Lies damn lies and profiles! You're going to exaggerate, that's a given. So what's the best strategy?

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Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast, produced by me, Fraser McGruer, for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights, and this week we're discussing how we lie on Tinder. You're on Tinder, so, yeah, I guess, how are you lying on there?

Yeah, so, well, background is I recently, in the last couple of months, became single, sadly, which is a shame. So, as a result, all of my single friends are all advising me strongly to get on Tinder and other dating websites. And so, it's something I'm considering doing. Obviously, I don't do anything without thoroughly researching it first because I'm a good analyst. That's what makes for a hot Tinder date as well. Absolutely, yeah, I know, yeah, you've got to overthink things before you take an action. So, in my research, I stumbled across an interesting paper called Deception in Mobile Dating Conversations by David Markowitz and Geoffrey Hancock. And they conducted a study of, I think it was Tinder, Tinder users, and how they go about conducting their conversations and how they present themselves on Tinder.

So, sorry, a study on themselves or a study on other people on it?

A study on other people. Okay, sorry. So, they got, they had 200 or so users of Tinder and they looked at their profiles, looked at the conversations that they were having with these people's consent, of course, and to study how people misrepresent themselves and how people sort of lie when they're conversing with people they don't know very much. And they found that lie, they decided that lies, the types of lie people tell fall into two broad categories. One is about self-presentation. So, that's sort of what photos you choose, how you describe yourself and on your profile. Obviously, you want to present a more idealistic view of yourself. That's what that's all about. And then the other, which I quite like, they use the terms butler lies. These are sort of polite lies that you use in conversation to sort of let people down gently or to manage your availability. So, you might say things like, oh, my phone ran out of batteries as an excuse for why you didn't message back instantly or to sort of manage people's expectation and things like that. So, yeah, it's two types of lie.

– Okay. I mean, the second kind, we kind of do that all the time. You know, I'm always lying about that kind of stuff. – We know. – Yeah. Sorry, I was late today, by the way. The phone on my, the battery in my phone, it ran down. Sorry about that. So, yeah. And I guess the first one is sort of natural presenting, especially in a dating context, we want to, in a competitive dating context as well, I guess all dating is competitive, but we want to present ourselves in the best possible light, right? So, I guess that's what happens and we can sort of, and why is kind of almost self-evident. And I know we're talking about how, but beyond what you've said there, leading us in, Peter,

is there anything else you want to add? – Well, yeah, there was clear trends in the types of lies people present, sell to present themselves. So, it's a clear distinction that men tend to lie more about their height and their occupation and possibly penis length, but they didn't mention that, than women do. And women tend to lie more about their weight and have, and go for more flattering images than, images that are less representative of what they actually appear like in person. – So, males and females lied in about the same quantity, is that right? – They didn't, they didn't quantify it. I've got, I've got some, but what they were lying

about was different. – Okay. Go for, have some data. – Yeah. Well, I mean, so obviously there

is a lot of data. This is what's so great about, you know, online activity is that it generates an enormous amount of data and as a result holds this very unflattering mirror up to us, you know, to shatter what, you know, we might romantically believe is going on and shows us what really is going on, which is something which is very sort of primal, as you'd expect. Yeah. So, Peter mentioned height. If you look at the height of, so OKCupid, I know I've done quite a lot of analysis of how this works. – What's OKCupid? – Another one of these dating sites. It's not like Tinder. I think it's more of one of these matching things where it finds you someone who it thinks is appropriate. Whereas Tinder, it's just like a get it where you can kind of thing. Isn't it? So, yeah. So men add on average two inches to their height. – I thought you were going to say something else. – And the interesting thing is that the, so, so the reason they can find this out is you just map the height distribution of people on OKCupid and assuming that they're drawn from the general population and not from example, you know, particularly tall people, that it's two inches to the right. Not only that, but there's a cluster, an unrealistic looking cluster around six foot. So obviously people are bumping, if they're five foot eleven, they're bumping themselves up to six foot. – Just before you interrupt. Sorry, just before you

carry on to interrupt myself. I think I lie about my height. I'm not on any of these dating sites, I hasten to add. – In case you are. – In case my wife's listening. But I always say that I'm six foot. I'm not sure if I am. I think I might be five eleven. But I, all my, since I was about eighteen, seventeen,

