Who Did I Swipe On? Accuracy and Self-Presentation in Online Dating.

Many people use online dating profiles to meet partners and screen potential dates. Unlike other online contexts, targets might be more motivated to misrepresent their personality, making accuracy difficult. How strongly are people motivated to misrepresent themselves, how transparent is personality, and which individual differences might explain these processes? Online daters (targets, N = 180) submitted their profiles, described their personality and the impression they wanted to convey. Judges (N = 196) viewed these profiles and rated targets' personalities. Overall, targets wanted to be seen accurately and positively, and they successfully presented desired personas without their personality leaking through, suggesting being seen accurately is within targets' control. Some processes were related to outcomes (e.g., swiping decisions) and explained by individual differences (e.g., attachment). These findings highlight the importance of considering self-presentational goals in online dating and when indexing accuracy in general.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

• Publication date

  2025-11-13

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1177/01461672251386488PMID 41230894
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Dating in the dark: Vulnerable narcissism predicts inauthentic self-presentation in online dating

  2023cited by this paper
• Is My Attachment Style Showing? Perceptions of a Date’s Attachment Anxiety and Avoidance and Dating Interest During a Speed-Dating Event

  2022cited by this paper
• #Insta Personality: Personality Expression in Instagram Accounts, Impression Formation, and Accuracy of Personality Judgments at Zero Acquaintance.

  2022cited by this paper
• Is what is beautiful good and still more accurately understood? A replication and extension of Lorenzo et al. (2010)

  2022cited by this paper
• Accuracy and Bias in First Impressions of Attachment Style from Faces.

  2020cited by this paper
• Adult attachment and online dating deception: a theory modernized

  2020cited by this paper
• In person, online, and up close: the cross‐contextual consistency of expressive accuracy

  2020cited by this paper
• Examining the consistency of the good target across contexts and domains of personality

  2020cited by this paper
• Are some first dates easier to read than others? The role of target well-being in distinctively accurate first impressions

  2020cited by this paper
• Attention promotes accurate impression formation.

  2020cited by this paper
• Reassessing the good judge of personality.

  2019cited by this paper
• Welcome to the Tidyverse

  2019cited by this paper
• Disintermediating your friends: How online dating in the United States displaces other ways of meeting

  2019cited by this paper
• Evaluating Effect Size in Psychological Research: Sense and Nonsense

  2019cited by this paper
• Why are well-adjusted people seen more accurately? The role of personality-behavior congruence in naturalistic social settings.

  2019cited by this paper
• Do accurate personality impressions benefit early relationship development? The bidirectional associations between accuracy and liking.

  2018cited by this paper
• Selfies reflect actual personality – Just like photos or short videos in standardized lab conditions

  2018cited by this paper
• lmerTest Package: Tests in Linear Mixed Effects Models

  2017cited by this paper
• Self-Expression on Social Media

  2017cited by this paper
• Evolution and human motivation: A fundamental motives framework

  2017cited by this paper
• Is Romantic Desire Predictable? Machine Learning Applied to Initial Romantic Attraction

  2017cited by this paper
• An idealized self or the real me? Predicting attraction to online dating profiles using selective self-presentation and warranting

  2016cited by this paper
• The Correlates of Similarity Estimates Are Often Misleadingly Positive

  2016cited by this paper
• Knowing versus liking: Separating normative knowledge from social desirability in first impressions of personality.

  2015cited by this paper
• Personality Expression and Impression Formation in Online Social Networks: An Integrative Approach to Understanding the Processes of Accuracy, Impression Management and Meta–Accuracy

  2014cited by this paper
• Impression management and formation on Facebook: A lens model approach

  2014cited by this paper
• Personality Traits and Relationship Satisfaction in Intimate Couples: Three Perspectives on Personality

  2014cited by this paper
• Perceived, not actual, similarity predicts initial attraction in a live romantic context: Evidence from the speed-dating paradigm

  2013cited by this paper
• Targeting the Good Target

  2013cited by this paper
• Accurate First Impressions Leave a Lasting Impression

  2013cited by this paper
• Online Dating

  2012cited by this paper
• A Closer Look at First Sight: Social Relations Lens Model Analysis of Personality and Interpersonal Attraction at Zero Acquaintance

  2011cited by this paper
• Attachment, authenticity, and honesty: dispositional and experimentally induced security can reduce self- and other-deception.

  2010cited by this paper
• What Is Beautiful Is Good and More Accurately Understood

  2010cited by this paper
• Facebook Profiles Reflect Actual Personality, Not Self-Idealization

  2010cited by this paper
• Altruism as a courtship display: some effects of third-party generosity on audience perceptions.

  2010cited by this paper
• The Cost of Forming More Accurate Impressions

  2010cited by this paper
• The Social Accuracy Model of Interpersonal Perception: Assessing Individual Differences in Perceptive and Expressive Accuracy

  2010cited by this paper
• What leads to romantic attraction: similarity, reciprocity, security, or beauty? Evidence from a speed-dating study.

  2009cited by this paper
• The nature and structure of correlations among Big Five ratings: the halo-alpha-beta model.

  2009cited by this paper
• Scaling regression inputs by dividing by two standard deviations

  2008cited by this paper
• Assessing attractiveness in online dating profiles

  2008cited by this paper
• Separating Fact From Fiction: An Examination of Deceptive Self-Presentation in Online Dating Profiles

  2008cited by this paper
• How extraverted is honey.bunny77@hotmail.de? Inferring personality from e-mail addresses

  2008cited by this paper
• Sex differences in mate preferences revisited: do people know what they initially desire in a romantic partner?

  2008cited by this paper
• The Good Judge of Personality: Characteristics, Behaviors, and Observer Accuracy.

  2008cited by this paper
• Revealing the 'real' me, searching for the 'actual' you: Presentations of self on an internet dating site

  2008cited by this paper
• Predicting Preferences for Dating Partners From Past Experiences of Psychological Abuse: Identifying the Psychological Ingredients of Situations

  2007cited by this paper
• The Experiences in Close Relationship Scale (ECR)-Short Form: Reliability, Validity, and Factor Structure

  2007cited by this paper
• G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences

  2007cited by this paper
• Managing Impressions Online: Self-Presentation Processes in the Online Dating Environment

  2006cited by this paper
• When Is Being Known or Adored by Romantic Partners Most Beneficial? Self-Perceptions, Relationship Length, and Responses to Partner's Verifying and Enhancing Appraisals

  2006cited by this paper
• Self-Presentation in Online Personals

  2006cited by this paper
• Interpersonal attraction and personality: what is attractive--self similarity, ideal similarity, complementarity or attachment security?

  2003cited by this paper
• One Hundred Years of Social Psychology Quantitatively Described

  2003cited by this paper
• Relationship formation on the Internet: What's the big attraction?

  2002cited by this paper
• Measuring Global Self-Esteem: Construct Validation of a Single-Item Measure and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale

  2001cited by this paper
• Maxims or myths of beauty? A meta-analytic and theoretical review.

  2000cited by this paper
• Computer-Mediated Communication

  1996cited by this paper
• "Judgable" people: personality, behavior, and competing explanations.

  1993cited by this paper
• Attachment styles and patterns of self-disclosure.

  1991cited by this paper
• Impression management: A literature review and two-component model.

  1990cited by this paper

• No citing papers are available for this paper.