Hello, old friends. I am back from dark months of data mining, here now to present my ores. To write this piece, we cataloged over 7,000 photographs on OkCupid.com, analyzing three primary things:
- Facial Attitude. Is the person smiling? Staring straight ahead? Doing that flirty lip-pursing thing?
- Photo Context. Is there alcohol? Is there a pet? Is the photo outdoors? Is it in a bedroom?
- Skin. How much skin is the person showing? How much face? How much breasts? How much ripped abs?
In looking closely at the astonishingly wide variety of ways our users have chosen to represent themselves, we discovered much of the collective wisdom about profile pictures was wrong. For interested readers, I explain our measurement process, and how we collected our data, at the end of the post. All my bar charts are zeroed on the average picture. Now to the data.
It’s better to smile
One of the first things we noticed when diving into our pool of photos is that men and women have very different approaches to the camera.
Women smile about 50% more than men do and make that flirty-face four times as often.
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Now, you’re always told to look happy and make eye contact in social situations, but at least for your online dating photo, that’s just not optimal advice. For women, a smile isn’t strictly better: she actually gets the most messages by flirting directly into the camera, like the center and right-hand subjects above.
Notice that, however, that flirting away from the camera is the single worst attitude a woman can take. Certain social etiquettes apply even online: if you’re going to be making eyes at someone, it should be with the person looking at your picture.
Men’s photos are most effective when they look away from the camera and don’t smile:
Maybe women want a little mystery. What is he looking at? Slashdot? Or Engadget?
It’s interesting that while making flirty eye contact is relatively okay for men, flirting away from the camera is the worst thing they, too, can do.
The MySpace Angle Is Busted
The universally-maligned MySpace angle is achieved by holding your camera above your head and being just so darn coy.
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We were sure these pictures were lame; in fact, the prospect of producing hard data on just how lame got us all excited. But we were so wrong.
In terms of getting new messages, the MySpace shot is the single most effective photo type for women. We at first thought this was just because, typically, you can kind of see down the girl’s shirt with the camera at that angle—indeed, that seems to be the point of shot in the first place—so we excluded all cleavage-showing shots from the pool and ran the numbers again. No change: it’s still the best shot; better, in fact, than straight-up boob pics (more on those later).
Weird.
Guys should keep their shirts on
The male “Ab Shot” has the same reputation as the MySpace Shot—it’s an Internet cliché that supposedly everyone thinks is only for bozos. To wit: a journalist was visiting our office recently, and when we told her we were researching user photos, the first thing she said was “please tell me people hate it when guys show off their abs.” We hadn’t finished running the numbers yet, so we confidently reassured her that people did. The data contradicted us.
Of course, there is some self-selection here: the guys showing off their abs are the ones with abs worth showing, and naturally the best bodies get lots of messages. So we can’t recommend this photo tactic to every man. But, contrary to everything you read about profile pictures, if you’re a guy with a nice body, it’s actually better to take off your shirt than to leave it on. We would never suggest to a Fitzgerald or a Dave Eggers to limit his profile to 100 words, and so why should guys with great bodies keep their best asset under wraps?
Dating, both online and off is about playing to your strengths, and it should be no different for men with muscles, even if the classic pose is kinda hard to take:
After weeks of sorting through pictures, I started calling these guys headless horsemen.
An interesting caveat here is that a six-pack does seem to have a short shelf life: the effectiveness of the “abs pic” decreases sharply with age.
A 19 year-old showing his abs meets just under 1.4 women for every women he reaches out to, meaning that not only are females responding to his messages, but many are actually contacting him first. For a 31 year-old ab shower, that ratio has regressed to much closer to the average.
Because of our restricted data set for this post, we can only make confident claims for 19 to 31 year-olds right now, but it’s our strong suspicion that this downward trend continues with age. In the future perhaps we can investigate what’s behind the decline: is it because older guys and their older abs are inherently less attractive, or because women as they age find body shots less interesting?
