Men “Lie More” than Women in Online Dating
Everyone knows that men lie more than women, right? It’s one of the unspoken assumptions most of us have about the sexes. When we hear that someone has been cheating, we look first to the man and are more surprised if turns out to be the woman. Think of the high profile celebrity cheaters of late… Ashley Cole, Tiger Woods etc. It’s more often than not the man that can’t stay away from the honeypot.
Well that assumption has been shown to have some basis in fact by a study released yesterday in the USA – but perhaps not as much as you’d think.
Jeffrey Hall of the University of Kansas undertook a survey of 5000 members of a popular online dating website to test their attitudes to truth and deception. The study, published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships found that men were indeed more likely to tell lies in an online environment.
However, Hall concluded that most of these lies were motivated by a desire to ‘fit in’ with social norms rather than just a matter of simple presentation. He noted:
“What people lie about depends on what kind of people they are. For example, if you’re an extrovert, you might downplay the number of past relationships you’ve had because chances are you’ve had more relationships than an introvert.”
Those who are the most likely to tell fibs are those that Hall calls “high self monitors”. These are people who are very aware of the things that people generally like and are adept at controlling their own behaviour to fit in with these patterns. Underlying this can be character traits which the person would much rather be hidden and so they fall into a patter of “little white lies”.
Hall’s more surprising conclusion was that while men tended to engage in this behaviour more than women, the percentage difference was actually very small. Furthermore, in the study group as a whole levels of honesty were surprisingly high.
Hall points out in his summary that as most people engaged in an online relationship would ultimately like to meet up in real life, the risks associated with lying are so high as to render people more honest than you might expect.
The message is clear: if you are online dating, more often than not you can trust the other person. But still, keeps your wits about you and look for tell-tale signs that they’re not being entirely honest with you.
