This week we will confront an unfortunate truth of online dating: no matter how much time you spend polishing your profile, honing your IM banter, and perfecting your message introductions, it’s your picture that matters most.
We’re going to look at how your photos affect both the messages you get and how successful your own outgoing messages are. We all know that beautiful people are more successful daters, but let’s quantify by exactly how much.
To illustrate the exact spectrum of looks we’re talking about here, and to put some human faces on our discussion, I want to introduce a few photos of real OkCupid users. Here are two women near the top of our range.
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And here are two rated in the middle.
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As for photos at the bottom of the curve, it didn’t feel right to write someone and say “can I use you to illustrate the concept of ugliness on my blog?” so you’ll just have to extrapolate.
The above featured users have graciously agreed to let me post their pictures, so please don’t make them regret it. Funnily enough, I had to write about a dozen beautiful female users before anyone would even get back to me. Life imitates blog!
Anyhow, I know attractiveness is far from a universal concept, but maybe keep these folks in mind as we go through the data.
We’ll start with a simple line chart. The information I’ll present in this post is not normalized because, as we’ll see, it’s interesting how men and women evaluate looks differently.
Our chart shows how men have rated women, on a scale from 0 to 5. The curve is symmetric and surprisingly charitable: a woman is as likely to be considered extremely ugly as extremely beautiful, and the majority of women have been rated about “medium.” The chart looks normalized, even though it’s just the unfiltered opinions of our male users.
Given the popular wisdom that Hollywood, the Internet, and Photoshop have created unrealistic expectations of how a woman should look, I found the fairness and, well, realism, of this gray arc kind of heartening.
Now let’s superimpose the distribution of actual messages guys have sent:
When it comes down to actually choosing targets, men choose the modelesque. Someone like roomtodance
2/3 of male messages go to the top 1/3 of women.
above gets nearly 5 times as many messages as a typical woman and 28 times as many messages as a woman at the low end of our curve. Site-wide, two-thirds of male messages go to the best-looking third of women. So basically, guys are fighting each other 2-for-1 for the absolute best-rated females, while plenty of potentially charming, even cute, girls go unwritten.
The medical term for this is male pattern madness.
The female equivalent of the above chart shows a different bias:
As you can see from the gray line, women rate an incredible 80% of guys as worse-looking than medium. Very harsh. On the other hand, when it comes to actual messaging, women shift their expectations only just slightly ahead of the curve, which is a healthier pattern than guys’ pursuing the all-but-unattainable. But with the basic ratings so out-of-whack, the two curves together suggest some strange possibilities for the female thought process, the most salient of which is that the average-looking woman has convinced herself that the vast majority of males aren’t good enough for her, but she then goes right out and messages them anyway.
Just to illustrate that women are operating on a very different scale, here are just a few of the many, many guys we here in the office think are totally decent-looking, but that women have rated, in their occult way, as significantly less attractive than so-called “medium”:
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Females of OkCupid, we site founders say to you: ouch! Paradoxically, it seems it’s women, not men, who have unrealistic standards for the “average” member of the opposite sex.
Finally, I just want to combine the two charts to emphasize how much fuller the inboxes of good-looking people get. I have scaled this graph to show multiples of messages sent to the lowest-rated people. For instance, the most attractive guys get 11× the messages the lowest-rated do. The medium-rated get about 4×.
This graph also dramatically illustrates just how much more important a woman’s looks are than a guy’s.
Now let’s take a look at how senders’ and recipients’ attractivenesses affect reply rates, not just the number of messages sent.
As you’d expect, more attractive people get more replies. And since they themselves get so many more messages than everyone else, they write back much less frequently. Here’s the graph for female senders, plotted in evenly-spaced “attractiveness groups.”
And here’s the one for male senders.
One interesting thing seems to be going on here: when the best-looking men write the worst-looking women, taste the rainbow,
of self-esteem issues their message success rate takes a big hit. The knee-jerk response would be to somehow chalk it up to hunky spammers, but we very carefully control for that in these articles, and in any event why would better-looking girls be drastically more susceptible to it? It seems to be some kind of self-confidence thing.