One final point, vis à vis men, their torsos, and the clothing thereupon: if you’re not the type of guy who can show off your muscles, don’t veer off in the opposite direction and get all dressed up. Outfits more sophisticated than a simple collared shirt fare poorly:
The Cleavage Shot
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There are no clear myths associated with showing cleavage in your picture. Most “experts” recommend you don’t, but everyone knows that breasts get attention, so to treat that recommendation as a “myth” would be disingenuous. But since the Cleavage Shot is the feminine analogue of the Ab Shot, and an undisputed online dating archetype, we thought we should discuss it.
Like the Ab Shot, the Cleavage Shot is very successful, drawing 12.9 new contacts per month, or 49% more than average. But unlike the Abs Shot, this positive effect actually trends against the effects of age.
As you would expect, women get fewer and fewer new messages as they age (which is a topic for another whole post!), but this decrease in new contacts is substantially slower for women with cleavage pics. A 32 year-old woman showing her body gets only 1 less message a month than the equivalent 18 year-old; an older woman not showing off gets 4 messages less, a large relative fall-off in popularity. The older the woman, the more relatively successful she is showing off her body
We find this anti-aging trend surprising. When we look further into the data, we can see that as women get older, they are more hesitant to emphasize their bodies, despite its still being a good strategy (at least in terms of message volume). Instead, they increasingly choose to show themselves in non-sexual contexts, like being outdoors:
For women in their late teens and early twenties, body pictures are the most popular type of shot; outdoor pictures are second. This ordering is reversed by the mid-twenties.
To wrap up our cleavage discussion, let’s assess the kind of messages the cleavage-showers are getting. A message like “Hey nice rack” isn’t really gonna lead anywhere, and isn’t very valuable to the recipient. We looked a level deeper and analyzed what resulted from the incoming contacts. Did the messages go unanswered? Did they turn into legitimate conversations? We didn’t go through anyone’s inbox to do this; we mathematically modeled a “conversation,” based number of messages back and forth. And we discovered the following:
This chart gives excellent insight as to why to the subject of this picture:
gets many more meaningful messages than does the subject of this one:
even though the two women are basically the same age, spend the same amount of time on the site, have similar profile length and quality, and have the same “attractiveness” as rated by OkCupid’s male population. If you want worthwhile messages in your inbox, the value of being conversation-worthy, as opposed to merely sexy, cannot be overstated.
Make sure your face is showing
We used to think that the one iron-clad rule of Internet dating photos was to at least show your face. In fact, we used to give this very advice on OkCupid’s own photo upload page:
That page reads differently now because we found that all other things being equal whether you show your face really doesn’t affect your messages at all.
When at first these results came back, we didn’t believe it. We installed all kinds of sophisticated photo analysis software libraries, ran scripts to measure the percentage of face in each of our photos, generated diabolically meaningless scatter plots:
But the facts were stubborn: your face doesn’t necessarily matter. In fact, not showing your face can in fact be a positive, as long as you substitute in something unusual, sexy, or mysterious enough to make people want to talk to you.
All of the above subjects get far more messages than average, and yet none of them have outstanding profiles. The pictures do all the work: in different ways, they pique the viewer’s curiosity and say a lot about who the subject is (or wants to be).
Of course, we wouldn’t recommend that you meet someone in person without first seeing a full photo of them, that still seems like a recipe for disaster. In the near future, we’re going to be arranging series of blind dates through the site, and profile photo accuracy vs. the success of the date will be a big part of the report. Thanks for reading.
How we collected and evaluated this data
Our data set was chosen at random from all users in big cities, with only one profile photograph, between the ages of 18 and 32. We then lopped the most and least attractive members of the pool, fearing that they would skew our results. So all the data in this post is for “average-looking people;” here’s a graphical representation of that concept for the female pool.
After a bit more sifting, we finalized our data pool at 7,140 users. Aside from running each picture through a variety of analysis scripts, we tagged, by hand, each picture for various contextual indicators. We double-checked the tags before generating our data.
