Your Looks and Your Inbox

November 17th, 2009 by Christian Rudder

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.

[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.



556 Responses to “Your Looks and Your Inbox”

  1. Kolla says:

    I think woman (unconciously) judge more on status than on atractiveness. They guys on the photo’s may not be look ugly but they do not seem to have a high status. Maybe that’s why women rate them as less atractive.

  2. Okay whatever says:

    Interesting. The two females you picked out for “average looks” are better looking than your top people. Wouldn’t bother to comment at all on that cause whatever – chalk it up to taste – HOWEVER, the guys you think are average are really really low average. Maybe you know them and therefore being cool people, they look more average to you?

  3. jr says:

    Regarding picture ratings:

    1) Selection bias is one issue. I think all guys are just as likely to rate gal pics. Not sure if all women are equally likely to rate guys.

    2) Assuming no selection bias in the women who rate guys, and that for every 3 guys online, there is one gal, then when she typically peruses profiles she’ll quickly zero in on the top 1/3 (as she’ll always gets responses in this market, due to supply & demand). Over time, since she only ever looks at the top 1/3, she’ll form a rating scale of attractiveness based only on what she typically looks at. Hence, the 66th percentile is now close to the bottom in her mind. When she is randomly asked by the site to rate a true random sample of pics, she finally sees the “ugly” 50th percentile, so he will now be rated in 5th percentile given her rating scale was calibrated on a very biased sample of the top 1/3.

    Regarding Messaging:
    1) First lets examine the guys messaging. Based off plot in blog, we can assume women’s ratings are normally distributed. Reasonable to assume that guys “objective’ ratings are normal too (ignoring the skewed ratings given by women). If guys email every gal that is hotter than them, then the probability a gal of hotness rating x (-3 to 3 on standard normal curve) getting an email is F(x), since that fraction of guys will be less hot than her, and hence email her.

    More realistically, if guys will not email a gal that is 3 standard deviations hotter than them since rejection is certain, but will email gals that are a tad less hot than they (say .5 standard deviations less hot), then the probability a girl of hotness x getting an email is F(x+.5) – F(x-3). Wallah! We have the same distribution of messages sent out by guys that is shown in the article.

    The article states, “When it comes down to actually choosing targets, men choose the modelesque”, but seems guys are willing to consider less attractive. Just that given guys always are expected to initiate first email, why not aim high as well- you never know. Basically guys will shot off many emails, aiming a tad below them, and a ways above that rating as well

    1) Women rarely initiate a message. What is not clear is if Female->Male messages are instances where she initiates a first message. If so, there is CLEARLY a selection bias, as I know few women that initiate. The women initiating, may be very different than women in general. Are they the ones rated lowest by men? If social norms were not an issue and all women were equally likely to initiate, might the distribution of messages look the same as the rating women had of men?

    Regarding Message Reply rates:
    1) Given my comment on selection bias for female initiated messages, hard to comment on the reply rates, as “most attractive female senders” does not mean females rated 5, but merely those rated highest of the female senders, say a 2. Also not clear what the x axis is- the skewed females rating of male attractiveness, or a normalized rating taking into account the skewness.

    2) For male initiated messages, hard to comment on reply rates, again because not clear what the attractiveness is based off- female ratings, or normalized ratings.

    Interesting data & plots though. Maybe a future article will address my questions

  4. IWorkInPixels says:

    Just to join in what some others have said: QuickMatch is blowing up your statistics here…

    If I go to a girl’s actual profile and rate her, the rating reflects my assessment of her overall profile. I remember back when you dispensed with the Looks/Personality dual rating system, I thought “Why on earth would they do that?!” So, yeah… first of all, I don’t think the star ratings can be construed to mean “physical attractiveness” anymore. And even if it could, QuickMatch is problematic. Just to get through the stream of people I’m not interested in (for whatever reason) quickly, I rate nearly everyone I’m not interested in 3 stars. If I like her, I’ll rate her a 4 or a 5 so we’ll match. If I think she’s hot but not a good personality match, or lives too far away, or is of a different religion, or smokes, she gets a 3. If she is hot but bitchy she gets a 1. Even if I’d like to rate her high just to say “Hey, you’re cute!” cause she could clearly use the self-esteem boost, I can’t if I don’t want QuickMatch to inform her that someone has chosen her.

