PAPER Romantic Relationship and Self

The Sino-USA Differences of Online Dating Advertisements

Abstract:  We selected 50 personal ads on the Chinese dating website and another 50 on the American dating website, and coded the free-texts into two dimensions including self-descriptions/partner-descriptions and internal attributes/external characteristics to compare the culture and gender differences. The external characteristics were divided into physical appearances and affiliated characteristics featured by economic background. The numbers of the descriptions of each dimension illustrated the extent the advertisers valued it. Results showed that, 1) Chinese valued external characteristics more than American, especially the physical appearances which demonstrates that Chinese had stronger interdependent self-construals than American; 2) Chinese asked for more requirements than American, including internal or external attributes; 3) Male described their own affiliated characteristics more than female; 4) Female asked for external characteristics more than male; 5) Chinese female asked for more affiliated characteristics more than male.