You Are Creating an Online Dating Profile

question 17

Multiple Choice

You are creating an online dating profile. In order to look your best, you hire a stylist to help you choose your clothes and hairstyle, a makeup artist to prepare your cosmetics, and a professional photographer to take 100 photos of you. You read a lot of online advice columns about how to write your profile, and you hire an editor to review it for you and offer you . What would sociologist Sherry Turkle, author of Life on Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, likely say about your efforts?

• A) They are deceptive and thus unfair to other people who may be respond to your ad.
• B) They are likely to be ineffective, since those viewing your profile will likely unconsciously adjust their expectations of you downward anyway, because they understand that everyone appears more attractive online than in person.
• C) They are a form of online identity performance that involves genuine ways of engaging in the social world.
• D) They reinforce hierarchies of attractiveness that are associated with wealth, since only wealthy people can afford to go to such efforts.

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Definitions:

Top-Down Perceptual Processes

Cognitive processes that involve using previous knowledge, expectations, and experiences to interpret and understand sensory information.

Template Matching

A technique in pattern recognition in which a predefined template or pattern is compared with potential matches.

Prototype Matching

A cognitive process where new items are compared to an idealized or average category member to make recognition or classification decisions.

Gibson's Theory

A theory of perception that emphasizes the importance of environmental affordances and direct perception, proposed by psychologist James Gibson.