    And none of this is solely dependent on looks, at least since the two-scale system was dropped.

  5. whatever says:

    Uh, how can you conclude that women think non-super-attractive men aren’t good enough for them, when WELL BELOW AVERAGE men are the ones they contact the most???

    The number reflect the simple fact that men’s attractiveness isn’t evenly spread out. Most men ARE ugly. And women are okay with that.

  6. Andy Mesa says:

    To all the ladies who say they rate guys low because they have bad pictures; I’d rather that than being rated high for misleading pictures. You know who you are…and we do too when we finally meet you.

  7. Alan says:

    This is interesting as hell. No time to wade through all the comments right now, but I’ll definitely be reading the further posts.

  8. Palionu says:

    As an amateur photographer I can see why the huge discrepancy exists and it’s largely in part to photo editing. Women are more likely to edit their photos to such an extent as to block out any and all flaws while a guy will just leave it as is. Blame Cosmo, MTV or whatever but there is certainly more to these statistics than meets the eye.

  9. Jesse says:

    I think the fact that you ask “guys here in the office” about the attractiveness of other men, and then use these assessments for further observations on women’s OKC behaviour, is totally ridiculous. Why not ask some, you know, actual heterosexual women? The thing is, men benefit when average, shlubby dudes are considered attractive – then any guy who is better looking than that is automatically bumped up to gorgeous. It’s the “King of Queens” effect – shlubby, overweight white man with attractive, slim woman. Then every “average” guy thinks he, too, deserves an above-average looking woman. That’s why the female users with the most attractive pictures receive so many more messages than the male users with the most attractive pictures: women may think the majority of men are kind of fug, but they don’t assume they DESERVE to be with the best looking guy. Men, on the other hand, think they DESERVE a hot woman. Are there no women who work on this site? This stuff is all pretty obvious to any men who actually interact with women once in a while.

  10. Sealinewuman says:

    I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but does it seem that the pictures that OKC rates as more attractive are the younger users? And the middle rated ones are slightly older. For both the men and womens pictures.

  11. lucernea2 says:

    The most attractive pictures seem to be of younger people; I find the middle-range women just as attractive (if not more); they’ve older. How old is most of OkC’s population? How does closeness in age-range affect ratings?

  12. JohnHolmes says:

    The data are misleading. The blue line represents what men really want, versus the grey line which represents what they are willing to settle for. That is why they are more charitable to the less comely ones at the middle of the spectrum.

  13. boogaboo says:

    Maybe women judge attractiveness based on the whole profile and not just a picture

  14. FunnyIntellect says:

    1) the best thing about online dating is reading this blog.
    2) I agree there are innumerable biases to this that are almost next to impossible to control for I’m not going to throw out the old chestnut about beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but. Crap. I just did.
    3) regardless, the fact that almost no man receives a 5 star rating is fascinating. I am sure I’m repeating comments left before me that men use this more like a beauty rating and women use it as a whole profile (pics and words) rating. Which is sad. On two levels. As a man who is equally interested in words and appearance I’m saddened my bretheren are so superficial. Second, I think women get this and say “it doesn’t matter what I write, guys will just react to my picture” and drive down the quality of the words. Words I so desperately hope to be entertained and bemused by.

