Dating dynamics: Men more likely to admit poor hygiene, women confess moral lapses

When it comes to dating, everyone wants to put their best foot forward. But what if you had to disclose something less flattering? In a study published in Telematics and Informatics, researchers recently investigated this tricky question, exploring how people manage self-presentation on dates when they have to reveal both negative and positive traits. The findings indicate that women more often disclosed morally disgusting behaviors and artistic abilities, while men tended to reveal pathogenically disgusting behaviors and kindness.

The researchers were motivated by a desire to understand how individuals manage the delicate balance of self-presentation in dating contexts, especially when it involves revealing both positive and negative traits. While extensive research has been conducted on the traits people prefer in potential partners, there is a significant gap in knowledge regarding how people choose to disclose their own less desirable qualities. The study aimed to fill this gap by examining which traits individuals prefer to highlight or conceal when trying to make a favorable impression on a date.

Another key motivation was to explore the role of different types of disgust in shaping these self-presentation choices. Disgust, being a fundamental factor influencing social and romantic interactions, can significantly impact one’s image in the eyes of a potential partner. By focusing on three specific types of disgust—pathogen, sexual, and moral—the researchers hoped to uncover patterns in how these different forms of disgust affect dating dynamics.

“I was interested in the subject as it is part of my broader research on disgust and disgust sensitivity, with particular weight put on sex differences in the latter,” said study author Michal Mikolaj Stefanczyk, a PhD student at the University of Wrocław. “Cross-culturally and robustly, women are more disgust sensitive than men, but the reasons on it remain unexplored, and empirical approach in addressing this issue is scarce.”

“In this particular study, I wanted to test whether men and women not only are different in their disgust sensitivity levels, but also if they differ in how they operate when it comes to self-presentation. My previous study on that (Stefanczyk et al., 2022) showed that we tend to bend reality and declare increased sexual disgust in presence of an attractive audience; how far does the self-presentation disgust-wise go? And do men and women differ in that?

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The study involved a total of 1,017 adults from two countries: Poland and the United States. The Polish participants (512 individuals) were recruited using a snowball sampling method, while the American participants (505 individuals) were recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform. The sample included 540 women and 477 men, with an average age of 28.78 years.

The research utilized a dating simulation game to explore self-presentation strategies. Participants interacted with a virtual date, choosing from different dialogue options to disclose positive and negative traits. The game was designed to appear realistic, with the virtual date reacting positively to any positive trait and negatively to any negative trait disclosed by the participants.

The positive traits included physical attractiveness, financial prospects, health, kindness, and artistic ability. The negative traits were categorized into three types of disgust: pathogen (e.g., poor hygiene), sexual (e.g., inappropriate sexual behavior), and moral (e.g., dishonest behavior).

The researchers found differences in how men and women chose to disclose negative traits. Women, on average, were more likely to admit to morally disgusting behaviors, while men more frequently chose to reveal pathogenically disgusting behaviors.

“The take home message is: men and women most probably differ in their perception of severity of damage that certain disgust-related declaration do in the eyes of others; in other words, and what was directly found: they prefer to admit to transgression of norms of different kinds of disgust, namely women prefer to admit to moral disgust transgressions, whereas men prefer to admit to pathogen disgust transgressions,” Stefanczyk told PsyPost.

“In short, it means that women more often than men prefered to admit that they lied, manipulated others or stole from them (i.e., transgressed moral disgust norms), whereas men more often than women admitted to be be stinky, physically/sensorially repulsive, or have symptoms of illness (i.e., transgressed pathogen disgust norms).”

There were no significant differences in the disclosure of sexual transgressions between the sexes.

“It’s interesting that men and women did not differ in the frequency of admitting to sexual disgust transgressions, since we expected the differences to be the biggest here, as in this domain sex discrepancy is in general large (really, really large, meta-analysis of Sparks et al. (2018) shows a Cohen’s d of over 1.15!),” Stefanczyk said. “Perhaps when the dating context is present, we no longer differ in sexual openness?”

In terms of positive traits, artistic ability was the most frequently chosen trait to highlight, with women selecting this option more often than men. Men, on the other hand, were more likely to emphasize kindness.

Surprisingly, the study found no significant sex differences in the frequency of choosing to display physical attractiveness. Similarly to physical attractiveness, there were no significant sex differences in the frequency of choosing to display wealth. Both men and women chose to highlight their financial prospects at similar rates.

“No sex differences were found in the ‘traditional’ field of sex differences, i.e., wealth and physical attractiveness,” Stefanczyk explained. “Perhaps it is too obvious, in our times, to directly boast about money or to highlight one’s physical attractiveness, and each of the sexes chooses a different ‘second best’ option to astonish their date, without falling into cliches?”

The researchers also found that sexual orientation played a role in the choices. Participants with higher Kinsey scores, indicating a higher degree of non-heterosexual orientation, were less likely to choose morally disgusting dialogue options. Non-heterosexual individuals might be more cautious about disclosing traits that could damage their social image, especially in contexts where they might already face bias. But more research is needed to understand this.

“It seems sex and sexual orientation influence how we perceive certain unfavourable statements about self, and we differently play the game of holding the best image possible when in the context of dating (and mating),” Stefanczyk said. “A rotten rose smells unevenly bad, depending on the nose of the beholder.”

“We do not know why that happened, but currently there is too little research done on these kinds of comparisons, yet our empirical study of, I dare to say, quite fun design, showed that the two groups do think differently when dating. Different things are perceived as the worst, it seems. But why?”

As with all research, the study has some limitations to consider. “The two cultures we conducted the study in are both WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic), there are no good reasons why Poles and Americans should differ that much,” Stefanczyk noted. “But I think performing this study in a different culture would show different results, perhaps greater differences. In the West, everything slowly becomes permissible, at least when in the heat of a date, when both sides are interested in each other. But outside of the Western culture, it should be different.”

Future research could include more diverse samples, further examine why individuals choose “second best” traits to display, or explore the perceiver’s perspective on these traits, Stefanczyk said.

“Here, the participants chose what they believed was the best/the least bad option,” he explained. “But would they actually perceive these options as the best/least bad, if they were the ones who listened to such statements? Perhaps we would rather see men boasting more about their wealth, and women underscoring their physical attractiveness more?”

“There is far more self-promotion when we are the ones who express things, whereas more ‘true to the heart’ responses could be found when we are the ones who get the impression about others. For instance, think about going on a date with a person of your preferred sex. Let’s say – it’s a woman. Would you really rather hear her admit to lying to the police, or maybe you’d prefer to hear that she enjoys casual sex with strangers? And this is what we should really care about, if we are in the game of self-presentation – what the other person would like to hear about us.”

The study, “Disgust in the mating context – choosing the best and the least bad self-presentation option in a date simulation game,” was authored by Michal Mikolaj Stefanczyk, Daniel Conroy-Beam, Bartosz Ujma, Kathryn V. Walter, Zuzanna Zborowska, and Agnieszka Sorokowska.