With news media coverage of free dating app horror stories of serial rapists and undergraduates reporting having been lied to in previous relationships, 157 undergraduate students at Morehead State University and East Carolina University completed an anonymous, voluntary 31 item online survey to assesses vetting/background checks on potential/current romantic partners. Over three-fourths (75.5%) of the respondents reported that they had Facebook/social media stalked a potential romantic partner with about a quarter reporting having conducted a background check on someone they were considering meeting or were already dating. Focus groups were also conducted with 23 undergraduate students who provided further insight into vetting. Exchange theory was used to interpret the findings. Vetting today may be more about survival than distrust

Perkins, Elizabeth B.

English

Morehead State University

25“LET’s FALL IN LOvE…AFTER I vET yOu”:  ROMANcE AND vETTINGElizabeth B. Perkins and Chelsea Dyer Morehead State UniversityTaylor Hilliard and David KnoxEast Carolina UniversityWith news media coverage of free dating app horror stories of serial rapists and undergraduates reporting having been lied to in previous relationships, 157 undergraduate students at Morehead State Univer-sity and East Carolina University completed an anonymous, volun-tary 31 item online survey to assesses vetting/background checks on potential/current romantic partners. Over three-fourths (75.5%) of the respondents reported that they had Facebook/social media stalked a potential romantic partner with about a quarter reporting having con-ducted a background check on someone they were considering meet-ing or were already dating. Focus groups were also conducted with 23 undergraduate students who provided further insight into vetting. Exchange theory was used to interpret the findings. Vetting today may be more about survival than distrust.IntroductionDating can be dangerous. Many free on-line dating sites (including Tinder, Ok Cupid, Hinge and Plenty of Fish) do not vet/conduct background checks to identify previously convicted sexual assault felons. Janine Dun-phy (one of ten million who has used these sites) met someone on Plenty of Fish who turned out to be a registered sex offender (he raped her the night they met) (Battiste, 2019).In addition to the potential for sexual as-sault, over half (53.4%) of 7390 undergrad-uates reported that they had been lied to in terms of a previous romantic partner cheating on them (Hall and Knox, 2019). Awareness of rapists and liars swimming in the dating pool suggest the wisdom of being cautious (even suspicious) and vetting each potential/new romantic partner. The practice is not new—deceased late night host Johnny Carson had his 4th wife, Alexis Mass, vetted by private investigator Joe Mullen (Bushkin, 2013).The purpose of this research was to deter-mine the degree to which undergraduates vet/conduct background checks on a potential/existing romantic partner they were consider-ing meeting, had already met, or were dating. We also examined the degree to which vetting varied by sex of respondent, race, and sexual orientation.BackgroundA review of the psychological, sociolog-ical and criminology literature revealed the complete absence of professional articles focused on vetting and background checking (BC) of a potential romantic partner. While vetting/background checks are common in regard to buying a gun (Vernick et al., 2017) 26 / College Student Journaland applying for a job (Levashina et al., 2017; Selbin et al. 2017), they are “under the radar” in regard to scientific inquiry when applied to romantic relationships.Stalking is sometimes thought of as vetting/background checking. But stalking is typically thought of as a jilted lover observing/follow-ing another without the person’s permission (and often without awareness). In regard to stalking in general, in a study of 873 students at a university in the upper Midwest, 43% of the females reported that they had been stalked at some point in their lifetime (13% while in college). Of the male respondents, 34% re-ported that they had been stalked (18% while in college) (McKenzie and Stichman, 2018). These “stalks” were mostly in reference to a past lover who was angry at having been jilted rather than “Facebook stalking” as a means of finding out information in regard to a potential romantic partner (Marcum et al. 2018).Sample, Analysis and FindingsA 31-item internet survey (developed by the authors) was approved by the Institutional Review Boards at Morehead State University and East Carolina University, respectively, and emailed/completed by undergraduate students in the first and last authors’ classes. Sociology faculty in the last authors’ univer-sity also sent a link to the students in their respective introductory classes.Data were analyzed by the research team at Morehead State University using version 25 of the IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) program. Frequency and crosstabulation measurements were per-formed to analyze respondent answers in accordance with project objectives.One-hundred and fifty-seven predomi-nately unmarried undergraduates completed the survey. Almost eighty percent (79.5%) of the respondents were females with almost 90% (88.7%) identifying as heterosexual and three-fourths (75.8%) reported their race as white. When asked about their current rela-tionship status, 39.5% were not dating anyone while 47.1% were romantically involved. Almost a third of the participants (30.5%) reported being moderately religious, closely followed by 27.2% of the participants report-ing being “about midway.” When asked about vetting, 75.5% of participants admitted to Facebook/social media stalking someone that they were seeing or considering seeing with 43.7% stating that