{"id":23121,"date":"2016-06-03T10:24:28","date_gmt":"2016-06-03T15:24:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=23121"},"modified":"2016-05-04T21:40:22","modified_gmt":"2016-05-05T02:40:22","slug":"why-you-should-lie-in-your-online-dating-profile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2016\/06\/03\/why-you-should-lie-in-your-online-dating-profile\/","title":{"rendered":"Online Dating: Little Lies Might Lead to Love"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Flashback Friday.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Russ Ruggles, who blogs for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.onlinedatingmatchmaker.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Online Dating Matchmaker<\/a>, makes an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.onlinedatingmatchmaker.com\/lie-online-dating-profile\/\" target=\"_blank\">argument<\/a> for lying in your online dating profile. He notes, first, that lying is common and, second, that people lie in the direction that we would expect, given social desirability. Men, for example, tend to exaggerate their height; women tend to exaggerate their thinness:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/05\/07\/why-you-should-lie-in-your-online-dating-profile\/1-72\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-23123\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-23123\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/05\/1.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"555\" height=\"371\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/05\/1.gif 800w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/05\/1-500x334.gif 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 555px) 100vw, 555px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Since people also tend to restrict their searches according to social desirability (looking for taller men and thinner women), these lies will result in your being included in a greater proportion of searches. So, if you lie, you are more likely to actually go on a date.<\/p>\n<p>Provided your lie was small &#8212; small enough, that is, to not be <em>too<\/em> obvious upon first meeting &#8212; Ruggles explains that things are unlikely to fall to pieces on the first date.\u00a0It turns out that people&#8217;s stated preferences have a weak relationship to who they actually like. Stated preferences, one study found, &#8220;seemed to vanish when it came time to choose a partner in physical space.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/05\/07\/why-you-should-lie-in-your-online-dating-profile\/2-47\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-23124\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-23124\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/05\/2.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"573\" height=\"560\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/05\/2.gif 800w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/05\/2-500x489.gif 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 573px) 100vw, 573px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It turns out,&#8221; Ruggles writes, that &#8220;we have pretty much no clue what we actually want in a partner.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So lie! A little! Lie away!\u00a0And, also, don&#8217;t be so picky. You never know!<\/p>\n<p><em>Originally posted in 2010. Crossposted at <a href=\"http:\/\/jezebel.com\/5533574\/why-you-should-lie-in-your-online-dating-profile\" target=\"_blank\">Jezebel<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/\">Lisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/American-Hookup-New-Culture-Campus\/dp\/039328509X?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">American Hookup<\/a><em>, a book about college sexual culture; a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Gender-Interactions-Institutions-Lisa-Wade\/dp\/0393931072?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/intro\/\">Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a><em>.\u00a0You can follow her on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lisawade\">Twitter<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/lisawadephd\/\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Flashback Friday. Russ Ruggles, who blogs for Online Dating Matchmaker, makes an argument for lying in your online dating profile. He notes, first, that lying is common and, second, that people lie in the direction that we would expect, given social desirability. Men, for example, tend to exaggerate their height; women tend to exaggerate their [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":68827,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[218,244,387,329,55,2103,2088,12467,272,37],"class_list":["post-23121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bodies","tag-fat","tag-dating","tag-emotion","tag-gender","tag-gender-bodies","tag-gender-marriagefamily","tag-heightheightism","tag-marriagefamily","tag-social-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/05\/8.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23121"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68832,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23121\/revisions\/68832"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}