Deception in Online Dating

Sara Blair, Marshall Cooper, Shannon Fahnestock

Why Deception Occurs

Now that there has been discussion on what deception is, the frequency and magnitude of online dating deception and even an addressing of gender differences, it’s important to look at why this online deception may occur.  One of the major reasons online deception may occur in general, is the idea that technology enables lying through a variety of properties.  Two of these major properties are editability and rehearsability.  Editability refers to one’s ability to edit information about oneself even after it has been posted online while rehearsability refers to one’s ability to think about how to present his or herself ahead of time and to do so in a way that best presents his or herself (Toma et al., 2008).  Another online property that enables deception is idea of disembodiment.  Disembodiment refers to the concept that two or more people who are interacting no longer share the same physical space and can interact with the others without being seen.  This disembodiment further enables deception by reducing the number of cues available to detect deception.  Many people have difficulty detecting deception when face to face when seeing both verbal and nonverbal cues, such as tone of voice and facial expression, and this detection becomes even more difficult without these verbal and non verbal cues (Hancock, 2009).    

While the people interacting online may not be in the same place, the interaction still takes place in real time.  These properties of disembodiment and real time interaction make identity deception possible.  Identity deception is when one falsely displays or manipulates who they are.  The internet allows individuals to present themselves without the constraints of the physical self ( Hancock, 2009).  Some have called the internet a “safe playground” for experimenting with aspects of one’s self (Caspi & Gorsky, 2006, p.58).  Identity play was found to be one of the most common motivations for taking part in online deception.  Another common motivation for online deception was privacy concerns.  Privacy concerns, as a reason for deception, would mostly be due to a higher anxiety of negative consequences coming from the online interaction.  This reasoning is questionable when one looks at the next data that addresses why deception may occur (Caspi & Gorsky, 2006).

Another reason that has been found as a reason that online deception may occur is related to online usage in general.  Previous research has found that individuals who use the internet more often are more likely overall to deceive online.  This has been suggested to be due to the fact that when the “technology becomes transparent to the users, the anxiety related to technological faults that might disclose deception is reduced and, at the same time, feelings of efficacy are increased (Caspi & Gorsky, 2006, p.58).  While it seems that increased internet usage may lead to reduced anxiety thus increasing deception this idea is in conflict with the finding that many people report privacy concerns as one of the primary motivations for online deception (Caspi & Gorsky, 2006).

 

Caspi and Gorsky (2006) also found that online deception may occur due to an altered ethical sense that online interaction encourages.  The authors found that digital spaces are not viewed to individuals as real objects and thus are judged differently when it comes to morals.  In fact online deception does not appear to be due to malicious motives the majority of the time but is often viewed as an enjoyable activity.  Instead of people reporting feelings such as guilt, shame and fear which is commonly associated with face to face deception, very few people report negative feelings when it comes to online deception.  This is thought to possibly relate to the medium of the internet and the idea it is less threatening to deceive someone you do not know (Caspi and Gorsky, 2006).   

When looking specifically at online dating deception some other factors come into play as to why this specific deception may occur.  Toma et al. (2008) found that online dating deception often results from the dater’s desires to enhance their attractiveness while staying true to themselves.  Deception also occurs from one attempting to enhance one’s self presentation but Toma et al. (2008) also addresses the idea that online dating deception differs from other online deception.  These differences in deception are largely due to the idea that online deception is done with the intent of meeting in real life and building an offline relationship.  This expected meeting implies that large amounts of deception would have a good chance of being noticed and have future consequences, so online dating deception often is less severe than other general forms of online deception (Toma et al. 2008).