As we did before, I’m going to consolidate the line charts to show just how your attractiveness changes how often your messages get responses.
This post has been the preamble to the larger discussion of “what makes a good profile?” We’ve spent a lot of time on OkTrends looking at messages, and since your profile is the other important place you express yourself, we thought it deserved the same treatment.
I wanted to address physical attractiveness right at the start, because obviously it’s a huge factor in how successful your profile is. In the upcoming posts in this series, we’re going to control for attractiveness, so that we can deliver real and useful advice for all the non-models out there.
We’ll look at, among other things: what makes a good picture (is it taken outside? inside? is it full-body? a head-shot? with your pet snake? what?), what kinds of self-presentation will get you the most messages (jokey? flirty? all business?), and how much profile information is too much. Should be good.
perhaps the most attractive guys are writing mean messages to the least attractive women? could explain the low response rate…
“I am a chubby chaser ala Thick chick.
most trouble I run into I guess is the recipients disbelief that I am genuinely interested.
that and I suppose those women are ether no participating in the ok cupid experience or I hate to say it , confidence issues?”
… or maybe it’s because you’re a “chubby chaser”.
Here’s my two cent’s. Don’t worry if you don’t get a response. Get over it and move on. The most important part of your profile is being honest. Be yourself and don’t pretend to be someone else. Why waste each others time and effort. Some of us are on here to seek a person who is fun to spend time with whether it’s just dating or seeking that one person you cannot live without. So, get real, be funny, be honest and have a blast with it.
“So there you have it: I don’t wanna know.”
The thing you’re forgetting is that physical attractiveness is only minimally genetic. The vast majority is grooming, haircut, weight, style, clothes, swagger, and other things that you can change.
Just look at some “omg supah hot” celebrities in everyday clothes without makeup and professional photoshopping. They’re ugly as hell. It’s all a sham, and you can easily clean yourself up, too.
best birthday present ever!
I want to point out this article, it may explain some of the trends that are shown in graph 1 and graph 3.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090626153511.htm
Hmm… looking at the male pictures I have to say I find the medium more attractive than the top totty. Don’t get me wrong both of the top totty men are extremely good-looking in a very Calvin Klein ad kind of way but to be honest I personally prefer the medium two. Less arty more real (and sexy – esp leaveyourmark’s ankles :)).
I don’t think I do go by photo either – don’t get me wrong I’m shallow enough to be swayed but a photo of a good looking man and a crap profile compared to a good profile and so-so photo – I’m going to go for the so-so person – because at the end of the day a photo tells you nothing – a trick of good lighting, good photographer, body enhancing underwear whatever it doesn’t say whether that person has a good heart or brain or if the way they walk or talk or smell is a huge turn-on. And some people just take a bad photo in reality they are hugely attractive or they personality make their physical appearance immaterial.
Take Patrick Swayze for instance – photos of him rarely convey just how attractive that man was but when he was in motion there was something highly sensual and attractive about him.
Or if you compare David Boreanaz versus James Marster – photographically Mr Boreanaz takes a better picture whereas when watching them in action together Mr Marsters wins hands down – it’s the movement, the facial expressions, tone of voice perhaps also acting ability which gave James Marsters more fans than David Boreanaz in the Buffyverse
Similar to what I expected. I just wouldn’t have expected that women would be that far off.
I would like to see more numbers about the nature of the data. Especially the attractiveness rating. Is this based on heterosexuals rating each other only ? How would the distribution look if you used bisexuals as raters only ?
I am also curious about the age distributions of the male and female OKC populations…
Awesome post. I have so wanted to see someone do an analysis of this type. Of course, I always conjectured about many of the statistics but it was great to see someone do the work.
I am not sure about the other posts here. Well done. I appreciate seeing the info.
Thanks.
lol im just here for da testz lol omg lol dont rite me as i wont answer
This is another great post on dating stats – they’re all really interesting – although this one is somewhat spoiled by the American grammar. You don’t ‘write women’, i.e. write the letters W-O-M-E-N on a piece of paper, you write to women! (-:
Did you control for age? Your pics of “attractive” women shows two very young women; but the “medium attractive” women seem older.
