Your Looks and Your Inbox

November 17th, 2009 by Christian

This week we will be confronting a fact that, by definition, haunts the average online dater: 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.

[show men instead]

And here are two rated in the middle.

[show men instead]

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”:

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.



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366 Responses to “Your Looks and Your Inbox”

  1. FedUp

    Way to kill my self-image, jerkface. Now every time I see a woman, I’m going to think that they find me to be hideous. >:(

  2. just stuff

    I have a question about your method of measuring attractiveness. Was it done by the quick match star scale or by some other way?
    I think the star scale might not be the best way because at least I rate people not only on the looks but also if I like what I read and if I think we will be a good match.
    Besides that I love this blog. I really think you are doing something amazing and should publish for real.

  3. In reply to Gene McCubbin

    Gene seems to have a real hangup about the pictures of the two “hot” woment at the top of the page and says “I would guarantee that if we had all four of those women in one room… the two at the bottom would be much ‘hotter’ than the two at the top if you had to have a conversation with them for more than 3 minutes.”

    Well, let me tell you I am fortunate enough to know one of the two women at the top (I won’t embarrass her by saying which one) and the three adjectives I normally use to descrive her are beautiful, intelligent and funny… and you certainly wouldn’t want the conversation to end after three minutes.

  4. Women should not even bother writing in their profiles. It’s just a waste of time. Add more pictures instead. Or vids. Most guys aren’t honest enough (usually with themselves) to tell you so, but in reality that is all we care about.

  5. dahduhdah

    I agree with a lot of the other women on here. There is so much more in a potential mate than their looks. Even if I were to look at just a picture of someone, I’m going to be more judgmental of the person’s choice in clothing, haircut, facial expression, piercings, etc. than I am at their given features. Most women know what they are looking for in a man, and whether they are conscious of it or not, they assume a lot from small ques in a photo. They can assess very easily whether they think this person has shares their sense of humour, music, intelligence and hobbies. Men, are wired differently and tend to care much more about looks than personality, that is to say that they do at first. They don’t need to make assumptions on a woman’s personality to find if they’re attracted or not, looks are just looks to them. So, women grade men more harshly because of our bias towards what we want in a relationship and what we for our future.

    That said, that is only about pictures, if you take profiles into account it is even more exaggerated. In my case, I am much less interested in a persons photo than their profile. If I were to receive an e-mail from a 5 and they sound like an idiot, or a jerk, of coarse I’m not going to respond. I may not respond if I go to their profile and I can’t stand their taste in music (ok, seriously, if all you have is 90s and newer pop and hiphop on your page, I will not respond to you). Oh, and personally, I never rate people less than a 3 (3 or higher, or no rate at all) because I just think it is kind of mean. Just because I don’t find my personality to meld with this person, doesn’t mean that they are less than average (it’s more or less because I’m not very conventional, so I wouldn’t consider a “normal” person as a potential match).

    What I am trying to say is that it isn’t that woman think that they’re better than most men, we just can easily rule out most men as being potentially compatible.

  6. Boaz

    “…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.” >> This is a classic statistical artifact.
    You are misinterpreting your results. Few messages get sent to highly rated men just because only few men get highly rated and not because women don’t tend to send them more messages. The fact that attractive men get 11 times more results proves this clearly. To be sure I will also state the corollary: unattractive men get a a lot of messages just because a lot of men get an unattractive rating and not because “women send them messages anyway”.

    The reason that women rate more men as unattractive as compared to men is 3 fold:
    1) Women are not primarily attracted to looks in the first place. So to get a high mark the guy will also need to convey high status and trustworthiness. These are traits that are difficult to convey by picture. Once she gets to talk to you and knows who you are she will change her perception of your pictures. Just last week a woman friend of mine told me that her boyfriend IMMEDIATELY seamed less attractive to her once he got fired. So from a woman’s point of view, any picture of a guy on a dating site is just some guy she doesn’t know or trust yet, so how can she feel attracted to him? She doesn’t even know what he does for a living! :)
    2) In nature women take a greater risk by committing to a relationship. Pregnancy can kill a woman, and in the past it very often did. And even after giving birth, she still needs to be sure that the guy will stick around as he promised and be capable of taking care of her and the baby. So from a woman’s point of view, the default answer is, don’t risk it with a guy until he proves himself as a trust worthy provider. This of course can not be conveyed by a picture and converges with the 1st reason. It’s all in the genes baby!
    3) In general men approach women more then the other way around. Online this difference get’s exacerbated by the easiness of approaching. So even not so good looking women get relatively a lot of messages compared to men (numbers which you unfortunately did not provide in this article). This causes their evaluation to get whacked off. When they judge men, they are in a filtering mind set. She sees a picture and thinks: “he’s not that hot, 10 guys like him send me an email each week”. It’s like monetary inflation. Since average guys feel available to her (send her messages regularly) their value decreases and she rates them below average. If this argument is correct and you create a graph that will control for the amount of weekly messages received by the rater, you will see no or lessened difference between the male and female curves. I will be very interesting if you actually check this out, so if you do, or need statistical help in doing so, drop me a line.
    Cheers,
    Boaz