  15. Anonomous says:

    As a person who has worked/volunteered for many singles groups, I have had conversations with many men and women about dating and can give you the real scoop about why men choose attractive women and don’t actually read the profiles or question percentages to find a true match. Men have told me that they would prefer an attractive woman that treats them like crap over an average looking nice woman. The reason is that they want to impress their friends with what is on their arm. Also, many men really do not want permanent loving relationships, they just want temporary companionship with what is hot and starts their engines. One man was surprised when I told him a big rule for women was not to accept a date after Wednesday for the weekend. He said that if I turned it down that the guy would just ask out another girl because he wanted companionship on that night. The women were replaceable and exchangeable. A girl was just a girl and they were not being looked at as individuals with diverse personalities. Men considered women to be numbers and it was a matter of contacting the largest number of women to get a large pool of results. One man asked me to set him up, and after a lengthy discussion I said I knew a girl he had much in common with. When I pointed her out, he said “I don’t like curly hair.” So, I suggested another very nice girl. He said I don’t date women over size 8. So, I suggested a couple more. Apparently they also needed to be under 5’3″ and could not have red hair. Despite the fact that he was soooo desperate for me to fix him up, he was not interested in anyone in the room other than the blond bar-ho types. And the girls he was interested in I knew and told him were not nice people and treated men like crap. The attractive women could do this because they got so many men coming after them and throwing flowers, drinks and jewelry at them. They went through men like water as they were always being chased and didn’t care about anyone. The more unattractive the guy, the more they wanted the hot girls. The hot guys also only wanted the hot girls, but they would treat them badly because they knew that they were hot. The average looking nice girls generally avoid the “hot guys” because the women are smart and don’t want to be treated like crap. The smart attractive women also don’t want to be treated like poo, so, they all go after the less attractive men because they want good conversation, intelligent men and guys that will appreciate them for their intellect and not their looks. They want to be appreciated as individuals with separate personalities. So, they will often indepthly read the guys profiles for common interests etc… and not just for looks. Many of the “hot men” don’t understand this and don’t even bother saying much other than putting up a photo. But, they don’t understand that women have less interest in looks and more interest in personality and being with a guy that treats them right. They are interested in the guys as individuals and do not find them replaceable by any old guy. They aren’t playing numbers for temporary companionship. They want to find Mr. right. whereas many guys are looking for Ms. right now. I think very few men are looking for real love as much as they are looking for casual fun and sex and just a good time for now that won’t necessarily lead to anything. Anyhow, that is why decent looking women are contacting less attractive men, whereas men are ignoring anyone that isn’t hot. Maybe you should study how many men are contacting women with similar percentages vs. women. I think you’ll find that women are contacting men they meet in the 90% range with, whereas men are contacting women that they have so little in common with that they are practically enemies! My advice is for guys to not think of women as replaceable and start thinking of them as individuals.

  16. Chopin0x7b9 says:

    “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”

    The data does not support this conclusion.

    The data indeed shows that women have a skewed idea of what average attractiveness is in men, but the conclusion in question presumes their self image forms a nice bell curve.

    A simpler explanation is that women apply the same skewed curve to their own appearance as well. Example: a girl is a 2.5, but considers herself a 1.5, so she messages what she thinks is a 2 (who is a normalized 3).

  17. J says:

    This is great work.

    I think that ‘average’ looking women are doomed. Men are too conditioned to media, advertising and porn to be turned on by average women much less want them longterm.

    Therefore, we are all doomed, since the best looking women aren’t enrolled in breeding programs. Take a look at Japanese demographics. The guys are staying home with porn & sex machines, not dating, not marrying, and not reproducing.

    I guess if average-looking women really glammed up all the time, and kept things interesting constantly, then there would be some hope. But we are talking about super-women here, since many average women have brains, careers, and other interests besides fitness and beauty.

    Guys on OKC go for the hotties because it is worth it. It is low risk, much more efficient, and if a single one goes for you, then jackpot.

    Women are tough on guys on OKC because they feel bad about themselves. They are angry and ashamed with themselves for being on a dating site in the first place, so they take it out on the guys’ ratings, rather than come to terms with their conflicted feelings and thoughts. When a guy interacts with a woman on this site, the women tend to be even pickier, using any detail or question as a dealbreeaker, since they have more volume and choice, but also because women don’t feel comfortable with online dating for a variety of reasons, so to live with herself, she only admits perfect-seeming candidates.

    Here’s my rating system:

    I don’t vote 1s. I feel too bad for them, and I immediately close that page asap, or maybe I take the time to remove them from future consideration.

    2’s I would never be attracted to, and I immediately close that page asap, or maybe I take the time to remove them from future consideration.

    3’s are for me only, when I’ve had some drinks and put time and probably money in with her at the bar. We go home that night. Were I sober, I never would have even considered her for sex. I take the time to remove them from future consideration, since I’m not drunk in a bar when on OKCupid.

    4’s are tricky. They range from ‘I’d probably like to have sex with her sober’ to ‘I’d definitely have sex with her.’

    5’s are gorgeous, and I’d never want to stop making love with her and doing whatever I could to keep it going well.

    I wish there was a gradation between low-4 and high-four. Probably since I never vote 1, I should just move the 2’s to 1’s and downgrade from there.

