Attractiveness Assessment in Online Dating Profiles in Taiwan

บทคัดย่อ

Online dating is a social phenomenon widespread worldwide to increase opportunities to meet potential partners. Whilst research in western countries provided valuable insights on how users perceive one another when viewing their profiles, little research has been done in Asia, where culture and cultural environment are different. In an experimental approach, we evaluated how people assess attractiveness of profile owners. We created two online profiles of a young woman and of a young man, both of which were evaluated by 295 participants. First, participants were shown the written description of a profile and asked to evaluate it in terms of attractiveness, trustworthiness and self-esteem, plus being asked if they’d consider dating the profile owner or no. Second, participants were shown the pictures of the profile and were asked the same questions. As previous studies in psychology, in the absence of photographs, participants tend to rely more on other clues to evaluate the attractiveness; whilst after looking at profile photographs, there as a big noticeable decrease on the participants willing to meet the profile owners, participants seemed to evaluate the final attractiveness based on the photographs rather than in the initial written description of the profile owners.