I've always said, yeah, I'm six foot. – Right, there we are. I'm six foot and half an inch, right? So, the problem is if I say I'm six foot, it makes it sound like I'm just going along with everyone else and pretending to be six foot like you. I can't say six one. – Right. – So I always end up saying I'm six foot and half an inch, which sounds really lame, but it's sort of, you know, you know when they measured the height of Everest and it turned out to be exact, exactly something like it was 21,000 feet or something, it was like exactly right. And they were like, this is going to look really suspicious. And so they added about 20 feet to make it plausible. Yeah. No, so the height is an interesting one because, OK, it's very easy to sort of spot the differential between OKCupid users and the general public there. But the interesting thing when you look at whether it works, it does if you're a man, right? Now, women add inches to the height as well. – So whether it works, what do you mean? – Oh, yeah. So unsolicited messages per week. This is random users getting in touch with someone they like the look of. Very, very clearly correlated with height. Five foot men got an average one unsolicited message every month, whereas men who were sort of six foot and above are getting more like one a week. So it works. But with women, men don't like tall women, it turns out. So, yeah, if women who are six foot and over rapidly declines. So men are scared of tall women. But below about 5'10", there's no correlation between height and sort of unsolicited messages. Income. Peter talked about lying about job. People also lie about, again, using the same method of assuming that OKCupid users are representative of their postcodes, which they know. That income inflation becomes more important the older you get. So if you're people in their early 20s tend to be honest about their income. But when you get up to the age of 40, so if I was on there now, I'd be inflating my income by about 30% on average. Men and women do the same on that score. And then Peter mentioned the thing about flattering photos. Yeah, if you look at how old photos are, they on average are about a year old or something, the photos people use. But the ones which are judged hot, I think the ones which get lots of likes, are on average older. So that tells you basically exactly correlates with what Peter was saying. So we are lying about things on those dating sites. And we're lying about the right things. You know, the things we lie about work.

I mean, the good news for the female population out there is you're going to be safe with Peter

that he's six foot six. Yeah, well, he has to lie to make himself less attractive. Yes, because

otherwise it's not fair to all the other men. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, right. So those are the ways in which people lie. And it sounds like it works. So great. Everyone should lie. I guess it's also it's a bit like a job interview. A big part of success in actually getting a job is getting to the job interview, right? So you could say that once you turn up, it turns out you're not six foot, this is the foot in the door. Yeah, you're five foot eight. But

it turns out you're really charming. Well, I was thinking about exactly this. Yeah. And I wonder, I mean, you can see that there are sort of psychological reasons why someone might having in already invested in making contact and arranging a date that at that point, you know, they have more to lose by walking away that actually, yes, they're going to sit out, they're going to get a meal out of it. So foot in the door probably work probably works. But at that point, you've got to now be making up for those inches you lied about. So you I think I sort of feel like that's rational for people who do have, you know, who have a loss of perhaps personal charisma, which it's difficult to express in a digital profile. Yeah, okay. Well, that's one of

the things that they mentioned in this paper and other related papers is that people expect to be lied to as well. So they expect a certain amount of embellishment. And so you they they already come to that date with their expectations managed. So but presumably, there's a sort of there's a kind of upper cut off on how much a person is willing to be lied to because assuming assuming that they want some degree of enduring relationship, maybe it's only for a few dates, maybe it's for a long time. But when you're presented with somebody who said they were six foot three, and actually they turned out to be five foot eight, you're probably going to think, well, okay, that's totally ridiculous. Well, unless you said you were five foot eight, and you're only four foot seven, in which case, yeah, it's perfect. Yeah. So maybe the weighting, as to how much you can tolerate a lie is based on how much you lie yourself, but you're going to, you're not going to want to form a relationship with someone who is a really terrible liar, and chooses to lie about the wrong things in a totally extreme way.

And you could also put yourself ahead. I mean, maybe there's another strategy you can have, which you can go, you know what, I'm going to be completely honest about the fact that I'm five foot 10, I earn x per year. And, and okay, you're going to get less of that volume. But when you do get through to, you know, having your actual dates, the person goes, wow, look, I mean, I come on here expecting, as you say, everyone to be to lie embellish a little bit. But this guy is exact, or this girl is exactly as they said, this one's a winner. This one's a goer.