  18. J again says:

    I read most of the comments to this blog, and I want to retract or update my section about womens’ self-loathing for being on a dating site. I think there are other factors as well: these involve the messages’ content (spelling, politeness, rudeness, and whether the men went beyond one or more pictures, etc) OKCupid’s Blog doesn’t account for content of messages. There is a feature where we can put a smiley face on a message, but I don’t think that that would be valid either at this point.

    OKCupid is brilliant and a cut above, but it often works on assumptions that are myopic.

    First of all, many users are not aware of how their answers are used and judged by other members or OKCupid staff. What is our ‘reasonable expectation of privacy’? I was surprised to discover that my answers and responses to journals were posted for all to see, for example. Now my hotness ratings are being statistically analyzed against an assumed unspoken norm.

    Another assumption is that the stars mean physical attractiveness. Some are using the stars for compatibility. It seems that some are using the stars as a feeler, a way to let a user know that you find them attractive. This might lead to inflation of looks’ average stars, or that members would like a low-risk way to get someone’s attention. Some use the stars to organize their searches. Some women don’t want every attractive guy’s attention, so she might rate a guy with fewer stars so as not to ‘poke’ him with a good rating.

    Then there’s technological biases:

    @ CRM__114: this user doesn’t even know s/he can rate people beyond Quickmatch. This might be because CRM__114 is using Firefox 3.5.3, a very popular browser. After one of the site upgrades, the stars for rating members practically disappeared and need to be clicked on twice sometimes. Or maybe there is an interface design flaw, or maybe some people miss even obvious things.

    Another feature that was blown in the relaunch was the ability for me to see when I first contacted a member. This information is blown past the right margin.

    Upgrades and redesigns need to be tested on multiple platforms and browers, and user-tested.

    As for looks, women might be using professional stylists and photography editing techniques more often than men.

    We all remember ‘the popular girls’ in high school. Their biggest hatred was reserved for ‘the sluts.’ Why? Because the value of scarce sexual gratification was provided by the sluts, who then competed successfully against the alpha females.

    By the time women reach college, even many sluts tire of all that activity and attention. Guys literally and figuratively screwing them all the time. So, the women with good self-esteem become pickier. If they ever get horny all they have to do is sidle up to the nearest cocktail bar and get someone to lay them that night. Women are aware of their sexual power.

    So, if an average looking woman gets approached by a hot looking man online, it is fraught with risk and little reward. All she has to do is show up in a drinking environment or post on Craigslist and she can choose whomever pleases her most. Here are the risks: good looking guys can be cocky and leave you as soon as they are satisfied; he could be mean or violent (the woman has no social context or social network to enforce his good behavior online), or the women can be the brunt of an error or a hoax, leading to sadness and feelings of rejection after making herself open.

    There are many factors behind peoples’ responses on this site, and we are sharing much of our data without knowing how it is being disclosed or analyzed. If we knew that the ratings were for looks, then the data would be cleaner and more valid when correlating looks and looking for surprising lessons. OKCupid’s communication and policies being more transparent and open could improve everyone’s experience by improving the site’s data.

  19. IWorkInPixels says:

    Stereotype much? lol

    SRSLY… I’ve even hung out with some big names in the pickup community, and even there it’s not as bad as the last poster would suggest. Yes, a lot of men are either consciously or unconsciously choosing their girlfriends to impress their friends. That’s sad, for everyone involved, and it deserves as much air-time to dismantling that whole system as the Dove photoshop ads get.

    But this condition is neither permanent, nor generalizable toward all men. Look, there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING wrong with wanting sex, AND… for nearly all of the men I’ve talked to, the desires for sex and for love are not mutually exclusive. In fact, if anything men seem to confuse the two a lot more than women do.

    These discussions tend to get a lot of haterade flowing in both directions, but in my experience men and women are a lot alike as groups, and possess a lot more variety as individuals than we give them credit for.

    And IMHO, they’re both pretty friggin’ awesome. :)

  20. No name needed? says:

    Actually this is far more general female behaviour than you think.

    I have moderate looks, very successful in my career to the point that I have several papers with nobel prize winners. Additionally I have net wealth of about four or five million pounds which I do not advertize to unknown people but which is apparent if somebody wants to get acquainted. And of course I have the usual politeness.

    It is kind of funny how many faults the women find in me, in my normal life in university and international meetings people treat me quite deferentially.