To quantify “profile success” for women, we used new messages received per active month on the site.
We had to do something different than this for guys, because of the fundamentally different role they play in the online courtship process: they are the ones reaching out to new people; women send only a small fraction of the unsolicited “hellos” that men do. As you’ve seen, the metric we settled on is, “women met per attempt”, which is:
/
outgoing first contacts
Basically, this is how many women a guy has a conversation with, per new woman he reaches out to, and we feel it’s the best way to measure his success per unit time on OkCupid. Note that if a guy has a particularly compelling photo, this ratio could exceed 1, as he’d be getting messages from the women who come across his profile, as well as the women he himself is reaching out to.
” anon
Is there any particular reason you left out the confidence intervals?”
I agree completely. Just like Mythbusters, you’re giving convincing arguments without mentioning if its significant or if you’re results could be explained naturally by variance.
A very interesting read though.
guess no one cares about homosexuals do they?
You didn’t mention one obvious (to me, at least) reason why both “with animal” and “doing something interesting” result in more contacts/conversations: the animal/activity are conversation starters. Or, in sales terms, “hooks”.
Give me a choice between starting a convo with a person who shows only themselves, or starting a convo with someone who is hugging a dog or playing a guitar or holding a surfboard, and I’ll take the latter every time, because it gives me a conversation starter.
Note that “with animal” and “doing something interesting” tend to be just about equal in all your stats. Those are different enough that one would expect more variation, but if you view them as easy hooks for conversation, the data makes sense.
wow. a dating site that actually makes use of it’s data/users. nice research. very informative.
Fascinating! Of course nothing satisfied me more than the note that there is a strong correlation between conversation rates and what I will call, for lack of a better term “not being a stupid whore (i.e, drinking, the “myspace shot,” trying to display your physical attributes at the expense of or to the exclusion of your mental ones).” I think it provides an insight into the dual role that online social sites, and especially dating sites serve. On the one hand, they are genuine tools of social contact, where people go to find or maintain friendships and relationships. On the other hand, they are also a sort of non-pornographic venue for exhibitionism and voyeurism, a place where people can stare at photos of people with nice abs or breasts, without the sense shame that comes with looking at actual, depersonalized and professionally produced pornography/modeling photography.
But, my very favorite thing is that your assumptions were all overturned. The reason for this is that your assumptions are based on the most obvious of all sampling biases. If you’re smart enough to do sociological analysis, then you are, by some definition an intelligent person. The majority of people on the internet are, along with the majority of people, morons. So, in your initial assumptions, you thought that the populace would feel the same way an intelligent person would about cheesy and uninventive “myspace shots” and ab shots. But of course, most people are too stupid to register these a shallow and embarrassingly derivative.
I don’t know whether I should agree with Samuel or not.
But I do feel that there are other things that need to be considered before reading this article.
One being that all the information is based off of one dating website which on its own “screams” to one kind of demographic, to which Samuel would call “the morons”.
But lets say that the survey was conducted on a more maturely named and set up website (not ok cupid); you would expect that the response to certain images (myspace-pic) would alter in accordance (or at least you would hope so).
And another thing to factor in is that people on dating sites are pretty much looking for sex or comfort/flirting and thats it
and since many people incorrectly believe that there is a direct connection between their presentation and performance they look for the most attractive and the most fit. Which by itself should be a whole other paper all together
What people should get from this study is that when we are looking to hook up, many of us won’t actually be looking at the individual. It’s also important to note that it’s not gender determinate either: women look at abs, men look at breasts, and I believe that has something more to do with our genetics
I hate when you can’t see the face ugh.
The absolute worst all time profile photos are where men post of picture of themselves with another woman. What is the point of that?
Wow. Nice research!