Men are drawn to younger women and will rate younger women “attractive” more often than not. Call it biology, call it age-ism, call it whatever.
This information is interesting. Its easy to agree that honesty is most important in representing oneself. However, some folks may find it useful for consideration when touching up their profile. I found it no surprise to see the exponential receiver messaging curve for females…typical male *shakes head*.
On the note of the sending of messages I can agree with the self confidence thing, but if that is typical among men…that means it is a greater opportunity that had been overlooked! The problem will be that the most attractive females will NOW start to receive even more messages as this “security flaw” has been identified
I agree with all those requesting access to the raw data. Surely OKcupid realises that each person wants to create/see their own “view” of the data be it by age, message type etc. It would certainly make a great addition to the features already available thus far. Wishlist!
Ignorance is blisS…..
The comments may be more informative than the article, at least about the range of users of this site! A few comments:
-So many comments note that we (women) aren’t using the stars to rate for looks alone, so the star data is not being interpreted correctly. Hot guys with creepy profiles will get low scores from many of us.
-Even if the star ratings were being used for attractiveness alone, women would still show a different spread, because media images of attractive men show a wider range of looks than media images of attractive women (who are of a narrow type at any given time).
-I think Jaf nailed it: those of us gals who consider ourselves average do try to reach within our “league.” That’s why average guys get more responses, and why some 5-star guys are avoided.
-Alarming numbers of men who post comments here think that women who don’t write back feel superior, unable to imagine that their message may have not provided any basis for response otherwise (lack of match, lack of topic other than liking the photo, lack of common interest, lack of grammar or spelling, lack of shared pastimes, lack of shared locality, serious mismatches in values, etc.). There are potential issues of substance there.
That was an extremely interesting and entertaining article. Clearly, having attractive pictures helps quite a bit. However, it also helps to have a quality profile. I will be happy to read what OKcupid’s thougths are on that. Another aspect, which was commented on slightly in the article, is the quality of the messages that are sent/received. I believe I am a decent looking man. I’m not ugly by any means, but I don’t think I’m “soap-opera” quality either. I write to women that I find attractive. I find that if I send highly quality messages to women, I almost always get a response. If you have an eye-catching subject line (instead of hi, what’s up) and include humor while asking a woman about herself, it helps a ton. Perhaps OKC can comment more on how the quality of messages can overcome the “quality” of attractiveness.
I usually don’t comment on these, this post is indeed quite interesting however, I am wondering the five star rating system is the best way to judge overall attractiveness given that it is not a straight “picture only” rating. I personally tend to rate based upon a “whole person” concept and I’ve actually given some one star ratings to some women who were physically attractive because of what they wrote. That said though, personality is a part of attractiveness so it might not be as big of a problem.
All told though, I’m concerned that I’m in the lower ratings now seeing as how my reply back rate seem to be very low. Either that, I need to be sending more cold messages which just doesn’t seem quite right.
There are three times as many guys as girls on this site. The amount of time it takes to actively pursue multiple women on this site is staggering. It is literally a full time job. You would be better off working a full time job and trying your luck at a club.
I do way better in real life than on this site. I think every guy and girl on this site should revolt and stop putting up any pictures at all. PICTURES SHOULD BE BANNED!!
p.s. guys DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME messaging women above a 7 on this site. Your basically just feeding there ego.
“…people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests. ” -David Foster Wallace, E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction
Why were only White people used in this study?
And I don’t think OKC women graded men more harshly. I think it’s just a fact that the men on here are much more unattractive than the general population of men while the women represent the entire spectrum of beauty — from ugly to average to supermodel.
Since the graphs about replies don’t include data pertaining to messaging frequency, I’m inclined to believe that the jaggedness of the graph line for replies of most attractive male messaging least attractive female recipients is due to a low sample size? Also, in the same ballpark as spam, I had another theory for the dip in most attractive senders to least attractive recipients: selection bias. We’re talking about people who have joined a dating site, and if you are very attractive and joining a dating site, you might have something else wrong with you. Some people have very unpleasant personalities!
I must need a massive overhaul in my rating parameters, as I thought your batch of “less than medium looking men” to be significantly attractive–ie, they all looked happy and fun! Geez, what’s a woman to do?
