80% of Dating Profiles have One Small Lie

One of the stumbling blocks for members of dating sites is that fact that people can be deceptive online. In "real life", people can obviously be deceptive as well, but at least the other person can read nonverbal cues to help in determining if they think that the person they are talking to is lying.

Jeffrey T. Hancock, a communications professor at Cornell University gathered hundreds of active online daters in New York City to see how far people went in lying on dating profiles. The researches downloaded the peoples profiles and compared the information with verifiable data. This included physical attributes that could be gather on the spot like, height and weight, as well as income information which they could later look up. What the research found was white lies are common. 8 in 10 people had a small fib on their profile. This include things like their height being off by an inch or so, too their weight being 10 pounds over what they specified. Major lies like someone's marital status, were found to be rare.

Women also tended to lie more about things men care about. The most common was about physical attributes. Men lied as well, but usually on things that indicated their status in life, like income or occupation.

Most of these deceptions were not intended to be malicious. People usually lied about things that they see, they may be lacking in. If they ever meet a person in real life who had read their profile, they hoped that they would be interesting enough, that the other person would over look any deceptions.

Hancock also suggests, in which I agree with him on, is

as online dating sites are woven into social networks -- where people are linked to a web of real references -- instances of exaggeration will decrease. But even then, he says, people are still likely to present a version of their best self, even if that's not quite who they are today.

For more on this story, you can read the Washington Post.