Researchers Leonie Schlebush, Florian Hutzler and Sarah Schuster from the University of Salzburg studied which psychological traits distinguish people who agree to take part in television dating shows. The work was published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media.
The study involved 129 people. Some of them had appeared in at least one reality dating show between 2017 and 2024, while the rest formed a control group without such experience. Participants were recruited through flyers at events and in places associated with dating shows in Salzburg, Munich and Cologne. All completed online questionnaires, and the statistical models accounted for age and education.
The researchers divided narcissism into two types. Grandiose narcissism is self-confidence, a striving for dominance and a need for admiration. Vulnerable narcissism is heightened sensitivity to criticism, insecurity and self-doubt. Anxiety and attachment avoidance were also measured: the first means fear of rejection and a need for confirmation of feelings, the second means discomfort with emotional closeness. In addition, contingent self-esteem was assessed - the areas in which a person draws a sense of their own worth, for example the approval of others or appearance.
It turned out that the higher the grandiose narcissism, the higher the probability of being in the group of show participants. Vulnerable narcissism was not a significant predictor. The researchers suggest that self-doubt and sensitivity to criticism make public television projects unattractive, whereas grandiose narcissism provides emotional independence and a drive for self-presentation.
Show participants also had lower attachment anxiety: they were less afraid of romantic rejection and coped more easily with uncertainty in front of viewers. Self-esteem based on appearance was closely linked to participation in television shows. Other external sources of self-esteem, such as competitiveness or the approval of others, showed no significant differences after adjustment for age and education.
In open-ended questions, show participants more often cited adventure, fun and a desire to gain social media followers as motives. Many regarded love as a possible bonus rather than the main goal. Most noticed no lasting changes in self-perception after filming, some spoke of growing self-confidence, and a few of a drop in self-esteem due to viewer criticism.
The authors note limitations: the sample is small, the control group is younger, more educated and more often consists of students, and the questionnaire for vulnerable narcissism had low internal reliability - that is, the questions may have measured this trait insufficiently consistently. Therefore the link between vulnerable narcissism and participation in shows could have gone unnoticed. All the identified patterns are statistical associations that in themselves do not prove causal relationships.