Men on Tinder say misleading profile pics make them less inclined to care about how they treat someone on a date.
This is according to a new study on Tinder, relationships and online honesty carried out by sociologists from Manchester Metropolitan University.
The researchers asked male users of Tinder from Manchester & Cheshire about their experiences using the app, and the dates that led from using the matching service.
And rather shockingly, if some men thought women had misrepresented themselves on their profile pictures, they felt they had “a licence to use the woman as they see fit”.
Dr. Jenny van Hooff, senior lecturer in sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University & the study’s author, presented the research at the British Sociological Association’s conference this week, saying:
“We wanted to find out how Tinder affected the nature of our participants’ relationships and intimacies.
“Everyone sees themselves as behaving honestly, while presenting a best possible branded version of themselves.
“Many of our respondents felt let down on meeting a woman and on feeling a visual representation hadn’t been accurate.
“Some of our respondents felt that this breaking of trust was a licence to use their date as they saw fit, thereby speeding up intimacy and undermining it at the same time.”
While the study only presents the findings of a small number of male users, the honesty of online dating profiles & use of old pictures is a common complaint about online dating from both sexes.
Some dating services have tried to address this issue, by only letting users upload images taken directly from the camera, or getting their pictures & profiles verified by a moderation team.
Badoo’s recently released feature lets users take a selfie where they are doing a specific pose that has been given to them by the company.
They then send this photo to the company, and one of Badoo’s 5,000 moderators check to make sure the user has followed the “pose” directions, then approves the image.
Find out more about the feature here.