You have full access to this open access article. Profiles in the widely used phenomenon of mobile online dating applications are characteristically reduced to condensed information mostly containing one or a few pictures. Thus, these picture s play a significant role for the decision-making processes and success, supposedly holding vital meaning for the subjects.
While profile pictures in social media are omnipresent and some research has already focused on these pictures, especially selfies, there has been little attention with regards to the actual self-presentation when mobile online dating.
In this paper, we show the results of a reconstructive serial analysis of mobile online dating profile pictures investigating how subjects present themselves in the context of a mobile online dating app. This context is highly specific and characterized by continuous and dichotomous judgments by unknown others, unseen competition, and permanent validation of the self.
Despite the conceivable multitude of possible self-presentations, our analysis led to eight clear types of self-presentation. Grundlagen der Psychologie. Frankfurt a. What once was a dress, a suit, the perfume, make up, the car to arrive in, shoes, body languageβembodied knowledge and the first impressionβis now captured in one picture when mobile online dating.
Today, the dating reality of millions of users comes in the form of digital dating applications on mobile devices characterized by portability, availability, locatability, and multimediality Schrock, These deliver nonstop algorithm-based suggestions of possible partners with the obvious effects of a multiplication of options and acceleration of the search for a partner, as well as a specific frame for the self-presentation, namely the individual profile picture.