How do you go about? How do you go about proving that? How do you go about verifying it? Now, there is an interesting... Turn up on the date with your bank statements. But you need to do it beforehand. Otherwise, they're not good. If you're going for the honesty thing as being a selling point, then they're going to need some way of verifying it. But there is a dating web, dating service. I forget which one, but you, you were sent, the idea is you get endorsements from people, you know, so the... My single friend.com. Is it my single? Yeah. So my single friend. So, so when I'm, so when you're looking at people's profiles, you're not only looking at them, but you're also looking at the types of people they hang around with or the types of people that are friends. So you get a lot more data about this person.

Yeah, it's good, but that, that is a good, I mean, that, that's, that is a sort of thing where you think, well, okay, we're looking for things that are indicators here, you know, which are, which are hard to replicate, hard to cheat. And you know, let's be honest, I mean, heightened looks are difficult, you know, they're difficult to hide. It's difficult to hide that in a, in a profile pic, height perhaps more so, but the, you know, you can't, you, you can't, as they say, polish a turd. But you can roll it in glitter. I mean, so, so I, I think Fraser, your, your theory about honesty is, is a good one and well-intentioned and in a world which was directed by Frank Capra, I think I could go along with that. But I mean, we're talking about a couple of inches and, and I suspect that by the time you've secured that date, you know, other factors are going to dominate at that point. You're stunning them with your anecdote. So the problem is if you're a man, if you are five foot eight and you, you know, you choose to be honest, well, you're going to be up against a bunch of people who are, you know, five foot four and lying about being five foot eight, but also you're doing yourself out of possibly, you know, one, one message a week. But by, by choosing that stance and, and I think, you know, as with all these things, certainly as with, with Tinder, it's a numbers game.

Yeah.

I mean, do you want to know the numbers on Tinder? I do.

I'm also, before you go into the numbers, I'd be very interested in, in successful outcomes.

Well, we need to talk about that. What is a successful outcome? That is what we need to do next because that's a really, a much harder question. But so the, the interesting thing about Tinder is you, you, okay, so you, you have a choice of sort of effectively yes or no. So we, we, you can, they've done, they've done studies where they take two people who are judged on average to be equally attractive. So sort of median attractiveness people created fake profiles and then just swipe. Yeah. So, and swiped right for all of them and seen how many hits they get. So swiping right effectively saying yes to everything. And you get told if anyone else has said yes to you and something like one in 200 attempted matches. If you're a man gets reciprocated, whereas something like one in 10 for women. Now, what does it tell you? That women, it, it, it tells you that men are far less choosy, right? Basically men are swiping right. Some combination of either the number of male users or the number of people that they're looking at, right? So it might be that men are looking at 20 times more people because they're spending far less time on each profile. But, and then the probability of swiping right in the first place is basically 20 times higher for men. So on average, basically men send out 20 times more likes you know, than, than women do. Um, and I mean that, that more or less tells you, that tells you almost everything you need to know about the way that male and female, uh, you know, uh, sort of dating and signaling works and, and exactly backs up what, what you would expect from, uh, the evolutionary psychology.

Yeah. I mean, we could go on about evolution here and I mean, we've done it before, but as an aside, I've got a great new embellishment for Peter. He just needs to say that he's a woman and you immediately, you're going to get a greater success rate.

The, the, the, the, the data is there. If I relax my criteria for success, then yes, that would be great.

I guess, you know, I'd say it's even worse news because that one in 200 includes, uh, gay men and, and bisexual men, um, which I think in this profile, uh, indicates they weren't interested in. So you've got to subtract, uh, them as well. So it's probably more like, we're probably looking at one in 400, one in 500. Uh, you've got to swipe 500 times to get one, to hook one girl. Now, Peter, well, you swipe, swipe once, swipe right once and got one hit, I think.

Actually, I'm developing a script so I can just leave my phone swiping itself. You've got a little electronic finger, which just goes in an anti-compromised direction. I might make a mechanical version, that'd be more fun. Okay.

Well, look, I'm really surprised to see that actually we're quite far through this podcast already. But you're right. We need to talk about success rates. Yeah, success rates. So, um, I mean, I want, I don't know if you've got the data on this, Peter, but I want to know that, well, where does this all lead? How is, how is Tinder doing in setting up? I mean, how do you measure success? But let's say success is a couple get married. They meet on Tinder and they get married, for example. There are other ways we could define it, but is that data out there or what data is there?

