{"id":16188,"date":"2018-08-31T10:23:04","date_gmt":"2018-08-31T06:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/?p=16188"},"modified":"2018-08-31T10:23:04","modified_gmt":"2018-08-31T06:23:04","slug":"the-lies-we-tell-on-dating-apps-to-find-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/the-lies-we-tell-on-dating-apps-to-find-love\/","title":{"rendered":"The lies we tell on dating apps to find love"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\u00a0\"\"Researchers analyzed troves of messages sent between matches and found that the fibs people tell are usually rational ones that serve a purpose<\/span><\/span><\/h4>\n

<\/p>\n

Nearly\u00a0one-fourth of young adults\u00a0are looking for love through dating websites or apps.<\/span><\/p>\n

This relatively new form of courtship\u00a0can give you access to a large pool of potential partners. It also presents a unique set of challenges.<\/span><\/p>\n

For example, you\u2019ve probably heard about \u2013 or have personally experienced \u2013 a date that was planned online but didn\u2019t go well for\u00a0one of the following reasons: He was shorter than his profile said he was, she looked different in person than she did in her photos, or he was talkative over text but it was like pulling teeth at dinner.<\/span><\/p>\n

In other words, a person\u2019s profile \u2013 and the messages sent before a date \u2013 might not capture who a person really is.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a recent paper, my colleague\u00a0Jeff Hancock\u00a0and\u00a0I\u00a0wondered: How often do people who use dating apps lie? What sort of things are they prone to lie about?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018My phone died at the gym\u2019<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Our studies are some of the first to address these questions, but others have also examined deception in online dating.<\/span><\/p>\n

Past research\u00a0focused largely on the dating profile. Studies have found, for example, that men tend to overstate their height and lie about their occupation, while women understate their weight and\u00a0tend to have less accurate photos\u00a0than their counterparts.<\/span><\/p>\n

But profiles are only one aspect of the online dating process. Only after messaging your match will you decide if you want to meet him or her.<\/span><\/p>\n

To understand how often people lied to their partners and what they falsified, we evaluated hundreds of text messages exchanged after daters swiped right, but before they met \u2013 a period we call \u201cthe discovery phase.\u201d We recruited an online sample of over 200 participants who provided us with their messages from a recent dating conversation and identified the lies, with some participants explaining why these messages were deceptive and not jokes.<\/span><\/p>\n

We found that lies could be categorized into two main types. The first kind were lies related to self-presentation. If participants wanted to present themselves as more attractive, for example, they would lie about how often they went to the gym. Or if their match appeared to be religious, they might lie about how often they read the Bible to make it seem as if they had similar interests.<\/span><\/p>\n

The second kind of lies were related to availability management, with daters describing why they couldn\u2019t meet, or giving excuses for radio silence, like lying about their phone losing service.<\/span><\/p>\n

These deceptions are\u00a0called \u201cbutler lies\u201d\u00a0because they\u2019re a relatively polite way to avoid communication without completely closing the door on the connection. If you\u2019ve ever texted, \u201cSorry I went AWOL, my phone died,\u201d when you just didn\u2019t want to talk, you\u2019ve told a butler lie.<\/span><\/p>\n

Butler lies don\u2019t make you a bad person. Instead, they can help you avoid\u00a0dating pitfalls, such as appearing always available or desperate.<\/span><\/p>\n

Purposeful or pervasive lies?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

While deceptions over self-presentation and availability accounted for most lies, we observed that only 7 percent of all messages were rated as false in our sample.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why such a low deception rate?<\/span><\/p>\n

A robust finding across recent deception studies suggests that the majority of people are honest and that there are only\u00a0a few prolific liars in our midst.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lying to appear like a good match or lying about your whereabouts can be completely rational behaviors. In fact, most people online\u00a0expect it. There\u2019s also a benefit\u00a0to lying just a little bit: It can make us stand out in the dating pool, while making us feel we\u2019ve stayed true to who we are.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, outright and pervasive lies \u2013 mentioning your love for dogs, but actually being allergic to them \u2013 can undermine trust. One too many big lies can be problematic for finding \u201cthe one.\u201d There was another interesting result that speaks to the nature of deception during the discovery phase. In our studies, the number of lies told by a participant was positively associated with the number of lies they believed their partner told.<\/span><\/p>\n

So if you\u2019re honest and tell few lies, you think that others are being honest as well. If you\u2019re looking for love but are lying to get it, there\u2019s a good chance that you\u2019ll perceive others are lying to you, too.<\/span><\/p>\n

Therefore, telling little lies for love is normal, and we do it because it serves a purpose \u2013 not just because we can.<\/span><\/p>\n

David Markowitz<\/span><\/strong>
\n<\/span>Assistant Professor of Social Media Data Analytics,
\nUniversity of Oregon<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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