Catfish Get Caught and Punished: Dating Profile “Cheaters” and Mate Value Ratings

Catfish Get Caught and Punished: Dating Profile “Cheaters” and Mate Value Ratings

People who break social rules by trying to take more than their fair share are often singled out and punished by those around them. Although this phenomenon has been studied across a wide range of human behaviors, it has not yet been investigated in one situation in which people are consistently trying to "get more than they deserve": dating. This study tested the extent to which people may punish those potential romantic partners who falsely present themselves as valuable mates. Participants completed a task in which they (1) read a fictitious online dating profile that described a person as having either a high or low mate value, (2) provided a mate value rating of that person, (3) read a set of reviews indicting that the profile "lied" and the person was either less valuable or more valuable than was depicted, and (4) provide a second, post-review mate value rating of the person depicted in the profile. We hypothesized that, in the context of dating, people would be more likely to “punish”—that is, assign excessively low mate value ratings to—those who tried to appear more valuable in their profile, while those who tried to appear less valuable would receive no such punishment. Preliminary results support the hypothesis, and indicate that the extent to which participants engaged in punishment may be moderated by individual difference variables, including participant self-esteem and mate value.