  7. female

    “For example, I would not find the two men who you put as examples of “the top of your range”

    I thought they only put four examples of men who were ‘decent looking’ I don’t see the ‘two men in the top range’ did they remove them? I probably wouldn’t be into any of these four men *by looks alone* but I would go for guys who are not considered attractive at all by main stream standards- again, by looks alone. But looks mean very little to me at all.

  8. psycho-metric

    Interesting to know that you guys do some research with all this data. Trends you found are not surprising…any chance you would do a similar analysis for gay men? Bet you would find some SERIOUS looksist behavior there.

  9. Ryan W.

    shallow pal – I’ve never heard, “Hey my g/f is totally awesome at quantum physics and abstract math.”

    You’ve never spent a day around me, then. Geek chicks are HAWT. ;-)

    Emily – You said; “This is a fallacy, and does not have any concrete archaeological or biological support.”

    Which fallacy? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies
    If your argument is that it’s an overgeneralization, then I agree.

    But it certainly does have some support. While men seem to overestimate the importance of ’strength’ to women (based on surveys, strength seems more important in men’s dealing with other men. Women may pick up on this secondarily as ‘confidence’) and while I don’t think that ability to provide is the most important factor in female mate selection, having cash, or the results of having cash, certainly boosts a guy’s attractiveness with certain women. Women tend to hide this from themselves. But even my sister has complained when guys don’t pay for dates, etc. Many women would file that under ‘common courtesy.’ Same with bringing flowers and other token gifts. After a certain point in the reltionship (which varies) most women certainly do want tokens that a man is at least willing to provide. And having cash makes it easier to provide these tokens. And it’s not an irrational desire, since pregnant women and women taking care of kids usually benefit from some providing.

    Emily said : “It seems to equate women to a natural propensity toward prostitution, seeking the support of a pimp or looking for a John to support them economically.”

    Perhaps you mean ‘ascribe to women a natural propensity toward prostitution?’

    That seems a more pathological expression, but statistically, given the set of all heterosexual sexual encounters, which gender is more likely to prostitute themselves and which is more likely to pay for such services? This shouldn’t be overgeneralized. It doesn’t apply to all people. But it clearly applies to some, if only because, if sex is commodified, female sexual consent is a scarcer commodity.

    gene mccubbin – Amen.

  10. So for some stupid reason wemen think the emo/metro sexual/o’so gay look is attractive…guess that explains the SUCK-sess of the current vampire crap out there…sigh…

    SO how ’bout a chart for those of us who are honest in our profiles vursus the less tha divulgent out there?

    -Mark

  11. IWorkInPixels

    So, I’ve been friends with a dating coach from Texas for a while, and he said something that I’ve pondered ever since, and I’d love to see the OKCupid data to see if this actually plays out or not:

    He said in his conversations with men and women about online dating, it seemed to him like there was different behavior when filling out the “What I’m Looking For” section…

    According to his theory:

    Men check every box, iE “I’ll date anything with the correct number of limbs.” but once they start actually interacting with a particular woman, they decide “Yeah, it actually is a dealbreaker if she smokes/has tattoos/isn’t my religion/etc…”

    Women, on the other hand, tend to be uber-specific up front, checking “I want a 6′2″ brunette man with a beard 1/4″ in length with an MBA, who likes dogs and watching professional curling on TV and who doesn’t smoke.” but when they actually start interacting with a particular man, they could be genuinely happy with a guy who is none of those things.