Well, let's just, uh, before we do that. Although I guess we're not talking about, um, lying anymore, but anyway. Well, the, uh, yeah, yeah, let's carry on. Yeah. I mean, the, the ones, one's criteria for success will be very different from another. So Tinder is, um, has all kinds of objectives on there. So people want, uh, just, just want to hook up, uh, through to people want to find long-term.

That's what young people say when they mean bonking.

Yeah. Yeah. Hook up. Yeah. Uh, yeah. So there's, there's a whole range of, of, of things on there. There are other services, which are kind of more geared towards different ends of that spectrum. What services within Tinder? No, no. So like, like different dating. Oh, sorry. Okay.

Tinder is a bit of an outlier. Most dating services, uh, rely on some sort of algorithm to match you to people who are judged, which is just like what, what was that one called? Uh, back in the, back in the eighties, it was all telephone heart, heartline or something. It was a, it was the one that everyone used. Blind date. No, it was, it was, uh, oh God, I can't remember now, but, um, yeah, they had this sort of pioneering electronic matching system where they would find other people who were a bit like you on the assumption that that would in some way lead to, um, you know, a successful match. Now you're right, Fraser, the problem here is that we don't have the data. There, there is no, um. It's a lot more difficult to quantify. Yeah. The only way, how you would have to do it. I mean, let's say you wanted to compare. Okay. Look, first of all, there's no doubt that what it's doing is exposing you to more potential matches. That's a long way towards just being better, right? It's like, if you want to find a good house, you look at a hundred houses. Don't just look at three, right? So, so it's a priori, we should expect this to be successful.

I've got some anecdotal data on that. So I did a bit of back, back of envelope maths and I worked out that I, on average, meet two new people every month, two people I've never met before. Well, in general. Yeah. And a meeting is sufficient to have a conversation with. So more than like just saying hello in the shop to an attendant or something, it's actually having a conversation for more than a minute or so. We'd better get, Peter needs to get out more. So the two, so two people a minute. So assuming that on average, half of them are going to be women. So that's sort of one, one new woman a month. And then of all the sort of types of women and whether or not they're going to be interested in me, the chance of sort of meeting someone just at random, doing my normal, doing my, doing my normal dues is vanishingly small. It is.

On average, he has to wait 650 years before he meets the perfect woman. Yeah. Essentially. That's a good point. I think one thing that, you know, being a small company is works, you're already deprived of a huge pool. So many people meet their partners at work that, you know, in a small company, you're already off to a loser. So I think Peter's using, as you'd expect, the right strategy technologically. But in terms of like, okay, let's say Tinder doesn't try to do this, right, particularly. So Tinder is a bad example. But take a, you know, some generic dating company where they claim to have an algorithm. What you, so they match you with, say, 200 people. In order to work out whether or not that is, that's going to be more successful is you would have to look at the outcomes compared to being matched with 200 random single women. You know, if you're a man. And I just can't find any study where someone's done that. And in fact, most people are essentially quite sceptical that matching on the basis of digital profiles works, simply because I think the key variables are just not the kind of thing that are capturable.

You know, once, you know, you can't distinguish between people meeting their perfect partner and getting married and having a wonderful life and dropping off the service versus people who just drop off the service because they're fed up with it or they find another one.

So incidentally, I'm just wondering if the whole matching thing is, you know, I'm just wondering with my wife with who, you know, I'm happily married. I hope she is as well. I just wonder whether we would ever be matched because actually, in many, many ways, we're completely different. Right, precisely.

So the tests that they've done, which again, experiments, which are quite, you know, they're not testing any particular algorithm where people have tried to produce matching algorithms sorry, sort of attempts to match people up on the basis of their reported characteristics to see if that works, to see if that's more successful. And they've done things like, you know, you predict in advance which of your 200 experimentees are going to find a good match. And then they go on, you know, you have a speed dating component and you look at whether or not your predictions, whether or not you can predict based on that data, who is going to end up liking each other. And from these experiments, you can't, right? So the reported data that people get do not correlate with the outcomes into a speed date. That's all that tells you, which is revealing, I think, but not that surprising. I mean, you know, we shouldn't expect attraction to be that easily captured in, you know, I mean, but just based on anecdotal experience, it's not capturable in the kinds of things that are going to be on a digital profile.

