Assignment 2: Love's Little Lies: Deception through online dating
Today the average person with a computer does not have to leave their house in order to accomplish day to day tasks. Everything from grocery shopping, to clothes shopping, to dating can be done online, making it so Americans, theoretically, never have to leave their homes. Since activities that we used to do face to face can now be done online, it is more difficult to pick up on some verbal and nonverbal cues. In this blog I am going to look at how deception can be used over digital mediums, using the reading by Carlson et al. to analyze it.Numerous online dating sites containing thousands of profiles have sprung up over the past few years. Each user of the site relies on the profiles to find their perfect match, and this is where the issue of deception comes in. Not everyone who uses online dating sites is attractive, young, and wealthy, but it would be difficult to believe that by just looking at profiles. According to Buller and Burgoon deception is "a message knowingly transmitted by a sender to foster a false belief or conclusion by the receiver." This definition fits in perfectly with the deception used on dating websites. Each member wants the other members to see them in a certain light, even if they are not that way in reality.
Carlson et al. talks about the different motivations that people have to deceive others, including role strain, outcome value and relevance, and the likelihood of perpetrating a successful deception. In the case of online dating, I believe the motivation for people is the outcome value and relevance. Most people join an online dating site with the goal of meeting a future partner, so their first impression is very important in order to find the possible love of their life. In most cases, the user's motivation is pretty high because he or she wants to find a partner, so this increases the amount of deception that will be used. For example, Peter, a "fortysomething," rolls back his age to the previous decade. Despite possessing a reputation as the "life of the party," he claims he's forced to lie because attractive women are only interested in men his age if they have money. Overall most of the users of online dating sites probably use deception in one form or another. The level of deception, however, all depends on the motivation and outcome value of the individual.
posted by Nicole @ 8:45 PM
1 Comments:
Nice entry. I certainly agree with Cameron that you’ve managed to cover the motivation base very well. From the role strain of trying to appear attractive online to the high levels of motivation associated with dating sites, you’ve hit on every major point.
Continuing along a similar vein, I am curious how “socially present” dating sites (or really any social networking sites) are, and how that affects identity deception. Certainly there a numerous cues present in a profile, however there are only one or two channels to communicate through (the textual information and any pictures). With only two manageable channels, Carlson et al. would posit that it would have a relatively lower deception potential (although higher than say a purely text based conversation). At the same time online daters’ profiles are very tailorable and rehearseable – two factors which increase the deception potential. Combined with low synchronicity, it would seem that the potential almost balances out.
Also, I wonder where the “truth bias” comes into play with the profiles. Certainly most people browsing self-created profiles will take them with a grain of salt. That is unless, as Cameron pointed, both parties are willing to turn a blind eye to the situation. If one goes into a communication situation with a high likelihood of doubting all or part of what one’s partner is communicating, is one still biased towards taking the information as truth? Just more food for thought.
Again, a very interesting and thought provoking post.
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