    Usually the women dismiss me because of my looks or because I am middle-aged, but also because I am too wealthy or too educated. Or any other random thing, it is really not limited to looks.

    The women involved were usually secretary or low grade teacher types, a few beautiful intelligent and attractive ones, some others with obvious problems with alcohol or with a sex life that gets them a disease et theree months maximum. Most were usual working class people.

  21. xyzzy02 says:

    I’d be really interested in various info, like:

    How many women initiate first contact, vs how many men?

    How srious a hit do you take for not having a photo?

  22. ASITUADTE says:

    As one that loves as much “objective” data as he can get, can I make a request? I would love to see similar charts that show male success and how woman rate them solely based on height. Seems your database should be able to rip off some pretty obvious trends. Then compare that to female success and how men rate them solely based on their weight. Is “society” and “the media” really responsible for all the physical image bias or is that just wishful thinking.

  23. DC says:

    I wonder if the reason why response rates drop when attractive people write to unattractive people is because they are a**holes writing to insult them.

  24. Violetlight57 says:

    I’m surprised the authors did NOT comment on how the message rate for the very most attractive women goes DOWN at a certain level of attractiveness . . . anyone’s thoughts on this?

    This strikes me as a manifestation of an “intimidation” factor – at a certain point, it appears, a women may be considered so attractive that others are afraid to even speak to her . . .

    Thoughts, anyone?

  25. dsmatt says:

    As an OKC user – I found some of the comments and the article itself really interesting. I can’t actually bring myself to “rate” anyone or use QuickMatch, because it objectifies the women (for me). Pictures may be nice to look at, but it’s very definitely the words that actually make me write to someone, and there are some fantastically written female profiles out there.

    Obviously, I form part of a selection bias (though other people appear to be using QuickMatch against my profile), and also in not really being interested in looks, but actually in what people have to say for themselves (or about themselves – depending on how you look at it). I’d probably be lying if I said looks didn’t matter at all (and I think that every time I have to look in a mirror). I very definitely went out of my way to choose a flattering profile shot for OKC.

    I look forward to the next post about the choice of profile shots…

  26. Jane Gray says:

    Um… one of your 4 “average guys” is significantly worse looking than the rest. I won’t say which one out of discretion, but yeah, why are you asking other guys in the office for their opinions? Does OKC need to hire some women?

  27. nezvanov says:

    Interesting stats!

  28. Happysin says:

    From a personal perspective (as a guy), I’m not sure I’ve ever rated someone a one-star. It just seems rude, especially when you at one point (can you still?) could see your profile rating. If the picture was that bad, I almost always put it up as “can’t tell” and moved on.

    Women seem much more willing to give us an honest rating, which may be harsh, but ultimately is also useful. My real question would be whether or not OKCupid men are less attractive than the mean for men in general, or if OKCupid women are being unreasonably harsher in their assessment of men’s appearances. Maybe you guys can come up with a way to test for that, because it might be truly enlightening.

    Also, if there really is a way to see your own profile/picture ratings still, someone let me know!

  29. Walter says:

    Perhaps it’s simply a matter of different perspectives on risk/reward. Maybe men don’t actually see themselves as having a chance with the top-tier of women on the scale, but are more willing to take the risk of contacting them. Why not, after all? And perhaps women are just less likely to take that risk. Maybe men don’t mind messaging 50 women on the chance that 1 will say yes, and maybe women just prefer a better ratio (higher accuracy).

    I don’t have anything to back this up. It’s just a thought. There are all kinds of reasons you could see the patterns that you’ve found.

  30. NeilW says:

    A buddy of mine loves your site and has encouraged me to join which I will. but when he mentioned this blog to me I had to read it. Basically three things came to mind.

    One, this blog is brilliant.

    Two, anonomous needs some new friends, or a new social circle.

    Three, have you done a comparison chart with annual income worked in. Social studies have shown money will help the male candidate. I was wondering if such is true on OKcupid.

  31. Vladimir Levin says:

    I think it’s interesting that it appears as though the women labelled as “best looking” are in that 19-21 age-range whereas the women labelled as “medium” are in the 25-28 age range. I don’t know if that’s especially relevant to the stats, but I did find it intriguing. If you broke the ranking down based on the age of the person submitting the ranking, would that change anything? While I thought the first girls were lovely in that limpid 19-21-year-old way, I found the older women *more* attractive and sexier-looking.

