Conflicting Evidence

Last week I blogged about Lying Online, and how a very small study found that most people lied 'insignificantly' when describing themselves in their online dating profiles. And a commenter made an excellent point: that to alleviate dating scam issues, it is in one's best interest to fudge some of the insignificant numbers.

The poll embedded in that blog post showed that the gross majority of this blog's readers (64%) don't lie about their demographic information (age, weight, sexual orientation, etc.) when writing their online dating profile. Yet twelve percent of respondents felt the need to fudge their age... so not everyone is being completely honest.

An article in the Grand Rapids Press last week threw more conflicting evidence into the mix, which profiled author Carla Riemersma, a 65-year-old college professor who studied the online dating profiles of more than 4,000 randomly selected singles and met with over 300 men and women while researching her newly released book, "What are the Odds? The Likelihood of Finding Love and Romance in Cyberspace". Her findings?

"...97.5 percent of the online daters she interviewed were dishonest about at least one aspect of their profile, with women most likely to fib about age and weight while men often fudged their age and marital status."

"...about 60 percent of the men who stated they were single, separated or divorced still were married."

I found Riemersma's findings curious, to say the least. These numbers definitely haven't been my experience after having dated online for a number of years, nor are they the experiences of those coming to me for advice. In fact, I rarely get asked this question by people who are actively dating. More often than not, the concern with lying online comes from people who haven't dated for a while, or from those who have yet to meet someone from an online dating site. But then I sat and thought about it for a minute. Is this perhaps because those actively dating are already immune to the 'internet goggles' that are online dating sites? Do most of us now assume that there will be discrepancies in our profiles, and therefore, wait until we meet to pass judgment?