People who tend be a little dishonest when dating
online would likely stretch the truth on a face-to-face date, too -- all in an effort to get others to like them.
Jeffrey Hall, assistant professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas, surveyed more than 5,000 people in a national Internet matchmaking service to determine what kinds of people are most likely to lie during the online dating process.
He asked them how likely they were to lie about topics such as assets, relationship goals, personal interests, personal attributes, past relationships, age, and weight.
"What people lie about depends on what kind of people they are," Hall says. "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."
Those most likely to lie during online dating experiences are "high self-monitors" -- people who have an acute sense of what people like and control their behavior to achieve social ends. Their actions are not necessarily manipulative, Hall says, but rather reflect a desire to be liked and to fit in.
In the study, published in the February issue of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships , men admitted to lying more overall, but women were most likely to lie about their weight. Because online daters hope to meet face-to-face eventually, the amount of lying is quite small, he says.
"Online daters shouldn`t be concerned that most people are presenting a false impression of themselves," Hall adds. "What influences face-to-face dating influences the online world, too."
If the complaints received by ConsumerAffairs.com are an accurate gauge, it isn`t so much the daters people need to worry about as it is the operators of the Web sites.
"Great Expectations did not offer any help in finding love, all they offered where events that cost extra and most where geared toward women only," writes Jeffrey of Los Angeles. "My Bank canceled my credit card due to the recession, so I ask Great Expectations to cancel my account due to financial problems. They told me that I had to pay or be sued. The lawyers have threatened me with suing and wage garnishment from my job and threatened to take money from my checking account."
Margaret of Kamas, UT, says she paid a huge fee to The Right One. "To this point they have tried to match me up with (1) a sex offender who has charges pending. (2) A man who bragged about wanting to shoot a previous girl friend`s boy friend. (3) A man who upon the very first meeting tried to molest me, chasing me clear around his front room," she says. "I could go on and on and have had nothing but negative experiences. This company could not be following the guidelines they state. This company uses false advertising and is defrauding their clients."
Things have reached the point in the online dating industry where states are acting in an effort to afford more protection to dating Web site subscribers.
