14 DAY TRIAL // Researchers at the University of Kansas have determined that people who tend to date online exhibit a very similar type of behavior to the ones that do so in real-life. The study was focused on determining whether online daters that lie do so to deceive others knowingly or not. The experts learned that this was not case in most instances. Rather, the individuals that indeed misrepresented reality on dating websites did so because they were “people-pleasers” and want to get everyone else to like them.
The team says that this is precisely the same type of behavior people engage in when going through real-life dates, and so there are not many differences between the two groups in this regard. In the experiments, which involved keeping track of about 5,000 people enlisted on a US national Internet matchmaking service, Kansas researcher and assistant professor of communication studies Jeffrey Hall, the study group tried to determine which people were more likely to lie during the dating process.
All the study participants were asked a set of questions, dealing primarily with whether or not they would, or did, lie about issues such as relationship goals, personal attributes, assets, past relationships, personal interests, age or weight. “What people lie about depends on what kind of people they are. For example, if you're an extrovert, you might downplay the number of past relationships you've had because chances are you've had more relationships than an introvert,” Hall says of his group's conclusions.
The end-result was that people in the “high self-monitor” category were most likely to lie. These individuals, Hall says, can tell what other people like, and do everything in their power to satisfy those needs. This is done purely to achieve social ends, and not necessarily to manipulate. The team leader believes that they just want to be liked and included in various groups. Full details of the work appear in the February issue of the respected Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.
"Online daters shouldn't be concerned that most people are presenting a false impression of themselves. What influences face-to-face dating influences the online world, too,” Hall says. The overall research results showed that men were more likely to lie in general, whereas women took the number one spot in “tweaking” the reality of their weight. The expert adds that, since these people tend to want to meet each other face to face eventually, the amount of lying cannot be too great.