Still, as usual, interesting fodder for further discussion!
Thank you once again for raising the bar–intellectually.
what does it mean if nobody sends you any email at all?
OK, so this explains how physical attractiveness affects the heterosexual users of OKCupid. What about gay, lesbian and bi (I leave out trans because it’s harder to track on OKCupid) users? I know a few others have left comments of this sort.
I would be very interested in a comparison of American women Vs. European women and how the graphs compare.
It’s odd, because I happen to think the middle-rated woman– ElleSC– is considerably more attractive than the two top-rated women.
I’ve seen some female pics on here that are definitely spread out over a couple of years for the same woman. I want to know if it’s the thin woman or the chubbier one that is most recent. It doesn’t work for me on here.
I get a lot of messages, and I believe that I am attractive. I do not reply to a lot of messages because the ones that I get tend to be either very sexually forward, or the emails are they are just really strange. Once a guy emailed me and told me where to meet him and when. He had set up a date for us, and we had never spoken before. I do enjoy this site though, it makes online dating fun, and not so creepy.
i wish to find a good girl to be with me and undrestand me
i waiting for those who want to know me bye
Christian,
Assuming this “attractiveness rating” is based on the number of stars that people receive, you may be coming to a flawed conclusion by not taking into account that women and men probably rate each other differently.
When I decide how many stars to give a guy, I’m not looking at how “good-looking” the man is by society’s standards or even my own, I am judging how ATTRACTED I am to him. I’ll give a guy 5 stars if there’s something I dig about him, but that is not necessarily saying that I think he is the BEST looking.
This could help explain your figure of 80% of men being judged as below average-looking. Perhaps this is just women like me rating 80% of men as “not the one” for whatever reason, and not wanting to risk the “you have rated each other 4 or 5 stars” email.
I thought we were rating these people on how well we like them for us, not telling you how good-looking we think they are.
The lower response rate that the least attractive females give the most attractive men may be a result of:
a) A profile or message that discloses a fairly large “dealbreaker” (ex: I’m married) that makes it necessary for the guys to seek out a wider range of women in the first place than they’d “have to” otherwise, based solely on appearance.
or
b) The suspicion, even if left unsaid, that he’s messaging exclusively for an NSA lay.
The two “most attractive” men look like emo twats! Maybe there should be a distinction made between what’s most attractive to different age groups.
And also, it’s funny how the general summary of these results among commenters seems to be “women are shallow,” with virtually nothing about most men here messaging the top 3rd of women? No? *cricket sounds*
Sometimes when you reach for the moon, you just end up falling on your ass really hard. If the findings are accurate, women are contacting men that are considered less attractive fairly often, and taking into account the fact that women initiate less often, that’s saying something, and I think that’s that…. straight women’s physical preferences are generally more varied. I don’t think the women are rating the same men that they’re contacting so low, I think that women and men are rating according to their individual tastes, and men’s tastes seem to put them at a statistical disadvantage.
Oops, forgot. There’s an exception to the wider variation in female perceptions of male attractiveness – height.
Finally – you’ve talked about the elephant in the room. Thanks.
The reply percentage is very useful, as I can get an idea of when I will get a reply.
I think it’s harder for women to rate attractiveness just from a picture, at least it is for me. People who are perfectly good looking people I would have absolutely no interest in unless I knew a little something about them. Vice versa, I’ve found myself very attractive to men that I cannot explain!
I’m definitely at the lower end of the female attractiveness spectrum, and I have to say I would probably ignore messages from overly attractive men because I’d believe they were lying/playing a joke/ getting a good laugh with friends. I’ve seen and heard of people doing that before, and I’ve been the victim of it, so I avoid it altogether now.
Also, strangely enough, even if I find someone attractive, if something in their profile skews me, or they have a very low match percentage, I don’t bother messaging. MOST (of the very few men) who message me have a very low match percentage, it’s like they didn’t even read my profile…am I going to respond? Not likely.
I figure on a 10 pt scale I could possibly be a 5/6… so I write to 5/6 guys, and never hear back. I have always assumed that even these guys I’m writing to don’t write back because they expect to nab a 9/10 girl. Thanks for proving my assumption right!