  32. brokensmilensj says:

    This post was pretty interesting but surprisingly; I do not rate men on looks alone. I rate them based on interest and things I am looking for in a date. Obviously things I am not looking for is going to give them a lower rating too. Like if a user puts on his profile he is just looking for casual sex, then I rate him lower because we’re not a good match. I hope I am not the only person rating dates based on these reasons as well.

  33. Akien says:

    As a photographer, I’d love to get a sample of the images women marked as most attractive. Good photography is often as much about the composition as the subject. I’d love to look for commonalities around how the images were composed in the set marked “most attractive”.

  34. Noah says:

    Is this really so surprising? It’s purely biological..I mean look at the animal kingdom and tell me animals mate for personality. They don’t..they do it for genetics and an outward appearance is a pretty good indicator of good genes. Humans complicate things by adding in emotions and personalities. But in the animal world (usually) the MALE is the attractive one who shows off for the female..but she is STILL highly picky and with much reason to be so..the success of the next generation rests on her choices.

    Biologically we human females tend to do the same thing except for us it’s subconscious and we factor in other things too. Also it seems more common in our world for the female to be the fairer gender and EXPECTED to be so. After all..make-up was invented for who? The next time you see a MAN doing a Maybelline mascara commercial you let me know.

    For that reason..since we take time on our appearance..we expect men to do the same. And many..simply don’t. A beer belly under a tight polo shirt and a baseball cap..and you WONDER why no one mails you??? Get serious! Of course this is all generally speaking, I have seen plenty of cute girls marry slobs =)

    I think it’s time for guys to quit complaining about how picky girls are. Get OFF your ass, take some NICE pics..not the bathroom blurry ones, and put some personality on your profile the whole “Uhhh these things are pointless just write me to get to know me” goes against the POINT of having a profile at all, I know I personally skip those. Fluff those feathers Mr. Peacock..or step aside for the guys that WILL and quit your bitching when the ladies flock him! That’s how it goes gentlemen.

  35. nycnancy says:

    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.

    How could you possibly get that interpretation out of the data – other than it’s what you wanted to believe?

    You asked women to rate the men – not rate whether or not she was as attractive as the man.

    Then you looked at which women messaged which man.

    What the results mean is that while women may be very particular about what they rate as very good-looking in men, they go for someone out of their league much much less than men do.

    Women have been trained, through social expectations and hard experience to settle for less when it comes to attractiveness in mates.

    IF a man can’t find a woman he considers attractive enough, he’ll go to a prostitute. Also, women spend much more time, effort and money on improving our appearance – and for good reason – based on your study, clearly average-looking men feel they are a good match for good-looking women. Both men and women believe that women will ultimately settle for less-attractive mates than men. Because we all get the same messages about our relative sexual value from the same culture.

    One day, when men realize that the old mating paradigm of men’s money for women’s beauty no longer applies (except for prostitutes) maybe they’ll start to put more effort into their appearance the way women do. Instead of thinking that looks matter – but ONLY for women.

    And re: the guys you consider decent-looking – the third one from the right is practically bald and just plain goofy-looking. Get real.

  36. nycnancy says:

    I meant the third-one from the left – but that should be obvious, he’s the only one that’s practically bald.

  37. Robert O says:

    young and cute and tender vs old and haggard, obviously the young are going to get higher ratings than the old. You dont necessarily have to make much of an effort when youre 19 and can still be better looking than someone who is late 20’s who makes an effort with their appearance. Thats why older guys hit on girls who are under 24 on this site because the women who are older on this site tend to be very fat, the hot chicks only go on this site when theyre young as an experiment, they wont come on here when theyre older, those who are older tend to be fat and ungroomed.

    ……..Now, I dont accept the argument by Anonomous above, that women are looking for the one whereas men are only thinking right now…you’ll find very few women on this site are actually looking for long term dating, most of them are only looking for short term dating or casual sex, its mostly guys who are looking for long term on this site.

    …………….A lot of women over 24…they made no effort with make up, they made no effort with hair, they made no effort with photo quality, no effort with style, no effort with facial grooming…one woman didnt even pluck her eyebrows…I mean if she doesnt groom her facial hair, then her private parts are probably a jungle too. yes, its true looks are short term and everyone grows old…however…you still need to have sex in a long term relationship and if youre not physically attracted to her in the first place then youre definitely not gonna be attracted to her when shes older. the fact is guys like women who are slim and feminine and women like men who are masculine and muscular. Its common sense.

