Date of Award
1-1-2016
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Department
Human Communications
First Advisor
Mary Claire Morr Serewicz, Ph.D.
Second Advisor
Erin Willer
Third Advisor
Lynn Schofield-Clark
Keywords
Attractiveness, Confidence, Good genes theory, Halo effect, Online dating, Physical attractiveness stereotype
Abstract
Do physically attractive individuals truly possess a multitude of better characteristics? The current study aimed to answer the age old question, "Do looks matter?" within the context of online dating and framed itself using cursory research performed by Brand and colleagues (2012). Good Genes Theory, Halo Effect, Physical Attractiveness Stereotype, and Social Information Procession theory were also used to explore what function appearance truly plays in online dating and how it influences a user's written text.
83 men were surveyed and asked to rate 84 women's online dating profiles (photos and texts) independently of one another to determine if those who were perceived as physically attractive also wrote more attractive texts as well. Results indicated that physical attractiveness was correlated with text attractiveness but not with text confidence. Findings also indicated the more attractive a woman's photo, the less discrepancy there was between her photo attractiveness and text attractiveness scores. Finally, photo attractiveness did not differ significantly for men's ratings of women in this study and women's ratings of men in the Brand et al. (2012) study.
Publication Statement
Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.
Recommended Citation
Celani-Morrell, Collette, "Beautiful People Are Better, at Least Online: Associations Between Photo Attractiveness and Text Attractiveness in Women's Online Dating Profiles" (2016). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1103.
https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/1103
Provenance
Received from ProQuest
Rights holder
Collette Celani-Morrell
File size
66 p.
Copyright date
2016
File format
application/pdf
Language
en
Discipline
Communication