Funnily enough, 5 years ago I met someone through a dating website. My main photo was of me, looking at camera, slightly smiling, flirty face. I wore no makeup, pulled my hair back, and wore form-fitting clothes. For me, “form-fitting” means cleavage, because I have big boobs. So, throw cleavage in the mix, too. I stood in front of my bookshelves as a backdrop. I had a 2nd picture which was Myspace-style.
He had a profile shot which showed him smoking, looking away from the camera in front of the Musée D’Orsay in Paris. His Myspace-style second pic showed his blue eyes and hinted at arm muscle.
It must have worked – we’re getting married.
As a photographer, this is invaluable information for me. Thanks.
Beyond the “myspace shot”, did you consider measuring the success rate of snapshots versus professional (or professional-ish) photos? (“Professional” in this context meaning that there’s some obvious attempt at composition and lighting, not just on camera flash or glaring sunlight)
Wow, this article was in-depth, and full of excellent info. I have always been interested in “profile pics” and what role they play. This was a great read!
Wow fascinating data.
Please share whenever you have more data to come!
fascinating that we’re your little sociological experiment, makes me like you guys even more in an odd way. as for the “myspace shots,” as much as we all deplore them i suspect it might be a product of the early 20s and younger crowd who have grown up with the “myspace shot” and don’t find anything wrong with it. maybe you can do a breakdown on the age of those who post myspace shots and those who respond to them. personally i find them annoying, but i rock a dslr, so yeah i’m bit elitist about it.
Fascinating. As a statistician, I am impressed with the quality of your measures, thoughtfulness of trimming the data, and selection of graphics and summary statistics to present. Ignore the comment about confidence limits — they would add unnecessary noise to the presentation and, unless some of the subgroups are tiny (which I hope you would have noted if they were), the sample size ensures that that the estimates have a precision appropriate to this context.
It would be interesting to see how your results compare to academic research by psychologists into what constitutes visual attractiveness. There may not be much overlap since they are typically interested in beauty of the individual (not the photo, so there is a preference for standardizing poses) and you are interested how to make oneself most attractive in a single photo.
I’m female, so my optimum profile picture would be me taking a flirty photo of myself with my breasts bared, outdoors while walking along a sand dune.
I believe that it’s important to consider confidence intervals, and some measures of statistical significance. Given the numbers involved, it’s very possible that some of these statistics can be explained by natural variation alone. Maybe next time graph confidence intervals as an overlay?
Nonetheless, very interesting study!
I’m guessing with only about 7100 straight/bi folks to work with the number of non-hetero folks was probably around 100-150 people. If you further subdivide that into 100 gay men and 50 lesbians you’re left with sample sizes so small you can’t draw any meaningful conclusions about patterns. I don’t think they’re being discriminatory here, OKC is generally pretty cool about that; it’s a numbers game.
Actually, looking again, their data doesn’t specifically say they only sampled straight folks, and their equations don’t specify gender either. “Women met per attempt” is explained as “(new incoming messages + replies to outgoing first contacts) / outgoing first contacts” which could be incoming messages and first contacts with guys as well as girls…
Interesting post. I totally dig your blog posts about stats! Maybe do one for gay people also? Would be interesting to see
Cheers,
SML
I show my cleavage… and here is my rationale. Men who initially respond to what they SEE are weeded out. Men who respond to what they READ are given opportunity. It tells me what this guy is really interested in. I’m sexy AND intelligent as evidenced by my profile. I’m going to keep it this way because it works for me, stats or no stats. But thanks, it was an interesting read.
Well maybe im old fashioned , but with all your data, i still think that young and older women that have profile pics with their boobs popping out of their shirts or sitting there with only a bra on are looking for one of two things, attention, or sex. young guys that have profile pics with no shirt on are looking for attention and sex, older men with no shirt on in their profile pics are trying to relive their youth and are nuts enough to think a young girl , between 18-25 is going to find them sexy, sad but true.
Very interesting study.
I think in some cases there may be value in mapping psychological indicators to the different kinds of images and their success.
