--- title: How Often People Lie on Dating Apps, According to Research description: Nearly one-fourth of young adults are looking for love through dating websites or apps. This relatively new form of courtship can give you access to... canonical: https://time.com/5638981/lying-on-dating-apps/ author: The Conversation article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2019-07-31T16:37:20.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:58:09.327Z og:title: How Often Do People Lie on Dating Apps? Here's What Two Researchers Found og:description: And why telling small fibs is not always a bad thing og:url: https://time.com/5638981/lying-on-dating-apps/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt82ea5b556d909cd7/698a00ab16d8847b54c36c2c/dating-apps.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Online dating app relationship. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How Often Do People Lie on Dating Apps? Here's What Two Researchers Found twitter:description: And why telling small fibs is not always a bad thing twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt82ea5b556d909cd7/698a00ab16d8847b54c36c2c/dating-apps.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How Often Do People Lie on Dating Apps? Here's What Two Researchers Found by [David Markowitz, University of Oregon / The Conversation](https://time.com/author/the-conversation/) ## David Markowitz, University of Oregon / The Conversation Jul 31, 2019 4:37 PM UTC  Love concept. Vector flat illustration Love concept. Vector flat illustrationGetty Images by [David Markowitz, University of Oregon / The Conversation](https://time.com/author/the-conversation/) ## David Markowitz, University of Oregon / The Conversation Jul 31, 2019 4:37 PM UTC Nearly [one-fourth of young adults](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/02/13/8-facts-about-love-and-marriage/) are looking for love through dating websites or apps. This relatively new form of courtship [can give you access to a large pool of potential partners](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-attraction-doctor/201404/pros-and-cons-online-dating). It also presents a unique set of challenges. For example, you’ve probably heard about — or have personally experienced — a date that was planned online but didn’t go well for [one of the following reasons](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-hodge/online-dating-lies%5Fb%5F1930053.html): He was shorter than his profile said he was, she looked different in person than she did in her photos, or he was talkative over text but it was like pulling teeth at dinner. In other words, a person’s profile — and the messages sent before a date — might not capture who a person really is. [In a 2018 paper](https://academic.oup.com/joc/article/68/3/547/4986443), my colleague [Jeff Hancock](https://comm.stanford.edu/faculty-hancock/) and [I](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=-GBU6qkAAAAJ&hl=en) wondered: How often do people who use dating apps lie? What sort of things are they prone to lie about? ## ‘My phone died at the gym’ Our studies are some of the first to address these questions, but others have also examined deception in online dating. Past research [focused largely on the dating profile](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167208318067). Studies have found, for example, that men tend to overstate their height and lie about their occupation, while women understate their weight and [tend to have less accurate photos](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2009.01420.x) than their counterparts. But profiles are only one aspect of the online dating process. Only after messaging your match will you decide if you want to meet him or her. To understand how often people lied to their partners and what they falsified, we evaluated hundreds of text messages exchanged after daters swiped right, but before they met — a period we call “the discovery phase.” We recruited an online sample of over 200 participants who provided us with their messages from a recent dating conversation and identified the lies, with some participants explaining why these messages were deceptive and not jokes. We found that lies could be categorized into two main types. The first kind were lies related to self-presentation. If participants wanted to present themselves as more attractive, for example, they would lie about how often they went to the gym. Or if their match appeared to be religious, they might lie about how often they read the Bible to make it seem as if they had similar interests. The second kind of lies were related to availability management, with daters describing why they couldn’t meet, or giving excuses for radio silence, like lying about their phone losing service. These deceptions are [called “butler lies”](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1518701.1518782) because they’re a relatively polite way to avoid communication without completely closing the door on the connection. If you’ve ever texted, “Sorry I went AWOL, my phone died,” when you just didn’t want to talk, you’ve told a butler lie. Butler lies don’t make you a bad person. Instead, they can help you avoid [dating pitfalls](https://www.eharmony.com/dating-advice/about-you/7-signs-of-a-desperate-dater/), such as appearing always available or desperate. ## Purposeful or pervasive lies? While deceptions over self-presentation and availability accounted for most lies, we observed that only 7% of all messages were rated as false in our sample. Why such a low deception rate? A robust finding across recent deception studies suggests that the majority of people are honest and that there are only [a few prolific liars](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0261927X14528804) in our midst. Lying to appear like a good match or lying about your whereabouts can be completely rational behaviors. In fact, most people online [expect it](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563216304800). There’s also a benefit [to lying just a little bit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1jVvQbvZLQ): It can make us stand out in the dating pool, while making us feel we’ve stayed true to who we are. However, outright and pervasive lies — mentioning your love for dogs, but actually being allergic to them — can undermine trust. One too many big lies can be problematic for finding “the one.” There was another interesting result that speaks to the nature of deception during the discovery phase. In our studies, the number of lies told by a participant was positively associated with the number of lies they believed their partner told. So if you’re honest and tell few lies, you think that others are being honest as well. If you’re looking for love but are lying to get it, there’s a good chance that you’ll think others are lying to you, too. Therefore, telling little lies for love is normal, and we do it because it serves a purpose – not just because we can. Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: http://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines [_David Markowitz_](https://theconversation.com/profiles/david-markowitz-528569)_, Assistant Professor of Social Media Data Analytics,_ [_University of Oregon_](http://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-oregon-811) _This article is republished from_ [_The Conversation_](http://theconversation.com) _under a Creative Commons license. Read the_ [_original article_](https://theconversation.com/the-lies-we-tell-on-dating-apps-to-find-love-101061)_._ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5638981/lying-on-dating-apps/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5638981/lying-on-dating-apps/"},"headline":"How Often Do People Lie on Dating Apps? 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