    This theory seems accurate to me, and my proposed interpretation is that a majority of each gender has no clue what they want up front, having had no actual experience on which to base what they want. They therefore decide “I want what the telly says I should want!” and will continue to believe they want that until they have enough experience to realize that they actually want something else.

    The differences between behavior of the genders could then be chalked up to the different things that they’re being told about who they are and what they should want. Men, for instance, are constantly told that we are visual creatures who are only interested in looks, so when we think “So… what’ll make me happy?” it’s completely understandable that for a lot of us, our first guess would be “A hot girl will make me happy!” After all, we’ve got advertising shoving that particular idea down our throats all day, and now SCIENCE(TM) has stepped in to confirm “You are a guy; you’re supposed to be mostly visual.”

    My hypothesis is that “what people want” is not set in stone, nor is it always known to them, so statements like “Men are visual creatures.” are self-fulfilling prophecies. I’ve thought this for a long time, but I haven’t yet worked out a good way of designing an experiment to test this model.

    Also, I just wanted to say to Marie: your comment about “If a guy is attractive but a douchebag, I’ll rate him lower than I otherwise would have.” That made me smile. A lot. And if it makes you feel any better, I do the same thing. There was an incredibly hot girl who winked at me a few days ago, and when I went to her profile, it said “I’m looking for a guy to take care of me and provide.”

    My thought process went as follows:

    “Oh, a new wink!”

    (went to her profile)

    “Wow, she’s hot. But… only one picture? Probably a fake. No… everything’s filled out with prose of far too high quality to be a fake.”

    (read the part about wanting someone to take care of her)

    “Gold digger. NEXT!”

    (rated her one-star and went about my business)

  12. Brandon

    Interesting analysis. Even more interesting is the confirmation bias and special pleading of a lot of the commenters. How women can argue that ‘women having a broader range of what they find attractive’ leads to women finding most men less than average attractiveness? How can one determine a guy is a ‘douchebag’ from a picture? Unless they are dressed as such that is.

    I think I will be following this. I have a full profile, a fairly good picture as my profile picture, send many pleasant messages, and get very few replies. I’d love to discover more about the why.

  13. I was just telling a friend i met here on OKc that its bullshit when people (especially girls) say looks doesn’t matter. Physical appearance is part of the game as it determines alot about someones personality. it goes hand in hand!! I ask all the girls i talk to “would you still be interested in me if i was butt ugly… im talking elephant man ugly” most reply honestly “no”.

    All in all. We as humans should be more honest with ourselves. Look matter, its the first part in meeting someone knew! Attraction… you cant be attracted to someone personality unless they open their mouth first, and unless im a mind reader, im gonna go on looks first. You can judge a book by its cover most of the time.

  14. AJ

    Everyone will have their own seperate opinions on a match, guy or girl. EVERYONE is unique in their own way and that includes their taste in the opposite, or in some cases, the same sex. And people’s opinions will probably change throughout life. The idea of doing this is good because I believe it will work, but it will definitely have faults. Not saying I don’t support this idea, because that goes with everything that you have to survey with the amount of people that use this website.

  15. Dakoda

    This is great research.. Love it.. Yes unfortunately in the online world pictures are everything..

    I think it’s both good and bad.. you weed out certain things you just don’t like, for example girls with dyed hair or guys with too much facial hair or someone that looks just like your ex or someone you can’t stand…

    Although I have noticed in instances where you meet people in daily life as apposed to the online dating world I’ve notice actually knowing someone makes them more or less attractive.. The person I find most attractive is by far not the prettiest girl by most everyone standards (in fact she is invisible to guys, shes short, same haircut since she was 8 and shy as an owl) but shes attractive to me and if you put her in a lineup of pictures I’d probably pass her over

  16. I’ve noticed, perhaps due mentioning science in my profile, I overwhelmingly tend to get responses from the nerdish crowd. Which wouldn’t be a problem, and it isn’t necessarily, except 9 out of 10 are “carrying a little excess” and I don’t particularly find them attractive but I know it’s within my personal character to override SOME lack of physical attractiveness with an emotional attractiveness. I don’t always feel like doing this though… I’ve noticed that I don’t tend to be messaged by conventionally attractive guys, and I might be a 6/7 (on the account that I’m black and have short natural hair… I’m sure if I had a massive silky weave my appeal would be a little broader but isn’t that the material of an entirely different post…). It’s not that I have an issue with the nerd type – hell, as far as I know they make up 50% of this site’s users and I AM a bit of one, after all – but it would be nice for once in awhile to be messaged by someone who DIDN’T fit that demographic. Perhaps I need to revisit my profile and try to work out exactly WHAT it is that is attracting so many of a particular demographic and maybe tone it down a bit?

