Meeting partners on the Internet is a growing trend. But how much can one trust the information provided by people about themselves via online dating services? And why is depression so dissatisfying in relationships? These two questions have been explored by researches in articles appearing in the latest issue of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.
The authors say that the findings dispel the myth that people using online dating are that different than anyone else who might find a relationship through friends, school or work. The team investigated over 5000 individuals dating online in search of long-term partners, from all walks of life and over a wide age range (18 to over 60). The survey included questions on personality traits such as openness, extroversion, education and income, and also self-monitoring. Self monitoring is about how we try to present ourselves in a favourable light to others, to make people like us. The self-monitoring scores turned out to be a major factor in the likelihood of people changing their presentation to others across all dating indicators (topics such as previous relationships, likes, dislikes, appearance, etc).
Whether a person is likely to lie about themselves online also depends on what kind of person they are: Someone who is very open to new experiences (e.g. foreign travel) is highly unlikely to misrepresent themselves about their experiences – because they are naturally interesting people. On the other hand extroverts are more likely to misrepresent themselves when describing past relationships. Extroverts tend to have many past relationships because they meet new people easily, but may play this down when looking for a new relationship. The good part, however, is that the likelihood of people misrepresenting themselves overall is actually very low.
Meanwhile, another research looks at the longstanding question about what explains the association between depressive symptoms and relationship quality. Over three decades of research have shown that people with depression are less satisfied in their romantic relationships. But questions remain about exactly why these go together. Now the new research shows that relational uncertainty could be one explanation.
Relational uncertainty is how sure individuals are about their perceptions of involvement in a relationship. Self uncertainty is evident by questions like "how certain am I about my view of this relationship?" Partner uncertainty involves questions such as, "how certain am I about where my partner wants this to go?" Finally relationship uncertainty involves questions such as "How certain am I about the future of this relationship?"
There were three main findings from the study of couples experiencing depressive symptoms or relationship problems: Those with more severe depressive symptoms reported more relationship distress; people experiencing more relational uncertainty were less satisfied with their relationship; and finally, women's depressive symptoms predicted all three sources of their relational uncertainty, which in turn predicted both men's and women's relationship quality. For men, only the self source of relational uncertainty acted as a mediator.
People suffering from depressive symptoms may wrestle with more questions about their romantic relationship, which may be dissatisfying, say the researchers, adding that if we find ways to help people address their uncertainty about their relationship, then their depressive symptoms might not be so debilitating for their romantic relationships.
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