There’s quite a bit of “background” info that needs to be taken into consideration, as some commentors have already pointed out. That’s why I prefer venn diagrams to the line graph. Collecting data is intriguing, but statistics will always have the tendency to generalize, and should therefore be regarded skeptically. But I’d like to bring your attention now to a thought about correlation and causation:
While we’re on the topic of the unrealistic expectations of women, I recently read an article that described how the Twilight character “Edward Cullin” is “ruining relationships” by setting standards high for men, especially among the cougar crowd. Read here: http://www.details.com/celebrities-entertainment/movies-and-tv/200911/new-moon-twilight-edward-cullen-girlfriend-wife
My advice, ladies: Stop reading crappy teenage books. S that D. Shut. It. Down.
“Why were only White people used in this study?”
Probably because we’ve seen that race is a pretty strong confounding factor. Apparently in the race reply analysis, the results were among people of equal attractiveness levels, but I’d like to see a graph illustrating how it plays out when different levels of attractiveness are introduced — for instance, does an extremely attractive Indian guy get about the same response rate as a white guy of average or even low attractiveness, or do black men who are objectively equally attractive get rated lower due to skin color, presence of notably African features and/or low perceived compatibility? Also, I’ve noticed that there seems to be a difference between Asian male and white male perceptions of Asian female attractiveness that may play itself out in interesting ways, seeing as both groups of guys like Asian females quite a bit.
Um…whyb isn’t there a chart for gay men and lesbians?
I bet that OKCupid’s follow-up articles on this topic will address the question of cultural coding/sexual cues in profile photos, but I’d like to say something about it now, just in case.
When you look at the four photos of the sample women above (all gorgeous!), similarities in the photos of the two “classes” of women are easy to spot. For one thing, as someone pointed out below, the two “most attractive” women appear younger. That’s an easy one to analyze culturally: we’re programmed to think that younger women are lovelier, sexier, nicer, etc. (though I do think it would be useful to know what the rates of messaging are among different age demographics).
Another readily identifiable characteristic of the two “most attractive” women’s photos is their closed-mouth smiles: an indicator of passivity–sexual and social. It’s a truism of advertisement that women who are depicted with bared teeth are perceived as being more aggressive, independent, and generally indomitable. (Classical psychoanalysis would suggest the “vagina dentata!!”) Plus, women with closed mouths (appear to) have nothing to say.
Similarly, the postures and gazes among these two sets of women seem clearly split to indicate their relative level of sexual passivity (i.e. the degree to which they position themselves as sexual objects). The two “most attractive” women are ready to be kissed–lips pursed and necks suggestively lengthened and bared. Their come-hither gazes lock with the camera/viewer, and so suggest a ready relationship with those anonymous viewers. Basically, these girls appear ready for action, and it’s us they seem to want! Advertisements and pornography operate using this principle. (Of course, the tank top/tissue tee doesn’t hurt, either.)
Meanwhile, the gazes of the other two (women with whom, on this superficial basis, *I* would rather strike up a happy rapport) are both averted on account of their obvious amusement. (What’s so funny? we wonder–and we want in on the joke.) Also, the skin that these two women reveal is subtly guarded: in the first case, by her downward-tilted head, and in the second case, by her raised arm.
I guess my point is that careful analysis of the photos (samples chosen by Cupid admin, no?) reveals not only levels of innate attractiveness in these subjects, but also some really effective–and sometimes socially and emotionally dangerous–socio-sexual codes at work.
Well, I didn’t have time to read through all of the responses here to see if it’s been said. BUT I have theories on why women rate men more harshly then the site founders say they rate women. Not necessarily true, the women could just be being more picky and harsh because it’s online, who knows?
Either…
Men are rating women based on a scale of attractiveness for sex not something long term.
OR
Men are rating women 4 out of 5 stars to see if they have or will rate them 4 out of 5 stars so they’ll get the notification.
If you’re so shallow that you only care what the person looks like, you’re not worth it. All of these women looking for Prince Charming, I have some news for you–he doesn’t, nor will he ever, exist.