    Also, I’d like to lend another voice calling foul on the comparison of “attractive” versus “average” women. Age difference and different photo types (flirty vs. candid) account for A LOT, too much to compare the two on ANY reasonable level.

  17. [...] Online Dating Trends: How much do looks matter on dating sites? OK Cupid helps answer the question with interesting user behavior data. [...]

  18. Carrie Anne

    They should feel free to use my profile as the least attractive women. To my women friends they love my clear beautiful skin, face, the fact that I am proportionate and that I am an interesting personallity. Men just see me as fat. I have just about given up on dating since men, in Vegas especailly, seem to want the at least eight body with the five brain and I tend to have the five body (even if the face is pretty) with the eight brain.

  19. Clint

    This article really isn’t all that surprising. I’ve seen how the attention an attractive woman will get on the internet will stroke her ego until her standards are completely unrealistic. Traditionally the internet is the domain of people who want to HIDE what they look like, although I think that may be changing. To have someone ATTRACTIVE come on the internet and make themselves publicly available is an instant magnet for those who long for that.

    I’ve also seen how very expendable us guys can be! I met a girl on this site and chatted with her 8-10 hours every day. We really hit it off, and had a lot in common. I was completely upfront with her about everything. Last week we had a conversation on Skype for 2 1/2 hours and everything seemed great. But then after that her interest seemed to wane in me. She hardly messages me anymore and when she does her responses are one word instead of an attempt to stimulate a conversation. I’m not sure what I did wrong. I can’t help but think that I failed her standards somehow and that I was completely expendable all along. I know I have issues, who doesn’t, but it wasn’t anything that would have gotten in the way of relationship and it certainly wasn’t anything that would hold me back or get in the way.

    I’ll be honest. I value a pretty face. I don’t care about a few extra pounds. When doing quickmatch, if I like their face then I will read their profile. Just because a person has a pretty face doesn’t mean that they have a nice personality. The amount of time they spend on their profile, or how much effort they put into grammar really tells me how seriously they take this. I don’t want to date someone who thinks this is all a joke, or is too lazy to make themselves halfway appealing.

    What really annoys me is females who try to appear more attractive than they are by craning their neck and looking upwards into a camera to hide their gullet. Or women who turn the saturation up to mask skin imperfections. I understand that photographs are typically unflattering. I don’t like how I photograph myself. That being said, if you attempt to start off by being deceptive then its not going to go well.

  20. I hope to find someone that isn’t into drama and prefers to talk than argue, and hopefully has the same taste in music and can enjoy herself with me where ever I go or where ever she takes me….

  21. Michael

    Another glowing entry in the annals of “Well, Duh” science.

  22. cappysay

    Er…. I only bothered reading through the first few comments, but I do hope someone refuted the nimrods concluding that women are “shallower” than men for rating their looks more harshly. I would think, first of all, that something other than a normalized-looking curve would imply that women are actually drawing more thoughtful conclusions. And for another, this may simply be evidence that women are more likely to rate a person lower on looks but choose them anyway because of something in their profile other than their looks — unlike, it would seem, most of the men.

  23. s_n

    Perhaps I rate women differently than others do, or differently from the way the author assumes people do or should… and maybe others do as well.

    I give ratings based on a woman’s entire profile — the photos, the background, what she says and how she says it, what she leaves out. Since I don’t FAVORITE every woman who I find interesting or appealing, the ratings are a way to navigate the site and easily (re)connect with or ignore people whose profiles I’ve seen before but would otherwise have forgotten about.

    I almost never give 1-star ratings; if someone is so noxious to me I just HIDE them. So ultimately, I wonder about the overall conclusions of this interpretation of the data.

  24. 23/m/Cali

    (Warning: Spoiler Alert)

    I actually star rate EVERYONE that i come across, guys and girls (Im straight). When i rate the guys its kind of like a “Do i feel that in a room full of pretty women, they might look at him before they look at me”; if the answer is yes then he gets 5 stars, if its 50/50 he gets 4, if not then 3, if he is just ugly then 1 star. Im honest about it because come on, no haters around here.

