I think I like you: Spontaneous and deliberate evaluations of potential romantic partners in an online dating context

Abstract

The present research examined processes of impression formation within an online dating context. Across two studies, female participants formed impressions of a potential partner based on an online dating profile containing information about the target's facial attractiveness and self-described ambition. Afterwards, deliberate evaluations of the target were assessed with a self-report measure and spontaneous evaluations were measured with an affective priming task. The results showed that deliberate evaluations varied as a function of both self-described ambition and facial attractiveness. In contrast, spontaneous evaluations varied only as a function of facial attractiveness. Experiment 2 further showed that these effects were independent of the order in which the two types of information had been encoded. The results are discussed in terms of associative and propositional processes, and the conditions under which these processes can lead to conflicting evaluations of the same potential romantic partner. Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Over the past decade, online dating has dramatically risen in popularity, with over 40 million unique visitors to dating websites in the United States (Mulrine, 2003), and more than 800 different websites currently in existence (Marsan, 2008). In the United States alone, approximately 7 million online dating site users have gone on to meet a fellow user face-to-face and 3 million individuals have formed long-term romantic relationships with someone they met on the internet (Boyd, 2007). This rise in popularity of online dating has been simultaneously linked with a corresponding reduction in the stigma historically associated with meeting romantic partners through the internet. A survey commissioned by the Pew Internet and American Life Project (2006) found that 61 per cent of respondents disagreed with the view that online daters are desperate. Evidently, online dating is now more popular and socially acceptable than it has ever been, and this trend is likely to continue.The users of online dating websites, like any mating pool, are individuals possessing varying levels of attributes that influence their interpersonal likeability as a potential mate. Thus, a pertinent question arises: What factors influence the likeability of potential romantic partners in an online dating context? By examining a dataset from a major online dating site, Hitsch, Hortaçsu, and Ariely (2005) determined that physical attractiveness was a significant predictor of receiving messages from other users of the site for both men and women. Furthermore, the researchers found that women were more likely to contact men with higher annual incomes and men seeking long-term relationships. Similarly, Evans and Brase (2007) found that after examining an online dating profile of an opposite-sex individual, women tended to discuss the target's ambitiousness, whereas men tended to comment on the target's attractiveness when asked open-ended questions about the target in the dating profile.

Facial first impressions and partner preference models: Comparable or distinct underlying structures?

“…In most romantic contexts, people make partner selections based on a rich wealth of Figure 5. Examination of the correlations between each model shows the strongest correlations are between (1) warmthtrustworthiness and approachability; (2) status-resources and dominance; and (3) information that includes facial appearance (Fletcher et al, 2014;Sritharan, Heilpern, Wilbur, & Gawronski, 2010;Walster et al, 1966). These are presented in terms of the strength of correlation for all participants rating all faces.…”

Humor in Romantic Contexts: Do Men Participate and Women Evaluate?

“…They were then informed that they would examine an online dating profile that had ostensibly been submitted to a developing campus dating service and would answer several questions concerning the person described by the profile. The dating profile was adapted from Sritharan et al (2010), including basic information pertaining to the user's demographics. The profile did not contain a photograph, however, so that we could more cleanly assess the effect of humor on attraction without the noise introduced by physical attractiveness.…”

“…A second study revealed that men and women rate humorous comments made by attractive targets as funnier than identical comments made by less attractive targets. People have strongly positive explicit and implicit responses to physically attractive individuals (Sritharan, Heilpern, Wilbur, & Gawronski, 2010), so it is not surprising that both men and women use humor production and appreciation to convey their interest in especially attractive targets. A third study found that third-party observers perceive men's humor initiation and women's positive responses to humor as indicative of romantic interest.…”

Human Mate Choice, Evolution of

“…Ancestrally, women could have ascertained this by a man's potential for accruing resources, which in the modern environment equates with monetary resources (Symons, 1979;Buss, 2003). Ambition is correlated with the drive and ability to acquire resources, and women prefer long-term partners who are ambitious (e.g., Buss, 1989;Buss and Barnes, 1986;Buss et al, 2001;Kenrick et al, 1993Kenrick et al, , 1990 and will even prefer ambitious yet physically unattractive men to nonambitious yet physically attractive men (Sritharan et al, 2010;Townsend and Wasserman, 1998;Wilbur and Campbell, 2010). Women who selected men who could accrue resources as partners would have produced more offspring who survived than women who chose other men.…”