That “flirty face” is called DUCK FACE…check it out http://antiduckface.com/
so if a GUY was fucking a horse he would be doing something interesting and posing with an animal and that would be good.
but if a GIRL was fucking a horse she would be doing something interesting and posing with an animal and it would only be half good.
so sexist.
interesting read!
btw, lol: “What is he looking at? Slashdot?”
So everybody, when you make a measurements (measure the same thing several times, like pulse rate, or measure different things, like age of MySpace users) you obviously get an average. But also, two such experiments may yield the same average but one may vary a lot: Consider a man at a steady job whose monthly earnings have drifted slowly from 2000$ to 3000$ over 10 years. Consider another one working more independently, who may earn 5000$ one month but nothing the next. Though they may make on average the same amount of money, and hence probably earn more or less the same in a year, clearly there are important differences between the two cases. This difference can be calculated quantitatively by taking the mean, and looking at how much the individual measurements drift from it. One application which concerns us is, if we know only the mean and variance of these two mens salaries, it would be reasonable to guess the first one will definitely be able to afford a 1500$ medical procedure the next month, whereas unreasonable to suppose the same for the second (disregarding any savings they might have).
Not everything varies the same way. For example, if out of many differently priced products only two are (equally) popular, one for 20$ near the market minimum and one at 50$ near the maximum, the average money spent per consumer for the market will be close to the average of the two prices, since most people buy those. But unlike, say, weight of random people you meet, you won’t actually find many prices at or close to ~35$: They’ll be either 20$ or 50$ more often. However, it turns out that a lot of things do vary such that there are always fewer measurements that deviate greatly from the mean than there are measurements which are close to it. In fact, there is a very specific pattern to this, defined by a function called the Normal Curve, and these kinds of things are called statistical distributions. Since this is a very common distribution, it’s often reasonable to assume (when you don’t know any better) that your measurements will follow a normal curve.
Now when you calculate variance the formal way (square root of the sum of the squares of the differences of each data point from the mean) that is called the standard error or standard deviation. When you see something like 350 +-15 ml on a juice bottle, that means the 350 is their mean and the 15 is their error, since they can’t and needn’t really make sure that every bottle of juice they make is *exactly* 350 ml and not one less or more. Add to that the function for the normal curve, you can figure out that there is exactly about 68% that any measurement from a normal distribution will not be farther away from the mean than the standard deviation. (Between 335-365 ml) This is 95% for two times the error (320-380 ml), and 99.7% for three errors. (305-395 ml) If you want, you can even calculate this for, say, 1.57 times the error from the function, or just find a table of already calculated values.
Obviously, knowing this, we can say that in our first example there is only 60-70% chance that the second man can afford his vacation, while we essentially know for certain the first one will. Another thing we can say is this: With the juice bottles, if we find a bottle with not 350 but only 364 ml of juice, it’s probably not tampered with. But if you find a bottle with not 350 but 102 ml of juice, you know there’s something wrong because there’s like a million to one chance this was because the machinery at the factory had one of its usual messups. Because you can use it to figure out how sure you are, the “335-365″ (+- one error) is called the confidence interval. (This is all much oversimplified, see the wikipedia for more. Or something.)
So when you say, “oh geez, I posted a picture of myself and 7 people a day messaged me, then I turned the picture upside down and 9 people a day messaged, I bet upside down pictures are better!”, you may be right or you may be wrong. It depends on the deviation. If you have months where you get no messages, and months where your inbox gets flooded, the deviation will be large and obviously, it doesn’t really matter which way your picture is. But if you get 7 messages a day, like clockwork, every month every year, then this is huge, like a die coming up 6 a thousand times in a row -it’s definitely loaded- as opposed to just three times -which, like, happens all the time, man-.
See for example the context vs. age graph. They actually showed the data, and you can see there’s a lot of difference between those neat thick lines and the pale, squiggly actual data. And why are they lines, anyway? Looks like some logistic curve would fit much better, and yes that would impact the predictions they’ve made very much.