    When I rate the girls, a girl gets a 5 when i think “wow, she is so gorgeous that if i saw her in public, i probably wouldn’t approach her”. A girl gets a 4 when i think “Wow, she is really pretty and i find her attractive enough that i’d like to get to know her and possibly date her”. A girl gets a 3 when i think “She is ok, and i probably wouldnt be too interested in dating her, but she qualifies to get to know her for… possibly less respectable intentions only”. Anyone less than a 3 star and i click that handy little “Hide” button.

    Does anyone else rate people based on something like this?

    Ive given almost 5,000 star ratings so far since the format for star ratings changed. Before, when they had the separate star ratings for looks and for personality, i rated both as well. I think OkCupid needs to bring that back! It would def help out with the stat collecting! Now i just use the stars on here for looks only.
    Which brings me to my rating of the 4 girls who’s pictures are in this blog (after going to their profiles):

    RoomToDance: 3
    Ghostttt: 4
    RdS858: 2
    ElleSC: 4 (with her being my number one pick)

    Its not as shallow as all that though. After the whole picture assessment, and star rating, i actually read the profile and check out their test results to get a better picture of them, which will actually decide whether or not i send them a message.

  25. Rhamphoryncus

    I thought the rating was for overall profiles, not just attractiveness. I’m just as likely to rate high for geeky traits as I am for asthetics.

    That said, once I realized that rating 4 or 5 stars was another way to get attention (if they also rated me 4 or 5 stars) I stopped using anything lower. I’ve rated probably 95% of women at 4 stars… and I don’t care what they look like. I’d rather make a few friends based on personality, then see if I’m attracted to one of them.

    As another data point, the top two women may be sexier, but I’m more interested in dating the next two. Lots of possible reasons for that…

  26. I read about a study that indicated that if one were to line up 100 people with classic traits of attractiveness (i.e. summitry, high cheek bones etc) the men would go for almost every woman in the line of 100 and the women would only go for about 3 of the 100 attractive men. The hypothesis was that women were more interested in specific traits (or a ‘type’ if you will) than men were. This data seems to support that theory. I wish I could cite the study but you can probably find it (or a reference to it) online somewhere.

  27. Wondering

    I’m curious about gay/lesbian results: are people more or less critical of appearance when it’s their own sex they’re rating?

    Also, like many other commenters, I click on the rating based on the entire profile, not just the photo. If this is what most people do, these numbers aren’t accurate, are they?

  28. Eli_Happ

    I basically don’t rate women on here except in Quickmatch with has only two ways of moving on. Maybe I’m weird but I feel strange quantifying people. The few people I have rated have been the four or five star, ones wo have really stood out, and I would say it’s less than 2% or 3% of all the profiles I’ve looked at. This means I am probably not participating to the degree that I should. The thing is, I don’t much care what their picture looks like (within reason) I know it doesn’t really reflect who they are in real life. I, for one, am NOT photogenic and so I assume most people look better in person than their pictures. (Or, occasionally, not as good) It is really important that a person be compatible. I look for specific personality traits so their profile has everything to do with whether I contact that person. I would say, the picture only accounts for 20% or less of my interest in a person. Does this mean I’m skewing the data?

  29. N/A

    I’m really interested to know the statistics for the individuals giving ratings, as opposed to the average ratings received. Like if there was a large consensus and how people deviate from the means. You can figure most men voted an average of 2.5 across all women, but is that lots of 2.5 averages, or lots of 5 and 0 averages, etc.

  30. I like this blog post. It pretty much reaffirms my dating experience.

    Instead of bitter responses, men vs women polemics, we can all use these examples to learn something and make improvements in our lives. Harsh comments usually come from frustrated people.

    So if you are a guy work on your personality. We have yet to find a girl who can describe what that personality is…. assertive, emotionally stable, caring??…who knows ;)

    If you are an overweight lady, hit the gym and get in shape, it’s not that hard and it’s healthy.You’re going to be approached more often, plus if you have a good personality… then I want you :) Btw, the girls in the pictures are all lovely.

    This blog is awesome, especially for nerds like me.

  31. rc

    I’d be really interested to see dating patterns of people with different attractiveness.. My friends and i debate this at length.. e.g. Do middle-attractive women go on more casual dating looking for the “right” guy? Do very attractive women date more, or are they in relationships more? Are attractive men more happy dating, or in relationships? etc.

