Conclusion
Deceptive self-presentations in online dating can leave linguistic traces in the textual
portion of the profile. These traces include both nonconsciously leaked cues and
strategic cues; however, they are largely unavailable to people trying to detect profile
deception, who rely on a separate set of linguistic cues to assess daters’ trustworthiness.
These findings have substantial implications for theories concerned with deception
and self-presentation and with howwriting style influences perceived trustworthiness.
Although the practical application of the findings is currently limited, they do point
out to the possibility of building a linguistic model that can automatically detect
deception in online dating profiles and possibly other kinds of online communication.