DailyDirt: The Mating Behavior of Online Daters
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Online dating sites provide a vast amount of interesting data for researchers studying human behavior. These sites record how much people lie about themselves to try to impress others, and dating sites contain a wide variety of personal data that can be sliced and diced according to age, gender, income, education, interests, you-name-it. Here are just a few studies that have looked at digital dating databases for insights into the minds of people searching for- A study of 18 different dating sites, including eHarmony, Match, Plenty of Fish and Yahoo Personal, suggests that online daters are maybe slightly more successful at finding spouses than offline daters. The study also pointed out that there wasn't much difference between dating sites based on breakup rates, although some online dating sites had higher ratings for marriage satisfaction. (A+++ Would marry again!) [url]
- A meta-analysis for over 400 academic studies about online dating stated that about 25 million people use dating websites. The results of online dating aren't exactly conclusive, but with more and more people meeting mates with the help of websites, "online dating" is getting to be just like "dating". [url]
- About 81% of online daters misrepresent the facts about how tall, how heavy, or how old they are. Interestingly, people with online dating profiles are also more likely to admit to being fat than being conservative. [url]
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Filed Under: marriage, matching, online dating, personal data, relationships, romance
Companies: eharmony, match.com
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Online dating sucks
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No, dating sites contain a very narrow variety of personal data, unless you think people who use dating sites are a unbiased representational cross section of a population, but of course IT'S NOT.
"About 81% of online daters misrepresent the facts about how tall, how heavy, or how old they are. "
See what I mean!!!
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I went on tons of online dates and I found that as time went on over the past 5 years people have gotten more honest in general and typically it wasn't that far from their actual selves. Maybe 2 people in 5 years of off and on internet dating did I meet people that were wildly different than their profiles and 5 people were different but in completely positive ways (IE complete bombshells that undersold themselves because they didn't want people messaging them based on their looks).
The part about conservatism is funny though, I did notice that conservatives aren't that much self aware as liberals are. You can sniff out a super liberal pretty easy, they are out there loud and proud. Super conservatives though... they don't know how weird they are to non super conservative people cause typically they are conservative because "Well that's just how everyone is."
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Re:
But, if by "lying" they mean fudging their age, weight, or height by an insignificant amount, 81% is about right.
By the way, I met my wife through an online dating site. And thank God. She's the best thing that ever happened to me.
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I think it comes down to the fact that it's easier to hide being a conservative than being fat once you meet.
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