  32. acetracer

    Women, can we dispel a few theories right now?

    1. We acknowledge that women have more diverse tastes. THIS IS A MOOT POINT. If two women with completely different tastes rate the same 100 guys, we can expect them to rate each guy differently but still rate most guys as average. This data shows clearly shows they will still rate most guys below average.

    2. Men don’t rate most women 4 or 5 in the hopes of getting more responses. This data clearly shows that men rate women on a perfect normalized curve; there are a few attractive women, a few unattractive women, and mostly average women. The post is perfectly right in saying that men rate women fairly

    3. The idea that there are more ugly men on this site, or men take more ugly pictures IS ALSO A MOOT POINT. The guys clearly addressed this by posting pictures of four totally decent looking guys with very below average scores. These are clear examples of men that aren’t ugly, but most women think are ugly. Again, if women REALLY had varied tastes, then every man would show up as average in the data.

  33. Everyone is still reacting as if they did not know this is how people are. I am shallow, I know it, I accept it. I do not look at profiles without pictures, I only look at profiles with women that catch my attention i.e they do not look like a man in drag, a man, morbidly obese or look 15+ years older than me.
    I might stop and read the profile which can lead me to think someone who I found attractive to be less attractive, but what brought me there in the first place…..pictures.

    One does not read a book by its cover, but the cover is the first thing we see.

  34. IWorkInPixels

    Ok, because I won’t feel right until I’ve said it, three things:

    MEN:

    We are NOT wired to be looks-only. Throughout your life we are going to be told that we are, but we are not. Advertisers would like us to think we are because then we can be sold things easier, and researchers are studying the effects of the aforementioned advertising and attributing them to evolutionary influences that may or may not have ever existed, and which can’t be tested.

    Please, don’t drink the kool-aid. Limit your exposure to advertising as much as possible, and get out there and date however many people you have to date until you know what you actually want. And as someone who has greatly improved his success in dating, the best advice I can give you is to have a plan for your life, and move inexorably along that path at a constant speed NO MATTER WHAT. Invite women to walk with you, and if they choose to do so, you will enjoy their company for as long as you are walking in the same direction, and at the same speed. If she runs ahead, lags behind, or leaves the trail entirely, just keep moving at your constant speed, and 9 times out of 10 she will rejoin you shortly. If not, just keep moving toward your goals in life.

    WOMEN:

    Likewise, advertisers are interested in wrecking your self-esteem for the purpose of selling you things. Limit your exposure to advertising as much as possible. I can’t really speak for other men here, but I personally am attracted to a *VERY* wide range of physical appearances, and so am instead looking or a vibrant, slightly mischievous, VERY adventurous nerdgirl with her own opinions and the tendency to work cooperatively whenever possible.

    As such, things I can see in your picture that will greatly increase your attractiveness to me are as follows: mischievous grins, glasses, jumping into piles of leaves, hanging upside down from various objects, tattoos, artsy candids of you halfway awake in the morning, photographs of you holding a camera, playing a musical instrument, or on bicycle/skis/boat, one picture of you in your little black (or red!) dress dancing the night away at what looks like an awesome salsa club, pictures of you baking, you with your dogs, barefoot at the park in a sundress, and finally, that one weekend when you filled your apartment with plastic play-pit balls.

    Incidentally, if you were wondering what the top three factors in that list are, I once did an experiment where I did a nation-wide search on OKCupid for the absolute tightest set of parameters, so that I was no less than 98% matched with everyone on the list, and then picked out the pictures I thought were cute, and looked for patterns. You with your dogs came in third, and will more-often-than-not result in at least a first message. A mischievous grin and glasses were tied for second, and if you’re wondering what kind of glasses, the more you look like Lisa Loeb the better… just the glasses all but guarantee a first date. And the ball pit I haven’t seen yet on here, but if I should ever meet a girl that nerdy, I may have to propose on the spot. :)

    EVERYONE:

    There is never a reason you have to or should settle. Relationships in which you’ve settled are doomed to failure anyway, so just skip it. This require the courage to cut the crap and be honest about how you’re feeling, at the time you’re feeling it.

  35. Doug

    This article was interesting, but entirely heterosexist. It would be interesting to hear how LGBT people evaluate/respond to individuals with attractive pictures…

  36. DAndy

    This was really interesting. I wonder, though, how do the numbers change if you looked at gay men and women? Perhaps there’s a second chapter in the works?