I think in, as in many things, the answer is AI and to actually run this all through before, run through these potential matches and actually play them out before we meet. Simulate an entire lifetime. Much as in Black Mirror, right? They, one of my favorite episodes of that, they did that. Do you recall? Which one? Which one is that? It's in the last series. I can't remember which one it was, but you actually, it's told from the point of view where you're actually going on a date and they do it and you get told, oh, this is going to be, you're going to be with this partner for three months or two years or six. And actually what you don't realize is this is the app, let's say, actually playing through and spitting out what's the likely result before you actually meet the person. Really nicely done as always in Black Mirror.

So the OKCupid, I think Markovits again had analyzed the data on, I think, OKCupid and found that there are three questions with the best ability to predict long-term relationship potential based on reported outcomes. So this is people who've gone back into OKCupid and say, now I'm going out with this person now, you know, and then they can work out how successful they are broadly. These aren't particularly good. They're not great, but they're better than all other questions. You had to boil down to three questions. Okay. Um, so if you're ready with your answers, lads, uh, do you like horror movies? Question one, question two, uh, have you ever traveled around another country alone and, uh, C, wouldn't it be fun to chuck it all and go live on a sailboat? Wow. So, uh, Fraser, give me the answers. What do you think my answers are? I reckon, uh, you don't like horror movies. Stop being hard to get. Come on. I reckon you don't like horror movies, but you have traveled around another country and I think you really do think it would be fun to chuck it all and live on a sailboat. You know me so well. I think we'd make a great. Am I right about the horror movies?

Absolutely. You're right on all three questions.

No, the horror movies thing would be a letdown, I'm afraid.

So, uh, I'm going to answer Peter's. So, um, yes, he likes horror movies. Um, what was the second? I think, yeah, he definitely has been around the country on his own. Um, and the third one, let's chuck it all in. No, I'm going to say he doesn't want to chuck it all in.

You're wrong.

I think he's absolutely 100% wrong.

I'm wrong on every single one. Not fussed by horror movies at all. Uh, I have traveled on my own quite extensively and, uh, and yes, actually, why not?

You and Fraser have a budding bromance. Then you and Fraser are the, are the incipient couple here. And I feel like a bit of a gooseberry. Get a room guys with you, with your hatred of horror films.

Um, look, we need to wrap things up actually. Um, Peter, I feel the last word should go to you. Um, anything you want to say to sum it all up, uh, you know, make it personal.

Well, one thing, I mean, this is probably another podcast. This is the Tinder part two podcast, but what they didn't look at in this, these studies that I read about the lying on Tinder is to what degree those were conscious lies versus self deception in order to present oneself. I drop, I'll do another drop of a book here. Brilliant book. Just finish it. Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson. Highly recommend it. They, they, one of the things they look at, they talk about is self deception and how much of the stuff that we do and think and say, we are unaware of, and we are lying to ourself because it's easier to believe certain things and not let yourself in on things that you're actually believing and doing and saying.

So, um, well, it's kind of like we've evolved plausible deniability.

Exactly. Yeah. So they, they use it. He uses the analogy. They use the analogy of your conscious self. The, the, the, the, the, the self that you're aware of that you think is in charge of everything is actually more like the press secretary of the white house. So his job is to present the present yourself. Um, but actually there's loads of stuff going on behind the scenes that you're not aware of. And in fact, you don't want to be aware of because it'd make your job harder. Okay. So that, so, so, so they don't, so they don't look at, they don't, they didn't make the distinction between how much of the lies were subconscious lies. And when they, when, when the profile owner was asked about the lies, you know, why did you lie about your availability or why did you lie about your height? Had to what degree though their rationalizations were after the fact that they were just making excuses for themselves.

Got it. Okay. That's interesting. Um, okay. We're, we're gonna, we're gonna stop there. Um, but just before we do, um, just to sort of, you know, put the messes out there, you know, we've got Peter, he's, um, he's what, he's about six foot six. Blonde, blue eyed, incredibly muscular, smoldering, highly intelligent, paid. What about, I don't think it's breaking any sort of, uh, confidence about half a million a year, something like that. Is that right? Yeah. It's not far off. Okay. Right. Cool. Yeah. So, and he's available and get him, snap him up before, you know, those other ladies do on him, Tinder or elsewhere. That's right. Create a sense of artificial demand. That's always how you do it. Okay. Uh, thank you as always, you know, hot tamales, they're red hot, get them before they're gone. Um, so yeah, thank you as always for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with, uh, Nick Hare and stud, uh, Peter Coghill. Until next time. Goodbye.