26 Jul Results provided significant correlations between personality traits and online dating gratifications
There appears to be agreement concerning the relationship between some personality traits and the motives for online dating use (Sumter and Vandenbosch 2019). In a survey of 678 participants (584 undergraduate students and 94 individuals from the general population from online networking websites; 86% aged between 18 and 20 years), Clemens et al. (2015) took personality measures using the Big-Five Scale (Benet-Martinez and John 1998) and online dating gratifications (i.e. identity, social, companionship, distraction, intercourse, status, and relationship) with blended items from three different validated scales: the General Internet Use Scale (Charney and Greenberg 2002), Television Viewing Motives Scale (Rubin 1981) and Social Networking Scale (Guessennd et al. 2008). For example, neuroticism was significantly related to identity gratification, which means that individuals high in neuroticism pursue the creation of their own identity by being free to choose what to show to others. Openness to experience was found to be associated with being social when using online dating sites. Disagreeable individuals were found to use online dating sites to be social and to search for companions. Conversely, those who scored low in disagreeableness were found to use online dating sites with peer pressure (i.e. status). Furthermore, conscientiousness was correlated with finding a romantic relationship. Additionally, homosexuals were found to score higher on neuroticism, together with heterosexual women.
It has already been noted that neurotic individuals aim to form their own identity via online dating sites (Clemens et al. 2015). Forming one's own identity on online sites, in this case online dating websites, can lead to misrepresentation (Hall et al. 2010). In a survey of 5020 American online daters (74% females; mean age = 39.8 years), Hall et al. (2010) found that self-monitoring, defined as the quality of adapting one's presentation in order to obtain a desired outcome (Back and Snyder 1988), was a predictor of misrepresentation in online dating.