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Key points
- Researchers studied the differences in deceptive practices between men and women.
- The most common type of deceptive self-enhancement reported by participants was using an outdated photo to look more attractive.
- Women deceived more about physical attractiveness and men about achievement.
Everyone does it. A bit of Photoshopping or filtering on that selfie. A job title that sounds just a little better than your real one.
While most of us might suspect that deceptive self-presentation is common on social media, new research published in the journal Psychological Science has tackled this topic with a rigorous study of thousands of people from 25 different countries. Overall, results revealed that women engage in more deceptive self-presentation of their physical appearance, whereas men engage in more deceptive self-presentation regarding their personal achievements. However, this gender gap was relatively small and varied substantially from country to country.
The authors of this new study defined deceptive self-presentation as “impression-management behavior aimed at enhancing the image that others have of oneself by means of deliberate, incorrect disclosures about oneself in any form, including text, images, videos, and location tags.”
They focused on two research questions. First: Do men and women differ in these deceptive practices? Second: Do gender differences in deceptive self-presentation change based on the level of gender equality in a country?
Researchers have long been interested in the psychological differences between men and women. Evolutionary psychologists tend to frame gender differences in terms of sexual selection. The basic argument is that men evolved to value women’s physical attractiveness because it signaled health and fertility.
Conversely, women evolved to prefer men with access to resources because such resources would increase the likelihood of their offspring surviving. From this perspective, it would make sense that women would be more likely than men to manipulate impressions of how physically attractive they are, whereas men would be more likely than women to do the same for cues of success.
For researchers focused on sociocultural influences, the same prediction (women focusing more on appearance, men on status) makes sense, but for a different reason. In many cultures, women have limited access to education or financial resources and must depend on men for financial security.
Thus, women might emphasize appearance more than men because appearance is their primary form of “currency” and the only means of building a secure life for themselves or their children. If that’s true, we would expect gender differences in deceptive self-presentation to be smaller in countries where men and women are more equal in terms of rights, opportunities, and resources.
The authors conducted an online survey of over 12,000 participants in 25 different countries to test these ideas. The survey was offered in 19 different languages and dialects. Survey respondents ranged in age from 18 to 90 but averaged around 40 years old.
Men and women answered a set of eight yes/no questions about deceptive self-enhancement on social media platforms. The questions asked whether they’d ever done things on social media like posting an outdated photo to appear more attractive, editing a photo to make themselves appear more attractive, making it seem like they had a job they did not actually have, or lying about their educational achievements.
The researchers used a well-established procedure for obtaining honest responses called the “randomized-response technique.” (Here are the technical details of this approach, if you’re interested.)
The researchers also obtained an index of gender equality for each of the countries studied. The index was based on factors like the country’s gender differences in health, education, employment, and representation in government. In the key analyses, the authors statistically controlled for factors like participant age, employment status, relationship status, education level, and preferred social media platform, as well as the gross domestic product of the country.
The most common type of deceptive self-enhancement reported by participants was using an outdated photo to look more attractive; the least common type was presenting themselves as working for an employer they did not actually work for. In most countries, regardless of gender, deceptive self-presentation around physical attractiveness was more common than deception around achievement.
Overall, the expected gender difference emerged. Women deceived more about physical attractiveness and men about achievement. But this gender gap was fairly small and inconsistent across the countries studied (ranging from no gender gap to a 12 percent gap).
Did the gender equality of a country affect this gender difference? To some extent, yes. Gender equality in a country was associated with less social media deception about physical attractiveness for both men and women and less social media deception about achievement for women (but not men).
In some ways, this study likely underestimated how common deceptive self-presentation is on social media. The authors’ definition of deceptive self-presentation only included “deliberate, incorrect disclosures.” But much of the deception in social media posts are less about blatant lying and more about carefully selecting only the most flattering images and information about oneself to post. Regardless, the finding that countries with higher gender equality showed less deceptive social media self-presentation is promising. If more people painted an accurate image of themselves on social media, social media's effects on outcomes like body image or depression would decrease.
No matter your gender, may this research study remind you that what you see on social media is a carefully curated and highly edited highlight reel of people’s lives. If you want to know the truth about what someone is like, social media posts are not the place to learn that information.
