For Online Dating, Two Words of Advice: Honesty, Details

The headline for the University of Iowa news release about research into online dating puts it nicely: Love is about being real, not perfect.” How do they know? Because researchers at the school created eight online dating profiles—four men and four women—with various combinations of two perspectives. One perspective, “Selective Self-Presentation,” highlighted only what’s “good” about a person and downplayed the rest. The other, “Warranting,” contained information easily traced to a real person. The profiles were placed in OKCupid and shown to 317 adults who said they were using or had used an online dating service. There were 150 men and 167 women, and the mean age was 40, all of whom were asked to judge the profiles and decide which ones they would contact. Yes, the researchers expected that the high selective self-presentation—those who sounded perfect—and high warranting— those who provided specifics that could be traced to a real person—would be the most popular, but no, that was not the case. Instead, the researchers found that people were turned off by profiles that sounded too good to be true. They also found the more specific information a profile contained that could be traced to a real person, the more the viewer trusted the profile. “You want to balance all that is wonderful about yourself with some things that aren’t negative, but more humble or realistic about yourself,” says study author Andy High. “It’s important to put your best foot forward, but maybe not in your best pair of shoes.”