Where are your confidence intervals, OKCupid? I don’t mean to be anal because the post is really interesting but really, without errors your measurements are no better than a tarot reading.
Oh, and, Patrick from 8:16 AM: Errors are not important? The internet institute of statistics called, they want their fake diploma back.
And about photo with sunglasses?
I think maybe the effects of age have to do with the types of people online. At 19, showing your abs is advertisting what 19 year old girls want, sex. At 31, girls want a relationship, usually. Or, maybe less older people use the internet than younger people. Regardless, this is an interesting read
I don’t want to sound crude but depending on the kind of bait you put out there you are going to attract a certain type of fish. If you put your tits out there like a worm on a hook most fish will come over and check it out and maybe bite. But do you want a sunny? If you want to catch a bass a worm may work but a specific lure is better.
So i think comparing this study to the attractiveness study would be interesting
Who is that red-headed girl in the “Myspace Shots” section? I think I know her. A profile link would be lovely, thanks <3
Fun! But you don’t seem to have looked at the age of people responding to the photos. Given that FB probably has a young clientele, aren’t the results likely to be skewed in favour of what appeals to younger users. Hence the high success rate of ab shots and myspace photos. In other words, that kind of shot might be a great profile pic providing you want to attract people younger than 24, and repel people over 28…
Not a big fan of the webcam pic… too amateur!
I have to say, I met my current boyfriend on this site and we are planning to move in together. My picture was of me posing with me dog outside and looking away. That photo seemed to get the most compliments. His was at a wedding with a drinking glass covering his face, but not his eyes. I did not have any “Myspace photos” on my page, and I still got several messages of the hook up variety. My profile had nothing of that type in it either. Seemed very odd for me to have spiked that type of attention.
Either way, I appreciate the data and the site. It is free and easy and yes, there are people on here looking for sex, but it’s just about weeding those people out. There are plenty of people looking for an actual relationship, too.
Goodness. I didn’t realize this was about a dating site photo til half-way in. The advice is excellent for photography and social media profiles in general, and uhm, I am never going to flirt away from the camera, I promise I promise!!!! ;))))) Thank you!!!
Don’t start a sentence with but! People are smart
creatures but usually in unpredictable ways!
So, I’ve decided you are just going to have to hire more lab assistants. I have to wait far too long for these to come out and we need to pick up the pace here.
Also, don’t forget the homosexual like bob saget said. It really pisses people off when they are treated like people! That’s good enough of a reason for me!
I think you’re leaving out a whole kind of picture that gives a profile depth and often adds something to talk about: the picture that is not a picture of yourself. I know that this is not allowed by the flagging policy, and it’s a shame. As a visual person and someone who cares about a companion’s visual imagination (it would be on par with wanting to date someone with good taste in music or literature), I get a little bored seeing only clear medium-to-close-up shots of people’s faces. It makes them seem dull and a little vain. A profile that mixed up clear shots of a person’s likeness ALONG WITH other kinds of images – somebody’s bookshelf, a particular place they care about, a weird thing they noticed and took a picture of – would add a lot to a profile, in my opinion. And since we’re allowed to upload 8 or 10 pictures, that should give plenty of room for both getting a sense of what a person looks like AND how they see the world. Please change your flagging policy.
Interesting. Although it seems you know shag all about statistics and scientific data.
I like the way you guys did this. Worth a good read and to think and ponder on. It actually is nice to see what that could have done….
Okay, so I will now smile but look away when I get my picture taken. Thanx
I had always figured the MySpace shot would be successful for women because their height is usually shorter than men, so for men, the effect is like standing near the woman in the photo, making it more intimate.
Yes, confidence intervals would be nice to have for verification of the differences reported, but for presentation purposes, no.
