The Dark Side of Online-Dating – Dehumanization and How Humor makes us see the Human behind the Profile

In the last decades, online dating has become one of the most popular methods for singles to find potential romantic partners (Rosenfeld, Thomas, & Hausen, 2019). Previous studies have shown that mediating technologies can create distance and reduce relational closeness. Consequently, anecdotal evidence suggests that in an online-dating context, consumers dehumanize others. Dehumanization relates to a form of moral disengagement in which people deprive others of their humanness (Haslam 2006). In an online-dating context this might materialize in behaviors such as ghosting – a phenomenon in which individuals withdraw from communication with others without announcing it. Moreover, previous research has shown that dehumanization is negatively correlated with perceived romantic attraction and relationship success of potential romantic partners (Frech, Soliman, Loschelder, in prep). Simultaneously, research reveals that humor has many benefits (Warren et al. 2018). Especially, in a dating context, humor is one of the most desired qualities in others (Butzer & Kuiper 2008) and can increase attraction (McGee & Shelvin 2009). Humor might also signal intelligence (Greengross & Miller 2011) and makes individuals more likely to trust others (Gray, Parkinson & Dunbar 2015). Hence, humor might be one way to humanize others, which extant studies have not yet investigated. In the present study, we investigate the role of humor in an online-dating context and whether it can attenuate dehumanization and increase relationship success, empathy, attractiveness, and enjoyment. As research points out that different humor types might work differently, we will look at four distinct humor types (affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating; Warren et al. 2018).