Deception in online dating: Significance and implications for the first offline date

Abstract

Deception is a common strategy for securing a first date with someone from an online dating site. But does the possibility of a second date still exist if deception was used to get the first one? To address this question, we investigated the effects of online dating deception on people’s subsequent offline interactions. Online daters (N = 94) were surveyed before and after their first date with a prospective partner. Their emails through the online dating site were also analyzed for linguistic markers of deception. Juxtaposing the self-report and observational email data revealed a positive association between participants’ deception and negative emotion words. Further results indicated that participants’ perceptions of their partner’s deception—but not their own—negatively predicted first date success.