  37. Matt

    I knew happiness was within reach! All I need is some skin bleaching, plastic surgery, and a liposuction.

  38. cupid user

    I hope you do a study on women who look better in person than their pictures vs. men who look worse than their pictures in person. I have a feeling the results will be as loaded as my suggestion :)

  39. JoeBlackfl

    Wow from what I am reading here men don’t need any photos. All we need to do is post our salary and benefits. I understand that women don’t want a guy who is a complete loser. But how do you think it makes men feel when one of the first things listed on a profile or mentioned in conversation is about how much the guy makes? I also read that 80% of women married over 3 years uses sex for chores. The truth is it seems like there aren’t to many people on these sites who don’t have some kinda social disorder. I moved to a new town and was trying to get to know some local people. After a year on sites and many of messages I have been out with people I meet online twice. That is probably 2 out of 50. I don’t believe there is any point in messaging back and forth for a month before meeting in person, if your on there to actually meet people and if it is in a public place. But maybe it seems that is coming on to strong. But it still seems idiotic to join a “dating” site. And not go on a date.

  40. Shar

    I think this is actually pretty interesting work and that if you bolstered the stats up you could get this published. If you’re interested, I’d like to help but would probably bore everyone on this discussion page. For one, you really need to worry about controlling for covariates. One important one is age, age will be highly correlated with attractiveness, if different age groups have different patterns on okcupid what you’re attributing to attractiveness could just be picking up age. You need a multivariate regression framework. (Let me help, we can publish!)

  41. Beth

    Someone in an earlier comment may have mentioned this, but I didn’t feel like reading back through 335 comments to see: any particular reason you list the usernames of the women whose pictures you show, but not the usernames of the men? I find that a rather ironic discrepancy…

  42. Amy

    question for you:
    Why did you focus only on man/woman responses…? I thought that this website was doing a fairly good job (at least compared to other similar sites) of NOT following the heterosexist pattern of the rest of the world, but now this makes me think otherwise.

  43. solution

    Ok i’m going to be the most hated guy on this site for saying this but.. ladies, if all you have are face shots and shoulders up pictures, we assume you’re fat. get a full body shot. gentlemen, less playstation more running. pump some iron. don’t get big just look fit and healthy. try and get your priorities in line in your life because women aren’t attracted to the type of men who have no goals past getting blasted this weekend. don’t try to act like you’re Mr. Fun because you’ll simply come off as a total tool. and for christ sake, read the profiles so you have something better to say than ‘hey baby, what are you wearing.’ By the way, that nonsense some chick was just spewing about women reading profiles and changing their rates of reply and initial messaging based on what we SAY in our profile is absurd. Ladies, lets get serious. You send out feelers based on attractiveness, and based on the response you choose from there to read the profile after the fact. curve that rates 80% of men as below average and has the matching curve next to it slightly shifted to the right simply shows that women have absurd expectations. guess what, its what society preaches and women are more prone to taking those things to heart than men. they think men should look like they do on tv so they think 80% of us are less than average. BUT heres the shitty part, they’d also probably rate themselves the same way based on looks if not worse. in order to truly get an idea what these numbers even mean, OK Cupid left out a VERY important data set and that is same gender attractiveness ranking. i mean heterosexual guys ranking heterosexual guys and the same for women. even then these numbers would be skewed because you’d be hard pressed to have a guy give an honest assessment of another guy’s looks. whereas women will openly say when another woman is beautiful.

  44. These results aren’t just heterosexist, they’re flat out sexist and ageist as well. This website makes zero effort to market to the 35+ crowd.

    Of course a 19 or a 24 year old is going to get ranked higher than a 28 year old. Duh.Put a 19 year old in a tank top and in provocative poses and she’s going to get higher ratings simply because of what she represents.

    And, yeah, why aren’t there any usernames attributed to the male examples? I mean, we know that the blonde in the white shirt is one of the guys who created this website….but where are the usernames of the guys? Oh, they aren’t there. Why? Because this website is written for and created for MEN 35 and under. And of course the female examples chosen are all under 30. Way to cater to the idea that women over 30 serve no purpose. You’re enabling their stunted ideals.

