Chapter 6 - Love and Relationships Online

Chapter Summary

Seeking love online

  • In recent times, looking for love online has become increasingly common and acceptable.

Meeting online: where, who and why?

  • Now the third most likely way for new couples to meet.
  • About half meet through online dating, over a fifth meet through social networking sites and a quarter through online communities.

What motivates people to find romance online?

  • Similarity.
  • It can be a more discreet option.
  • It is an efficient and convenient method of meeting people.
  • About 10 per cent of people are shy and find it removes barriers to dating.

Experiences and outcomes

  • The number of people trying dating online has increased, as has the number of people who make a date to meet offline.
  • Almost half of daters experienced someone misrepresenting themselves.
  • Over a quarter, primarily women, felt harassed or uncomfortable.
  • The long-term effects of a relationship having started online are mixed, but similar to offline.

Online dating profiles

  • The profile photograph is the most important element of a dating profile.
    • Photographs have a halo effect, where liking of a photograph influences the judgement of the profile.
    • Photographs validate claims made in the profile.
  • The ‘about me’ text is the second most important for determining attraction and trust.

CMC and its effect on online romance

  • A lot is being communicated about a dater through the medium of text in the ‘about me’ section of the profile and in initial messages.
  • Cues in the text may be interpreted by different online daters in a number of ways.
  • In online dating the speed at which communication becomes intimate can be much faster than offline.

Self-presentation and deception in online dating

  • Online daters strive to present themselves both accurately and positively, mediated by their desire to meet face-to-face.
  • Daters are considered in how they present themselves, analysing responses and others’ profiles, and adapting their own.
  • Deception is widespread – half of daters lie about some aspect of themselves, but they are small lies.
  • Honesty is not always successful. More self-disclosure and positive self-disclosure can lead to greater self-presentation success, but more honesty does not.

What makes a dating profile attractive?

  • Important qualities include physical attributes, shared similar interests and values, socioeconomic status, personality, honesty and age.
  • Homophily, where people tend to like people who are similar to themselves.
  • One area where daters prefer dissimilar others is attractiveness, where all daters prefer others more attractive than themselves.

Shifting modalities: moving offline

  • Online dating moves quickly, as daters don’t want to waste time getting to know someone online before finding out if there is physical chemistry.
  • They want to ensure that the online persona matches the real person.
  • Extended online interactions can result in more negative outcomes because hyperpersonal communication can cause idealised impressions to be created. These expectations may not be met in subsequent face-to-face encounters.

Maintaining relationships online

  • Some couples find that technology allows them to feel closer to their partner, while others feel that it introduces friction.
  • The online disinhibition effect can make it easier for couples to open up and disclose intimate information.
  • It can allow them to feel closer by messaging, or because they have a store of the history of their relationship in the form of conversations and images of their partner.
  • Initially, Facebook is used as the primary tool for uncertainty reduction.
  • There can be significant social pressure to change their Facebook status to ‘in a relationship with . . . ’

Jealousy

  • The lack of cues online can lead to problems with a misinterpretation of communications, resulting in jealousy.

Surveillance

  • People engage in surveillance of potential, current and ex partners online, but few reach the point where they cause fear in their targets.
  • Partner surveillance through social media is not universally negative, if it is done without rumination and with positive self-talk.

Cyber-stalking

  • Online surveillance is not always benign.
  • Cyber obsessional pursuit (COP) involves using technology-based stalking behaviours to harass someone or demand intimacy from them, becoming cyber stalking when the behaviour is repeated and severe, and likely to cause fear in a reasonable person.
  • Those who engage in Facebook harassment are more likely to commit COP.

Infidelity and cyber cheating

  • Cyber infidelity can have serious emotional and other negative consequences for relationships, even when they have never moved beyond the virtual domain.

Breaking up

  • 17 per cent of people have broken up with someone by CMC and 17 per cent had it happen to them.
  • Facebook may have a negative impact on emotional recovery when used to stay in contact with an ex partner after a break-up.

Further Reading

This paper explores Joseph Walther’s theory of hyperpersonal communication in computer-mediated communication, as discussed in this chapter in relation to online dating.

McKenna, Green and Gleason’s paper discusses how those who are more able to reveal their ‘true self’ to others online are more likely to form relationships with people online, successfully move those relationships into the offline world and maintain those relationships in the long term.

While people interact online they are more likely to act out or to disclose more information than they would offline. Professor John Suler’s article discusses the factors that cause this disinhibition.

This paper explores the changing landscape of relationship formation, looking at how people meet and how this has changed over time.

Video links

Amy Webb’s Ted Talk on creating her own algorithm for finding love through online dating is interesting in terms of self-presentation strategies.

A short video asking whether technology ruins relationships.

Useful websites

The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication: an open access peer-reviewed journal with many articles on relationships and technology.

A frequently updated list of all papers published in the area of online dating.

PEW Internet research online quiz about dating attitudes.

Multiple Choice Questions

Essay Questions

  1. Online dating is both similar to and different from offline dating. Drawing from psychological literature, describe the differences, with particular focus on the creation of online dating profiles.
  2. Explore how couples use uncertainty reduction strategies, from meeting a potential partner to terminating a relationship.
  3. Computer mediated communication is different from face-to-face communication. Analyse the ways in which people utilise these differences in the various stages of their relationships, giving at least three examples with support from psychological literature.
  4. Explore the motivations for engaging in online dating, both practical and psychological.
  5. Deception is widespread in online dating. Describe the prevelance and in what manner it manifests, and explore the motivations for deception in the online dating environment.