Ever lied or exaggerated just a little about your looks, personality or status in order to get a date? Don't worry, researchers say you're not alone.
Lying occurs in everyday life. It occurs as we seek to attract people. It occurs in a variety of contexts, and in most cases it's probably not harmful.
In their study, researchers had 56 female and 21 male college undergraduates view the photos and short, self-penned bios of a group of prospective dates of varying levels of attractiveness. Much like those found at a typical dating service, these BIOS also gave clues to the type of ideal mate the man or woman was seeking.
In return, the undergrads were asked to fill out a response to each prospective date, describing on a 7-point scale their own level of physical attractiveness, kindness, level of success/status and other qualities.
The researchers found that people don't present themselves consistently to person A, B and C. Instead, they conform to the expectations of the one that they want to date, the attractive date.
In other words, both men and women scored themselves closer to a "7" on kindness if an especially attractive date said their ideal mate was "very kind," but lower -- say a 4 or 5 -- if an attractive candidate said kindness wasn't such a priority.
While researchers saw little difference between genders in this experiment, previous research has suggested that men tend to exaggerate their level of romantic commitment and income/status when pursuing women, while women tend to exaggerate their physical attractiveness when in pursuit of a desired male.
Most of these little white lies are quite harmless, and may even serve a positive function. When we fib a little about our less-than-perfect qualities, we're trying to make those initial interactions to go very smoothly. We're looking for shared values, similarities so that we might have future interaction.
But lying does have its limits. When you start telling lies that are 180 degrees from the truth, from who you really are, it can start to have some negative effects on relationships because of distrust that's established very early on in the relationship.
And there's one meeting place where it may be especially hard to separate romantic fact from fiction -- the Internet. People do misrepresent themselves, especially when there's low surveillance.
Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology February 1, 2002 Savannah, Georgia