    The average age of the men who visit my profile is about 28-32. I’m 41. Even the marketing efforts are targeted at a young crowd. What 40 year old is participating in an online dating profile contest? What 40 year old reads the blogs of some of OKCupid’s evangelists? Why are you guys so adverse to marketing to an older crowd?

  45. Tom

    what’s with the change to not include whole posts in the RSS? Please bring back whole posts!

  46. Chris

    Do we have access to what our average rating is? May be useful in mapping out our standings.

  47. Ed

    When I’m rating, I keep a couple things in mind. My attraction, what they wrote in the profile, and if I’d consider contacting them.

    Example.
    - Gorgeous woman, smokes. – 3 (I’d never contact her, but I am not rating her as high as her looks or her profile would warrant because I don’t want her getting an e-mail that says I’ve rated her as a “5″ and that we’ll match if she rates me high too.” -I can’t date a woman who smokes

    - Attractive woman, great profile, no smoking – 4(I’d give to any woman I thought I might be interested in who might be interested back)

    - Attractive woman, something in the profile says “NO” to me – 3

    My ratings are more based upon how the site works, as opposed to how attractive people are.

  48. Jim

    Hi all!!!! I just wanted to comment…….

    i am a very self-aware person. And im a good looking guy. Dont get me wrong, im no brad pitt or anything……but good looking. I have messages a couple of average girls on okcupid over the past few days. (average in my opinion)……. they just all seemed nice. I have gotten 0 responses, and a profile views from all of them. lol!

    It is actually easier for me to get a date with a well above-average looking girl at work, than get a response from an average looking girl on OKcupid.

    For me, i dont know what the explanation is. But I agree that average looking women on Okcupid seem to think they deserve a movie star or something………. i have no clue.

  49. dks

    I joined this site in August 2009 and I would definitely describe myself as average. I have been surprised at how many messages I get! I really don’t have time to answer them all because I have kids and only so much free time. But the sheer anger of guys who don’t know why they don’t get replies just boggles me. Please guys, just get over yourselves. I have messaged several guys I have high match percentages with, who I really thought I had quite a bit in common with, and received no reply. Big deal. Why do I want a reply from someone who isn’t interested? Can you not accept that everyone has different reasons for responding or not responding?

    Here are some of my reasons for not responding:

    1) You obviously didn’t read my profile. I don’t care if you think I’m cute! I want someone I can actually talk to as well! And if we match like 40% why would you message me? Especially the guys who have long first messages all about how they read your profile, liked it, and here is all about them. If a first message doesn’t reference SOMETHING in my profile that clicked with them, I don’t generally respond. This is why I don’t like Winks and generally don’t respond.

    2) I have my own sort criteria. I don’t enjoy cigarette smoke, and don’t care to be around heavy drinkers. I like guys who can form complete sentences. I find the dating profiles to be really hepful and there are several I don’t care to go out with (such as the Hornivore).

    3) Nothing to go by. Please put something in your profiles! Why send a message that says “”if you want to know, ask” Who has that kind of time? If a profile is totally vague with nothing I can start a conversation with, then I just won’t! There are plenty of other interesting profiles.

    4) You’ve got some issues. If your profile consistently talks about how you are unlucky with women, or makes angry comments about women not responding, or how you are a big loser or women dump you, then why on earth would I be interested? I prefer a profile that shows a man who is happy with who he is and looking for company.

    I have clicked on several guys profiles who I thought were VERY cute but decided to either not respond or to not message based on what I saw there. And I have clicked on several profiles that just looked interesting, and after reading, thought the guy was adorable. I recently went out with someone from this site that I thought looked ok in his profile, but his messages really intrigued me. In person, I found him totally hot and hope to see much more of him! I know that chemistry can alter everything, so I don’t make a lot of assumptions based on looks.

    One other way guys shoot themselves in the foot is to immediately send a phone number or email when we haven’t talked at all. This place feels safe to me. I like to email and IM here till I feel comfortable. Because of that, I have enjoyed all my OKC dates and not had any problems. There was one guy I thought was cute and considered asking him to meet for lunch. He gave me his phone number without me asking, and then when I hadn’t called in a week, he was angry! But I never told him I would call him! I decided then I definitely didn’t need to be meeting him for lunch or anything else.

  50. Scott

    I’d be willing to bet that women could just leave their profiles blank, or make ludicrous statements like how Hitler was just misunderstood, and still get a ton of responses if they’re pretty.