictures, daters were dressed in revealing beach attire. The dater was located in a city, which indicates a thriving and diverse dating environment.


Students were each presented with one dater profile and were asked to complete a questionnaire, which included a manipulation check and dependent measures. The manipulation check consisted of a 7-point bipolar scale that contrasted the traditional profile to the open profile. The dependent measures included eight true/false questions and a questionnaire that asked students to rate both the dater profile (scale of "1=extremely conservative" to "7=extremely progressive") and the actual dater (scale of "1=passively seeking daters" to "7=actively seeking daters"). The dependent measures were used to test each dater's level of trustworthiness based on how the students interpreted their dater profile. Interpersonal attraction was measured using the Interpersonal Attraction Scales, and personality perception was measured using NEO Big Five Inventory.


Traditional profiles elicit more trustworthiness, interpersonal attractiveness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness than open profiles 

In terms of their profile picture and interests, participants found daters with an open/free-spirited profile to be more open than daters with a traditional profile. Daters with an open/free-spirited profile were seen as more engaged in actively seeking a relationship than daters with a traditional profile.

The students who were presented with a traditional/uptight profile, participants perceived the dater to be more trustworthy, interpersonally attractive, agreeable, conscientious, and neurotic than daters with an open/free-spirited profile.

Trustworthiness was determined as the mediator between profile types and interpersonal attraction. This was much more prevalent in traditional/uptight dating profiles than in open/free-spirited dating profiles.


Similar study reveals the most alluring words to include on an online dating profile

According to a study that tested 12,000 online dating users in the United Kingdom, there are certain words that portray a user to be more enticing to those of the opposite sex.

dailymail.co.uk

Women who described themselves as "sweet, ambitious, or thoughtful" and men who described themselves as "physically fit, optimistic, or passionate" are more likely to gain attention from other users.

While men are more focused on the images of their potential matches, women tend to assess a user more so by the content of their interests. Statistics show that a woman's desire to approach a man online is dependent on textual descriptions 64 to 69 percent of the time, while a man's desire to approach a woman online is dependent on textual descriptions only 43 to 49 percent of the time.

Overall, the information that is shown on one's dating profile has a major effect on how and why a user might be more or less enticed to engage in conversation in the hopes of creating a newfound relationship.