    RE:putting up ugly realistic photos so the other knows what you looklike when you meet!!!…HELLO??? if your pic is so ugly and below quality, no one is gonna want to meet you in the first place!!!

  38. alan says:

    this is all cool and fun to read and whatever.

    one note tho. you’re going purely on attractiveness to lower the variables and create less of a headache, but as for “dude we find perfectly okay who were rated miserably” you somehow forget that it’s not about a guys look so much as what he chooses to put out there.

    dudes are famously overzealous when trying to put forward who they are (or who they’d like to be) in all aspects of their profile. musician X really influences them and what they want to do so theyre going to make sure you know about it because theyre a “passionate” guy. that kind of stupid bullshit. when women see a guy all wrapped up in his ass to be taking a picture of himself posed dynamically with a guitar, it stops being about his appearance and more about “oh jesus this dude went on a self timer and posed in front of a camera with a guitar and that really forced look on his face. oh god if i get with this guy im never going to stop hearing about his shitty band jesus what a douchebag.”

    the ones on both ends have an average profile, sure, but what they choose to put out there about themselves either says they’re a major tool or “a nice guy” who secretly complains to the intenet about what a reasonable guy he is and thinks ladder theory is valid.

    women know better about attractiveness than guys do. it’s less about look and more about the vibe you get on what kind of person they really are based on what they give away about themselves that they can’t help.

  39. c says:

    You should do a study on weight and messaging correlation. I wonder how many guys go for petite girls and overlook all of the average and god-forbid “curvy” girls?

  40. Azureai says:

    Ever think about doing these kind of articles for gay dudes and gals on the site? Can’t help but wonder what these graphs would look like in a world where the two sides have similar expectations.

  41. Anikka says:

    If you like, I wouldn’t mind my picture being used for the unattractive example. You should have written some women who have a sense of humor about their looks. :P

  42. anonymous says:

    Damn, those two guys on the left are a lot better than just decent looking, and the guitar guy is very, very, VERY goodlooking? The guy on the right is basically handsome and maybe even cute, in a geeky way. And I’m saying that as a gay man who is probably way too picky myself.

    All I can figure is most women must be latent lesbians if they can’t recognize the hot without People magazine spelling it out for them (how else to explain how Tom Cruise got to be known as a sex symbol?). I guess that explains why so many women marry for money or status. If you have to hold your nose when it comes to looks (if I may mix a metaphor), you might as well make your selection based on cold hard cash.

  43. anonymous says:

    NOAH said: Also it seems more common in our world for the female to be the fairer gender and EXPECTED to be so. After all..make-up was invented for who? The next time you see a MAN doing a Maybelline mascara commercial you let me know.

    Noah, haven’t you ever noticed that most men are BORN with much thicker and darker eyelashes than women? If women were naturally the fairer gender, they wouldn’t NEED mascara. Nature more often than not makes the males of the species more visually attractive, and females are more often dully colored and camoflaged. And females don’t need to be fancy because young males are usually hormone driven, and beggars can’t be choosers. I’ve known a few women who were average looking to cute but rarely ever wore make up, and they were hit on more than any other women I ever knew. Hair and make-up is all about social status. The people who care about makeup and hairstyles on a woman are the people who are least likely to be sexually attracted to them. Go figure.

  44. kathryn Raphael says:

    As my step aunt who lived to be 106 and never married said “beauty is only skin deep and ugly goes clear to the bone”. She never married. But she had an interesting relationship long term with a man and yes she was no beauty. Go figure
    We are drawn to beautiful people and who is beautiful dictated by social norms of what constitutes beauty. The media dictates this for men and women. But the really powerful force is the biologic force of procreation. And women and men are drawn to attractive physically attractive partners as a biological basis. We are not thinking about how compatible a mate is – how we have interests in common, we are drawn to their beauty. Women are apt to place power and money above beauty if they have to choose for their offsprings success. We are a base species. Not choosing mates on compatibility but on monetary or physical attributes. Many intelligent men seek women based on their looks rather than their interests. Women tend to look for more wealthy guys who can provide for their offspring without regard so much to physical beauty/or intelligence.

