Idealization on Dating Apps: Seeing Fewer Photos of the Potential Partner Leads to Expectancy Violation and Lower Attraction

Online dating apps facilitate the initiation of romantic relationships by helping users connect with new partners and meet them in subsequent face-to-face appointments. However, switching from online to face-to-face dating can induce expectancy violation and diminish attraction. Drawing on expectancy violation theory, we hypothesized that seeing just a few photos of the potential partner on their dating app profile can lead to these negative effects. Users who cannot rely on many photos for forming their impression are expected to idealize the person and show, in the moving from online to offline dating, lower levels of attraction, lower pleasantness of the person’s characteristics, and worse expectancies about their personality. To test this hypothesis, 57 single young adults were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions: half of them viewed a dating app profile with 18 photos of the potential partner; the other half viewed the same profile but with just 4 photos. Participants then filled out a questionnaire assessing their impressions (i.e., attraction, pleasantness, and expected personality). Later, participants watched a video interview of the person and completed a new questionnaire assessing their updated impressions. Results supported our hypothesis. While participants who had seen more photos maintained their impression as positive and stable, participants who had seen fewer photos showed, after the video, lower physical attraction, lower pleasantness of the person’s characteristics (e.g., gestures), and worse expected personality traits. These results have important implications for the study of romantic attraction and online behaviors.