There are baseball coaches. There are football coaches. And with the popularity of online dating, there are even online dating coaches. From perfecting your picture through professional photoshoots and photoshop, to providing a professional critique of a profile, online dating coaches do it all.
A NY times article from March 2007 describes the success story of Ms. Kost, who paid an online dating coach $2000 to help her in the online search for the perfect mate. In addition to changing her profile and picture, her coach encouranged her to tell more specific stories as well as to carefully screen potential dates thorugh e-mail and the phone. Ultimately, she found Stephen Micallef "who, like her, is an engineer. She immediately liked how he spoke of his daughters. 'I liked his values,' Ms. Kost said. 'He seemed emotionally mature and very open.'"
So what attracted Stephen to her profile? According to the article, Stephen was attracted to Ms. Kost because of her pictures and how well written and well thought out Ms. Kost's profile was.
(And in case you are wondering and don't have time to read the enitre article, they intend to get married).
This scenario highlights two key factors that influence the formation of a relationship. First, Stephen was initially attracted by how Ms. Kost looked, which highlights Wallace's factor of physical attraction. The more physically attractive one finds the other, the better chance for a relationship. The attraction between these two online daters occurred in the same direction as it would have in a face to face interaction- he saw her picture first and then contacted her.
It is extremely apparant by Ms. Kost's description that the common ground principle played a huge role in their relationship formation. According to Wallace, the more that people share beliefs, the more attracted to one another they will be. Ms. Kost and Stephen have the same values and even share the same profession.
Online deception played an equally important role in making this relationship happen. The author of an article in Scientific American eloquently observes that "One could even argue that deception is a necessary part of wooing a potential partner." Have you ever lied about really liking a tv show because someone you were interested in liked it too? The deception that takes place in Ms. Kost's situation is directly related to the asynchronicty of the online dating scenario. This coincides partly with the Social Distance theory of deception, which postulates that the more socially distant a medium the more a person will lie. For example, she was able to plan out her entire profile and picture with the help of a coach before posting it, which can be compared to the preparation that goes into an e-mail. While Ms. Kost didn't blatantly lie about anything as far as the article goes, she doesn't necessarily tell the whole truth, and the truth she does tell is not necessarily in her own words. How much of that profile was truly her own writing? How much did they photoshop her picture? What parts about herself did she choose to leave out? But in the end it doesn't matter, she still won her perfect guy.
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5 comments:
This is a great post. Typically, articles about online dating are fluffy pseudo-journalism or USA Today bad-statistic-throwing articles. It's great that you reference an interesting article that ties in overarching philosophical inquiries related to social relations. Is deception a negative concept? I think CMC researchers have been convinced that it is a safety or ameliorating mechanism as much as it is a hurtful lying technique. Moreso, in online personals, deception is rarely used to hurt another (because profiles are self-presentation meant to entice outsiders).
As with many things, it's all a measure of degree. Since we are most likely to be honest in our conventional and assessment signals, than the we probably use deception in an passable way as well.
Wow, this is a fascinating story. Keeps you on your toes how you can meet people and end up together nowadays. I wonder what kind of promise the dating coach makes in terms of money-back guarantee? The coach offered good advice to Ms.Kost in terms of her picture selection and to be more real in her descriptions/stories on her profile. It paid off seeing as how Stephen liked her for the person she presented as. I see how the physical attractiveness played a role since Stephen wrote to her based on her picture. Although I feel that disinhibition played a bigger role. The more she disclosed about herself in her profile the more real she was and that helped with the relationship development. You took an interesting approach on the deception that may have occurred but then who doesn’t? It would be a great article if they were to write how their relationship is going after marriage and if they really knew each other sufficiently.
Hi Diane,
First off, I really liked this post, it was well organized and the information in it was great. I especially liked the set of questions you asked at the end. I was actually thinking the same things and was glad that you brought them up. It's very interesting how the online dating sites because of the inclusion of pictures in the profiles, lead for the same effect as a face to face encounter. Just a question on the side, since people who use these websites must use some degree of deception, do you think they are more accepting of the deceptions when they are revealed to them as they get to know the person of interest?
Hey Diane! Your post was so interesting and eye-opening about what people do in this world to find romantic partners. The fact that Ms. Kost hired someone to create her profile and actually spent a lot of money on it makes me wonder how she actually acts now in the relationship. If there were initial lies, does she still stick to them? And what does the man she found think about what she did? When creating the profile, Ms. Kost was carefully using selective self-presentation in order to portray the information she thought would attract the man she was looking for. Women use other means of attracting men in face to face these days, such as plastic surgery, so it is no wonder that photo-shopping has made its way into this realm as well. Great post!
That was a really interesting article. I suppose it shouldn’t have surprised me that people would be willing to pay to be coached on how to best present themselves on an online dating website. It’s really no different than hiring an image consultant or a college admissions coach. I’m not sure how I would feel if I found out that someone I met on an online dating website had used a coach to maximize the effectiveness of their selective self-presentation. I think that, in a sense, I would feel manipulated. In addition, since I am already somewhat skeptical about the people on online dating websites, learning that not only did they spend money on the site, but they also paid to have someone make their profile would probably leave me with an unfavorable impression of that person.
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