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frost · 01-05-2014, 01:00 PM

Unfortunately, the world is full of a-holes. I had similarly bad experiences with online dating, and gave up on it.

Quote:

One of the weaknesses of online dating is an over reliance on "profiles," the researchers say. Although most dating websites feature photos and detailed, searchable profiles covering everything from personality traits to likes and dislikes, this information isn't necessarily useful in identifying a partner, Finkel and his coauthors write.

That's partly because daters don't always know what they want in a mate -- even though they generally think they do. Studies suggest that people often lack insight into what attracts them to others (and why), and therefore the characteristics they seek out in an online profile may be very different from those that will create a connection in person, the review notes.

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"Pretty much all of online dating works through profiles," says Finkel, an associate professor of social psychology at Northwestern University, in Evanston, Illinois. "But you can spend a zillion hours studying profile after profile and, at the end of that Herculean effort, how much closer are you to knowing if there's a romantic spark?"

The abundance of profiles online also may make daters too picky and judgmental, the authors say. The sheer number of options can be overwhelming, and the ease with which people can sift through profiles -- and click on to the next one -- may lead them to "objectify" potential partners and compare them like so many pairs of shoes.

"Online dating creates a shopping mentality, and that is probably not a particularly good way to go about choosing a mate," says Harry Reis, Ph.D., one of the review's authors and a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester Medical Center, in Rochester, New York.

Psychologists highlight pitfalls of online dating - CNN.com