    After one is done with reproducing- well then what is left? You can look for a mate who is likely to share a lot in common or look for one who is will impress your friends. Or there are some people who want a mate to share their life with. A conundrum.

  45. Pogyhauler says:

    The winding thread that brought me to this article is unlikely at best. But, now I’m here, I’d like to leave a thought.

    Another related thread describes, somewhat panderingly,
    the general demographic subset of this site’s participants.
    It seems that the sites operators describe you as:

    Educated: in this context, this approximates ‘credentialed’ in so far as the measure requires documentation of attendance or matriculation, and specifically excludes ‘intelligent’.
    It also infers ‘Privileged’, ‘Elitist’, and ‘Impressioned’.

    Young: is itself an uncompared, relative term. Young as against Humankind? against all online daters? In context, the only useful approximation is ‘inexperienced’.

    Progressive: As opposed to? The context would seem to approximate ‘Fashion driven’ or ‘Easily influenced’.

    While it’s impressive that you’ve generated a self selected cult here, I think it important that you limit your inferences as they may be applied to the wider demographic.

    All in all, What I see here, is that the preferences and behaviors of this group are closely congruent to those found in any typical Junior High School.

    For those interested in pursuing the pseudo science here applied, or the underlying veracity of these conclusions, let me point out that ‘Game Theory’ requires an ‘unsophisticated player’.

    If there is a fundamental principle to be gleaned from these somewhat self serving ‘statistics’, it is that you kids still have a lot of growing up to do.

    Were I your parent, I’d pull your plug and send you outside to play.

  46. Anonymous says:

    Getting a large number of responses isn’t the same thing as getting the sort of responses you want. I actually put up pictures that are okay but not the best I could find because I don’t want responses from men who are obsessed with finding the prettiest woman they can get. Furthermore, I find it’s nice to not have to worry about that “look of disappointment” the my friends have described receiving on a first meeting.

    Do other pretty women do this as well?

  47. somemaleuser says:

    Your physical attractiveness scale is way too simplistic. Looks encompasses more than just a photo showing a face. Aside from photo height and build (=weight, were you so courageous to allow use of that as a field for people to self-identify should they choose) are salient factors. How meaningful is your study when you’ve used a simple metric and ignored other perhaps (perhaps some-are-as-) relevant factors like height, weight, build that appreciably effect user’s experiences?

    Aside from that, I’m not impressed by your attempts to dress the site up with simple statistics. Why not some regression analysis? In addition, you toss out the data for the very attractive and very unattractive or something like that at some point in your analysis, limiting the meaningfulness of your results.

    You have the data. You’re spending a lot of time and resources on some of this stuff, why be so half-assed about it? Do the big research study with causal analysis.

  48. Angela says:

    You say that women rate more men as “unattractive” but message them anyway, and you interpret this as saying “the vast majority of males aren’t good enough for her, but she then goes right out and messages them anyway.”

    This assumes that women are using looks as an important measurement of “good enough.” Maybe the same data says that women don’t feel that a good mate needs to be attractive. Or even that a good mate *should* be less attractive, to a point. Maybe women are more often insecure about looks, and tend to message people they think are less likely to shoot them down, as measured by attractiveness of the guy. Or women tend to message guys they think of as being in their league, and rate themselves as low as they rate the guy.

    Women tend to rate guys low, but do women *also* rate other women low? That seems relevant.

  49. Praxis Man says:

    Thanks for taking the time with your studies.

    I wish your photo study had shown the same relationships for people in my own age range. I’m not all that old, but felt left out.

    I’d also love to see some analysis of profile length and vocabulary in relationship to contact reciprocation success rates, again, broken down by ages that include my own.

    Finally, I’d love to see some analysis of interage success rates by age. For example, I’d love to know what aged women respond with which bias to my own particular age.

    Food for thought!

  50. Ari says:

    It’s quite an assumption to say that the low response rate from unattractive women to attractive men is due to self-esteem issues. Certainly that could play a part, though there might be a lot more to it, such as attractive men might be relying on their looks rather than email-writing efforts to get a response from women. A woman who is considered less than average looking would be used to connecting with people on a less superficial level, and therefor not interested in an email from a man that says nothing more than “look at how hot I am”, while a less attractive man might put a lot more into trying to make a good impression with the email.