How Online Dating Motivations and Social Networks Affect Warranting Value and Interpersonal Impressions

Vendemia, Megan A.

Department of Communication Studies, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA

The author would like to thank members of the Emerging Media and the Body (EMBODY) Research Lab at Chapman University for their assistance and feedback on this project: Cali Shepherd, Rohan Chhabra, Amanda Dornsife, and Evelyn Sechrist.

Publication Ethics All procedures were approved by Chapman University’s Institutional Review Board and conform to APA standards on ethical treatment of participants.

Open Science Open Data: The de-identified data set underlying this article is available in an online supplemental file: https://osf.io/jahn9/ (Vendemia, 2025).

Funding: This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Megan A. Vendemia Department of Communication Studies West Virginia University 2319 Field Hall 1601 University Ave., P.O. Box 6293 Morgantown, WV 26506 USA [email protected]

Received September 20, 2024

revised May 6, 2025

Accepted May 29, 2025

Journal of Media Psychology: Theories, Methods, and Applications Publish Ahead of Print, August 12, 2025. | DOI: 10.1027/1864-1105/a000486

Popular online dating platforms feature self-authored profiles in which users can indicate their relational goals and interests. The ability to easily modify self-generated information raises questions about whether online daters are who they say they are offline. Informed by warranting theory, this experiment examined how online daters’ relational motivations and connections to social networks affect viewers’ authenticity judgments and interpersonal impressions. Results revealed that romantic relationship motives heightened viewers’ anticipated future interaction beliefs, which in turn, bolstered online daters’ perceived authenticity, trustworthiness, and goodwill. Results also demonstrated that connections to online daters’ broader social networks reduced relational uncertainty. Implications for warranting theory and online daters’ profile construction are discussed.