they told the person they had done so. Background checks on potential partners occurred less often with less than a quarter (23.1%) reporting that they had ever run a background check on someone they were seeing or considering doing so.In regard to gender differences, 64% of the women compared to 59% of the men reported Facebook/Social media stalking/vetting a cur-rent or potential partner. The difference was not significant. There were too few racial or sexual minority respondents to make mean-ingful comparisons.Focus groups were also conducted at the respective universities. Both the first and third author asked participants the same questions including: have you ever Facebook/social media stalked someone you were considering seeing?, have you completed a background check on someone you were considering dat-ing?, do you know if your parent’s have ever conducted a background check on someone you were seeing or considering seeing?, do you know someone who has ever stalked someone on social media?, if you had a child would you vet their potential partner?, and have you or do you know someone who found something negative about someone as a result of vetting?. Most participants responded by stating that “yes,” many of them vet potential partners, even to the extent of looking into their friends and parents/family members. Ex-amples of statements by focus group partic-ipants regarding vetting a potential romantic partner follow:“Let’s Fall in Love…After I Vet You”: Romance and Vetting   / 27Quotes from Focus Group Respondents:Alex “Say if I find somebody on like Tinder or find someone on Instagram and they DM me, I look them up on Facebook. I look their parents up on Facebook. And I go through their pic-tures seeing what they look like and seeing what they’ve done in their life and everything like that and I would never tell them that obviously because that’s really weird that I would like look their parents up on Facebook too.”Claudia “So there’s this one time where I didn’t know if this guy had a girlfriend or not and so I stalked him on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and he was DMing me that’s why, so um in all of his profile pictures he had his girlfriend so I went and talked to him and I told his girlfriend that he was like talking to other girls and insinuating hooking up and hanging out and she was like ‘thank you so much’ and she dealt with that information”Anna “My boyfriend that I met, one of his friends gave me his number, I never even saw him. I was like okay; I’ll give it a shot, so I texted him and I was like first of all what’s your Instagram and I got all of his information. And I defi-nitely looked at his exes and like the kind of people they were. I looked at his family, I just think that its import-ant if were getting into a relationship that you kind of know the person that you’re talking to. I asked him what school he went to and asked my friends there if they knew about him and the kind of person he was.”Exchange Theory FrameworkExchange theory provided the frame-work for understanding the data. Exchange theory is focused on relationships in which the respective partners seek the greatest re-wards at the lowest cost. One of these rewards is a partner who is both honest and faithful. But having learned in previous relationships that individuals sometimes lie, one may be inclined to vet a new partner to avoid being tricked. Hence persons who vet are simply protecting themselves from later discovering the person has been lying all along.ConclusionVetting is unromantic. It signals distrust. Yet over three-fourths of the respondents, mostly undergraduate women, reported hav-ing vetted a person they were considering meeting or had already done so. The mistrust is born out of previous experiences with part-ners who have lied, cheated, or both. In addi-tion, many free online dating sites including Tinder, OkCupid, Hinge and Plenty of Fish do not screen their registries from previous sexu-al assault convictions. Hence, vetting may be more about survival than distrust.28 / College Student JournalReferencesBattiste, N. (2019). Report finds many free dating apps don’t screen for sex offenders. CBS Evening News: Norah O’Donnell. Dec 3.Bushkin, H. (2019) Johnny Carson. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Boston Hall, S. & Knox, D. (2019) Col-lege Student Attitudes and Behaviors Survey of undergraduates. Unpublished data collected at De-partment of Family, Consumer, and Technology Ed-ucation Teachers College, Ball State University and Department of Sociology, East Carolina University. Unpublished data.Marcum, C. D., Higgins, G. E. & Nicholson, J. (2018) Crossing boundaries online in romantic relation-ships: Exploratory study of the perceptions of impact on partners by cyberstalking offenders. Deviant Be-havior 39 (6): 716-731.McKenzie, W. & Stichman, A. (2018). Stalking on the college campus: The influence of suitable target and guardianship variables on victimization comparing male and female students. Victims & Offenders 13 (4): 487-503Levashina, J., Peck, J. & Ficht, L. (2017) Don’t select until you check: Expected background checking practices. Employee Responsibilities & Rights Jour-nal. 29 (3): 127-148.Selbin, J., McCrary, J. & Epstein, J. (2017) Unmarked? Criminal record clearance and employment out-comes. Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology. 108: 1-72.Vernick, J. S., Alcorn, T. & Horwitz, J. (2017). Back-ground checks for all gun buyers and gun violence restraining orders: State efforts to keep guns from high-risk. Journal of  Law, Medicine & Ethics. 45: 98-102. 

“Let’s Fall in Love…after I Vet You”: Romance and Vetting

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“Let’s Fall in Love…after I Vet You”: Romance and Vetting

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