Completely agree with “metro” (though I’m a guy). I’ve rated attractive people poorly, because their profiles made me shudder; and intriguing people more highly than maybe I would on a photo alone. Sure, attractiveness is a factor, but it can get overruled. (Maybe I’m just doing it wrong?)
Then, of course, there’s the whole question of exactly what you find attractive. Women, I suspect, vary more in their taste in guys than when roles are reversed. Not that this invalidates the (very interesting) data, just means there’s a big margin of error.
I just can’t help but notice that this is (at least in appearance) completely heterosexually bias. Do these figures count all men who receive messages of any type, or were they specifically filtered only to include Straight (not gay/bi) men and women?
I just ran a general search of guys [with photo, any status]who like guys 18-30 online in the past month in/within 25 miles of various locations (Such as the Twin Cities MN, New York NY, Boston MA, etc.) trying to see if I could find a good area to compare how many non-straight to how many straight users would come up in a search. However the search caps at 1000 results and there were over 1,000 (or perhaps exactly 1000) guys who like guys in each location.
Needless to say… there are more than enough homosexual users to merit a report that acknowledges them and reflects patterns that emerge within their dating styles.
These results are exactly as expected. I’m not surprised. From what the girls I’ve talked to on here say the quality of the men is not so good, and there is as good of a percentage of attractive women as there are unattractive.
Nobody ever wants to admit it, but the first thing I look at is the picture. I’m here to find a girlfriend not necessarily make new friends. If we got along and there was no “spark” then okay new friends is fine. But if I wanted to consider dating somebody then yes looks are important to me. Now I know I’m no perfect 10 so I’m not going to go after the “models” but also part of it is because they probably won’t respond due to the traffic they get.
Great article though. Very interesting stuff.
I went through and found that I had written 51 women on this site. I do not contact as many people on this site as I have on pay sites because I only write those who are “green”. As the number of “greens” has dwindled I have found that I am now writing nearly any green that shows up as a match that does not freak me out, does not say something in the profile that excludes me and I can find something to write about.
Of those, I got 3 polite negative replies and one downright nasty response.
The three nice responses all came from highly attractive women. The “bitchy” response came from one I’d say was average.
The no responses came from across the entire range. — My experience then is that highly attractive women are more likely to respond than the less attractive ones.
You can easily explain the “male ‘pattern insanity” described above: If you’re going to get rejected, why not be rejected by a highly attractive woman rather than an ugly one.
In any event, the less than one-in-ten response rate demonstrates the overall low class level of the women on this site (and dating sites in general). These are the same women, who if you send flowers after a date, will not say thank you.
When I write a polite note to a reasonably attractive 39-year old women and get no response whatsoever, I can see WHY she’s not married—she’s rude. The passive aggressive rudeness that dominates dating sites is a blessing: At least you learn about it BEFORE going out with them.
If you were a woman who were serious and realistic above meeting men, a dating site would be a goldmine.
To final observations on women’s profiles:
I am struck by the large number of profiles that are effectively just pictures. Clearly, the hunt here is for looks. I also find humorous the large number of profiles whose description of the ideal man demonstrates the woman is seeking a homosexual.
Explains why so many men whine about the lack of messages. They are mostly messaging women way out of their league. THat’s the problem with online dating. People put more weight on looks than they would normally in real life (or so I would think) because there isn’t any way to have instant chemistry over reading a profile or have a personality make the person increasingly attractive.
Oh well.
as expected, even attractive men seem to think lowly of themselves so they work in the mid-range girls. and if they’re working on the modelesque girls, it’s just spam and obscene sexual comments they KNOW won’t get responded to, but they send them anyway just because it’s the internet, and shouting some obscene comment over the electric world is somehow “safer” than saying it on the street. i’ve been outside my apartment, men don’t say that shit to girls’ faces. none of them have the balls for it. and apparently, neither do attractive girls. they work in the mid range because they feel like they could actually land a mid-attractive guy because highly attractive women are spoonfed the doctrine of “you’re not pretty enough” by the media.
it’s lonely at the top.
Interesting stuff. I’d like to see messaging success of older men to younger women. Specifically, what strategies are most successful? Are there particular keywords that work better than others?