Catfishing in Online Dating

About the Project

As a continuation of our previous work in camouflage in other online social contexts, we turn to deception in online dating. Definitions of “catfishing” vary, but for the purposes of this project, we specifically look at deception used to trick other people into a romantic and/or sexual relationship (or the false appearance of a sincere relationship) by pretending to be someone very different from who one actually is. Catfishing is often discussed in the context of scams, but what other reasons might a person have to catfish? Where does everyday deception end and catfishing begin?

This project is a collaboration with Jacob Abbott, Ashley Bochner, Tim Kelley, and Anne C. Tally.

Publications

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Acknowledgements

We sincerely thank our participants for their time and feedback, which made this research possible. We would also like to thank the Department of Informatics at Indiana University, Bloomington for its support.