Reciprocal self-disclosure and rejection strategies on Bumble

Dating apps are an increasingly common element of modern dating, yet little research describes users’ experiences rejecting potential partners through these apps. This study examines how female Bumble users reject potential partners online in relation to self-disclosure, perceived partner disclosure, pre-rejection stress, and app usage. To investigate these issues, we conducted an online survey of 419 female Bumble users who had recently rejected someone through the app. Results revealed that women on Bumble employ ghosting strategies far more often than confrontational rejection and suggest that the degree to which women self-disclose, perceive a partner’s self-disclosure, and experience pre-rejection stress may impact their rejection strategies. This study informs the hyperpersonal model by demonstrating that reciprocal disclosure may characterize online dating interactions—even in relationships that fail to reach the face-to-face stage. However, results also broach the possibility of communication burnout in online dating, in which some users may lessen self-disclosure after extensive app usage.

Extending the Hyperpersonal Model to Observing Others: The Hyperperception Model

Much of our Social Network Site (SNS) and associated mobile application use involves observing and interpreting other people’s online presentations and interactions. This paper proposes an extension of the hyperpersonal model (Walther, 1996), called the hyperperception model, which can be used to explain and predict the potential psychological and relational effects that result from observing other people interact on SNSs and mobile apps. In this new model the observer of other people’s online interactions is the focus rather than the original hyperpersonal’s focus on the dyad. Hyperperception effects occur when an observer perceives higher intensity in others’ SNS interactions than those observed perceive. Following the hyperpersonal model, this extension identifies channel, sender, receiver, and feedback loop components that encourage hyperperceptions of others’ relationship by observers on SNSs. Applications to a variety of interpersonal phenomena are discussed.

Language, Psychology, and New New Media: The Hyperpersonal Model of Mediated Communication at Twenty-Five Years

Research on the hyperpersonal model originally described how the substitution of language for nonverbal cues, necessitated by text-based computer-mediated communication systems, transforms users’ reception, self-presentation, composition, and reciprocal reinforcement of messages in ways that create socially desirable relationships online. This article reviews the model after 25 years. It explicates the original model and mentions a sample of illustrative findings. It reflects on the state of internet diffusion and research traditions in the 1990s that affected the model’s original focus, and how these conditions have changed. It enumerates contexts that continue to meet the model’s original boundary assumptions, and some boundary expansions. It explores ways in which the model’s principles extend into contemporary multi-modal social media. It illustrates the evolutionary applicability of the model through cases of deceptive online romances, including contemporary online romance scams. It concludes by suggesting future research examining how many contemporary social media performances and responses comport with and illustrate the model’s tenets, at scale.