Impression management in online dating

Abstract

Despite the growing body of research regarding impression management that focus on the information shown on online dating profiles, there has been a lack of inclusion on (1) gender and (2) users’ purposes for using online dating applications that may affect how users construct and manage their impressions and how they engage in intentional deception. The present study aimed to understand the process of impression management in online dating, namely impression motivation and impression construction by also taking the two factors into consideration. Furthermore, it provided insight into the discussion on how impression management in online dating is perceived from the perspective of users themselves. The data was collected from semi-structured interviews with eight participants recruited through convenience sampling. The research findings illustrated that users’ purposes for using online dating applications were to search for friendship and/or romantic relationship, that would affect the degree to which users are motivated to spend time to construct and polish their profiles, thereby bringing the impression they intended to create. However, users’ purposes for using online dating applications would not affect the likelihood of intentional deceptive self-presentation, and gender difference is found to be apparent in terms of what users lie about – males on searchable attributes and females on photos. Overall this study suggested that users’ gender and purposes for using online dating applications are important factors to consider in the study of impression management in online dating.