New research has found that dating profiles indicating that their owners are non-smokers are more likely to receive video chat invitations compared to profiles of smokers. Male participants reported being more likely to send messages (to the owners of the dating profiles they were shown), initiate video chats, propose to meet offline, and make dating decisions than female participants. The paper was published in Telematics and Informatics.
With the advent of the Internet over the past couple of decades, many human activities have gradually moved online. Dating is one of them. Online dating is a method of meeting potential romantic partners through websites or mobile apps, where users create profiles and interact based on shared interests or compatibility algorithms. It has become increasingly popular due to its convenience, accessibility, and the ability to connect with people outside one’s immediate social circle.
The online dating app market generated almost 5 billion dollars in revenue in 2022. It is estimated that more than 300 million people have used dating apps worldwide, with about 20 million paying for premium features. The use of dating apps surged during the COVID-19 pandemic when the number of downloads sharply increased, as did the number of payments for the use of dating sites. However, scientific knowledge about the psychological experiences of dating site users is still insufficiently explored.
Study authors Ruoxu Wang and Jin Yang aimed to examine the effects of gender, smoking, and COVID-19 vaccination status on impressions and dating decisions toward online dating profiles (i.e., toward the people represented by these profiles). They note that people form first impressions about a person in online dating based on cues contained in the dating profiles. These first impressions then shape if and how the relationship will further develop.
They conducted an experiment with 250 Amazon MTurk workers as study participants. The average age was 34 years, 55% were male, 82% had used online dating services before, and 83% reported having dated someone after using an online dating service. On average, participants had used online dating services for 3–4 years.
The authors created a set of simulated dating profiles mimicking the interface of the dating website Match.com. These profiles displayed a profile picture (taken from a database of free pictures and pretested to ensure they were neither too attractive nor too unattractive), as well as the profile owner’s name, age, job, constellation, personality, hobbies, education, body type, height, smoking status, and COVID-19 vaccination status.
The authors were particularly interested in how gender, smoking status, and COVID-19 vaccination status affected participants’ perceptions of the profile. To this end, the profiles differed in these three characteristics, while all the other elements remained identical. Participants were asked to rate the profiles on perceived intelligence, perceived similarity to themselves, and to report their dating decision (whether they would like the profile, send a message to the person, engage in a video chat, meet the person offline, and make a short- or long-term dating decision).
Participants also completed assessments of loneliness (e.g., “How often do you feel that you are not in tune with the people around you?”) and dating anxiety (e.g., “I worry that I may not be attractive to people of the opposite sex”).
The results showed that non-smokers were more likely to receive a video chat invitation than smokers. Male participants were more likely to initiate contact (by sending a message, initiating a video chat, or arranging an offline meeting) and make dating decisions based on the profiles they viewed than female participants. Additionally, COVID-19 vaccinated females and unvaccinated males were more likely to receive offline meeting invitations from study participants. Participants’ perceptions of the profile owners’ intelligence and similarity to themselves varied with the owners’ smoking and vaccination statuses.
“One surprising finding emerging from this study was that smoking status was still an important health cue when it comes to making online dating decisions. However, the COVID-19 vaccination status was not that important, people take profile owner’s gender and smoking status altogether to make online dating decision. It is probably because this study was conducted during the later stage of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the study authors concluded.
The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the way people make decisions in online dating. However, the study was conducted on MTurk workers, a population that might not be fully representative of the general population. Additionally, real life dating decisions are critically shaped by interactions between individuals, while the study only applied ratings of static profiles.
The paper “Displaying health cues on online dating profiles: How do gender, smoking, and COVID-19 vaccination statuses influence impression and dating decision?” was authored by Ruoxu Wang and Jin Yang.
