The Concept and People’s Expectations from Online Dating

“There’s the old saying that you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince”, and I think that really applies to online dating. The growing popularity of online dating sites is significantly remarkable. The dramatic increase in Internet usage, indeed, has spread numerous online dating sites that allow people to meet and date in a virtual environment. People of different genders and various ages are turning to online dating sites and mobile phone applications in search of love and intimacy. The reason is that the online dating is a way to open doors to meet and date more people and to easily meet similar people than in real-life dating and to eventually end up with their soul mates. The question here is, how do people present themselves in a dating app and what do they really expect in their dates? For this reason, the following paragraphs are going to highlight on four different articles tackling the concept of online dating.

Research indicates that the likelihood of deceptive self-presentation increases as a function of the pressure to engage in self-presentation. One study examines the role of online daters’ physical attractiveness in their profile self-presentation and, in particular, their use of deception. The study reports how differences in expectations about meeting impacted the degree of deceptive self-presentation individuals displayed within the context of dating. In a similar study “Dating deception: Gender, online dating, and exaggerated self-presentation” clarify how differences in expectations about meeting impacted the degree of deceptive self-presentation individuals displayed within the context of dating. Both studies hold the view that people tend to present and sometimes exaggerate or fabricate their characteristics in an attempt to create their desired impression. One major difference between the two studies is the number and the type of participants. There were 80 online daters (40 men and 40 women) of diverse nationalities. Participants, however, were 148 (88 women, 60 men) students from a large southeastern university. One potential weakness of the Hancock & Toma (2009) study was the samples of online judges. The judges were students and therefore younger than many of the online daters whose attractiveness they were rating. It is possible that younger people may be harsher critics of older people’s attractiveness. The strength of the study, however, lies in the fact of the fair number of participants who contributed in it. Moving to Guadagno, Okdie & Kruse (2011), its solid, detailed, credible and accurate results were the foremost strength in this study. Participants were, however, limited to one university and this is considered a major weakness in the study. Generally, both studies emphasize on the fact that unattractive daters, can compensate for their lack of attractiveness by enhancing their self-presentation through the descriptors of physical appearance.

Research claims that physical attraction plays a major role in choosing our online date. One study of how gender role stereotypes affect attraction in an online dating scenario examined the effects of gender role congruence and physical attractiveness on romantic interest in college students. Both studies indicated that online dating was actually related to physical attraction rather than related to income and educational level. Results also reported that both men and women preferred attractive and gender role incongruent dating partners over average looking and gender role congruent. One of the differences of these two studies is that Chappetta & Barth (2016) study includes solid and more detailed information to the reader from different sources. Another difference is the number of the participants and the age groups in study. The participants in the latter study were 367 single users with different age groups between 18 and 60 years old. The strength of Chappetta & Barth (2016) lies in the fact of using solid and detailed information to the reader from different sources. The age of participants in this article, however, was the main weakness. The fact is that the participants’ pool was made up of mostly first-year college students. These young adults may think differently about their romantic partners than older adults. And hence, determine how this would affect the results. Turning to Valkenburg & Jochen (2007) one of the major strengths in this article is the accuracy and fairness, in the sense that the study took into consideration including equal number of males and females. One of the weaknesses, nevertheless, is the lack of enough literature review in their work. Overall, both studies support the fact that using online dating is not merely related to the income or the educational level of the person, but rather to the physical beauty which potentially affect interest in online dating profile.

The goal of online dating is to get offline as quickly as possible - Amy Webb author and founder and CEO of the Future Today Institute. Online dating does not necessarily change who we date or marry, it is just how quickly we meet them, and that’s the difference. Online dating is only one of the methods in which we can meet our soul mates; and it does not substitute the real life interaction. Being honest about who we are and what we really want out of online apps, however, is a part of the whole equation.