To fill in the theoretical gap, Walther and Parks (2002) adapted the original concept of warranting presented by Stone (1995), describing connections between one's self and self-presentation as a continuum rather than a binary, moderated by anonymity.
The greater this potential discrepancy, the more compelling it is for observers to be skeptical of information provided by the individual about the self (Walther & Parks, 2002).
Warrants, as described by Walther and Parks (2002), are perceived reliable cues that observers use to gauge how one's true identity matches that which is presented online.
Walther and Parks (2002) speculated that being able to obtain information from a partner's social network would increase the warrants within an online relationship.
Because information from others is of high warranting value, it stands to reason that those invested in a potential online relationship would use available resources, in this case social networks, to alleviate any skepticism about the accuracy of claims made by a relational partner.
For example, the presentation of one's given name is a partial warrant, as this information can be used to look up public records or link to other profiles the user may possess.
Walther et al. (2009) compared subjects reactions to fake Facebook profiles and their judgments of extroversion and introversion.
Walther et al. (2009) found that when asked to make judgments of attractiveness, results were strongly in line with predictions made by warranting theory.
Walther et al. (2009) explain the discrepancies in results between the two experiments by posing that perhaps more is going on when making judgments of internal versus external characteristics.
This is likely due to the assumption that a person would know his or herself best, and may still perform activities associated with another temperament while still claiming to be the opposite; for example, a true introvert may still elect to go out with friends on occasion (Walther et al., 2009).
Gibbs, Ellison, and Lai (2010) were the closest to studying partial warranting, or verifiable claims provided by the target, in isolation.
For example, if a real full name was provided by a potential relational partner, users typed this information into search engines in order to retrieve public records or links to additional social-network site (SNS) profiles (Gibbs et al., 2010).
Parks and Archey-Ladas (2003)[6] examined a sample of 200 personal home pages, and coded the information provided by the users.
Warkentin, Woodsworth, Hancock, and Cormier (2010)[7] wondered if warranting potential in a medium influenced the presence of deceptive practices.
Synchronous chat, which scored the lowest in warranting potential, was reported to be the largest source of deceptive practices (Warkentin et al., 2010).