Men and women who are seeking relationships online are asked to indicate what they want in a relationship, whether they are seeking “just friends,” “uncommitted relationships” or “long-term leading to marriage.” There’s an art to creating profiles, including uploading photographs to prompt a potential mate to indicate interest.

People can describe themselves and their ideal relationship in a wide variety of ways, sometimes less than honestly, including exaggerating characteristics thatthey think are desirable. Most people do not dramatically lie, however. Instead, they use minor deceptions or small exaggerations.

Altering photos by using filters is a common way to improve one’s portrayed physical appearance. However, online dating companies have been taking a hard stance and not permitting photos that have been filtered or altered on profiles because the wide majority of daters find the use of filters deceptive. Presumably, then, online daters provide photos that are accurate and speak to their interests and intentions.

Looking for commitment?

My colleagues, Mackenzie Zinck and Laura Weir, and I examined online dating photos in July and August 2020 in Nova Scotia. We looked at 250 women and 250 men seeking long-term relationships, and 250 men seeking short-term relationships. We did not include women seeking short-term relationships because there were only 46 in the entire province advertising this intention; we did not have any predictions about the content of their photographs, so we omitted them from the main study.

We predicted that men seeking long-term relationships would include images of dependants — children or dogs, cats or other pets — more than men seeking short-term relationships, and more than women. We argued that cross-sex mind-reading — the ability to imagine what members of the opposite sex are thinking when it comes to mating — would lead men to want to advertise that they can provide care to a dependant over the long term when they were seeking a long-term relationship.

Indeed, we did find that men looking for a lasting partnership were more likely to include images of children or dogs (or mention them) in their profiles than men seeking short-term relationships.

Women, though, surprised us.

We had predicted that women would be less likely to show dependants because they would want to avoid being considered a burden, or that another man’s child would need care and time. We thought women would feel a need to protect their children, or at least not display them from the outset in a public venue among strangers.

Instead, we found that both men and women seeking long-term relationships …….

Source: https://thenextweb.com/news/study-dogs-signal-commitment-men-dating-profiles-syndication