When meeting each of us wants to show his best side. But is it worth frankly flaunting your successes and achievements in a profile on a dating site?
Flipping through the pages of candidates on dating sites, we first of all pay attention to the appearance of potential partners, their physical attractiveness, and then we are already interested in personal information.
Many of us try to show our best side. The photo can be edited in Photoshop, and provide incomplete information about yourself, describing in detail the advantages and achievements and carefully avoiding the shortcomings. In the first case, the deception will be revealed upon meeting, but in the second case, the illusion can be maintained for quite a long time.
Even if we tell the truth about ourselves and provide evidence, is it worth shamelessly boasting about our successes?
To test whether bragging or modesty works best on dating sites, psychologists from the University of Iowa conducted a study in which users (a total of 316 people) of these sites were shown profiles of other users and asked to rate them.1.
Those who emphasize their merits or external attractiveness are less trusted
The questionnaires were fake, that is, created by researchers, in some of them the user described in detail their merits and achievements, in others the candidates behaved modestly. Also, some users made it possible to check information about themselves in an independent source – for example, on the website of an employer or university.
It turned out that those who boasted were seen as untrustworthy and less socially attractive. On average, participants were less likely to agree to text or go on dates with braggarts.
The researchers also added links to external sources of information in some questionnaires, for example, to a person’s professional biography on the employer’s website. Thus, other users could check the information provided and make sure that the user is telling the truth about their career progress. However, the presence of such links helped only to users who did not seek to show off and flaunt their achievements. As a result, they gave the impression of being honest and at the same time modest and open to communication.
But self-promotion, even backed up by real evidence of their achievements, in the end still did not attract. To the participants in the experiment, these candidates seemed arrogant and too immodest.
The authors of the study advise: “If we are looking for a partner on a dating site for a long-term relationship based on mutual trust, it is worth showing a certain modesty and trying to show ourselves as ordinary, “real” people.
1 C. Wotipka, A. High «An idealized self or the real me? Predicting attraction to online dating profiles using selective self-presentation and warranting», Communication Monographs, 2016.