Open AccessCreating Relationships Using On-Line Dating Services: A Preliminary Mapping of French People’s Views
Author(s) -
Mélanie Gauché,
Lucie Brard
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
universitas psychologica/universitas psychologica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.22
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 2011-2777
pISSN - 1657-9267
DOI - 10.11144/javeriana.upsy18-1.cruo
Subject(s) - romance , friendship , psychology , term (time) , association (psychology) , social psychology , sexual relationship , social relationship , passion , interpersonal relationship , duration (music) , service (business) , developmental psychology , human sexuality , sociology , gender studies , psychoanalysis , art , physics , literature , economy , quantum mechanics , economics , psychotherapist
We explored people’s views regarding the kind of relationship that can be expected and created using such websites. In the current study, we used the same scenario technique. Vignettes depicting the kind of relationship an individual expected to find through the use of an online dating service were created by orthogonal combination of five factors: (a) passion; that is, the level of personal, affective involvement in the relationship, (b) intimacy; that is, the type of relationship desired (friendship vs. intimate/sexual), (c) commitment; that is, the expected duration of the relationship (short term vs. long term), (d) the user’s gender, and (e) the user’s age. Three contrasted positions were found. A minority of participants considered that creating a relationship using dating services was never very easy. A plurality of participants considered that creating either long-term romantic relationships or short-term, more “utilitarian” relationships was considerably easier than creating either short-term romantic relationships or long-term, more “utilitarian” relationships. Another plurality of participants considered that creating any relationship was quite possible. These participants disconnected the commonly admitted association between the duration of a relationship and level of emotional involvement. In other words, they considered that creating a passionate but short-lived relationship was not more difficult than creating any other kind of relationships.