In my youth and during the early years of dating, we did not have the benefit or perhaps the detriment of electronic messaging. Which meant that typically, unless you were a world traveler, relocated for work, in the military or incarcerated you were limited to the pool nearest your home base. I like the advances, even if I have not yet benefited from the enhancements to seeking new friends or soul mates. I have to admit that artistic photos interest me. I flee when I see a photo of a man straddling a Harley, posing with a cooler of fish, sporting a mullet or similar hair fashion, a large gut or posted ages in the late forties with photos of men at least 58. I guess lying is in fashion for both genders regarding age and weight from what I hear. But for me it is the profile. The attitude must be positive, the banter witty and the sentences fairly well constructed. I think we quit needing to see the abdomen after any possibility or need for captive breeding has passed. Frankly at 49 I would be more interested in pictures of a brain scan, but I am certain that is cost prohibitive. I will never flash cleavage, simply because I find it shallow. Not the concept, but my actual cleavage. It is however gravity defying and that in itself is enough for me to embrace them rather than enhance them. No mention of guys posing with children or grandchildren any evidence to support the notion that women perceive that as a positive?
Your research is highly commendable, inspiring and entertaining. However, don’t forget
all those seductive gimmicks: cleavage, tongue on the lips, winking, holding horse prick
or shoving it in the cunt… are nothing but attracting customers.
Eg., a URL shows absolute pornos and the girls invite the customer to have ‘fun.’only if
you’re members.BUT there is OC that explains that it’s all FICTITIOUS and to provide
the customers NICE time. The URL is Amateur Match. Isn’t it ridiculous?
After reading this I found myself trying to figure out what in profile pictures spark my attention. mainly I look for a radiant glow in the girls face. I like pictures that have simi-good lighting, and I like display pictures that show the face, and shoulders (like ones that stops just before the chest). I won’t talk to any girl who doesn’t show body in any of her pics. (I’m more liberal on body type, anything below 200lbs is fine. however I HATE surprises and girls who aren’t comfortable with their bodies.)
Maybe that’s why Myspace pics get replies, they tend to also show the body (Unless she has a bust so big it hides the body.).
For the result that MySpace pics were optimal for girls, the cause could really be that men like just looking at women with a slight downward angle, and the MySpace pose accomplishes this. Because men are generally taller than women, they’re used to viewing women from a “higher” perspective. The replication of this perspective in the profile photo could be what causes the attraction.
I’d also like to see you run regressions with controlling variables (age, income level, geographic location, educational attainment etc.) to further prove your results, and give new insights into the causal mechanisms.
This was a really interesting read, one huge pet peeve though: those early bar graphs are just… bad. Graph rant: Taking ‘The Effect of a Woman’s Facial Attitude’ as an example- Why is the x-axis at ~8.6? Is it the average or something? It makes it look like ‘not smiling/with eye contact’ generates negative new contacts monthly. It’s a pretty nonsensical graphic, and I think does a poor job of conveying what is actually interesting information.
A simple bar chart with a standard 0-axis would’ve been much clearer. If where the axis is located is attempting to convey information, just throw in a line labeled ‘Average’.
@Alexander K
As I say in the opening of the post, “All my bar charts are zeroed on the average.” If the particular chart you mention “…makes it look like ‘not smiling/with eye contact’ generates negative new contacts monthly,” well, that’s what I’m trying to get across and why I zeroed the charts as I did. In this case, “not smiling/with eye contact” does in fact subtract from your contacts, compared to the average. Thanks.
@Christian
If the graphs are against ‘average’ people, then don’t you run into a situation where as more people implement your suggestions the average point shifts presumably higher. Would this make your data difficult to compare over time as the baseline moves.
I’d also like to propose that as women get older they may not like the comments they receive from their breast shot. Or more then the comments, the types of men who generate them.
For future blogs, maybe consider how many messages pass between people online before they meet. comparing that against age could be both entertaining and enlightening. I would also like seeing data for older people as they are a growing pool of users.
one of the greatest things about being human is the range of emotion one’s face can express and the magic extends to our body and limbs abilities, at a peak performance, to express fluid and abstract motion.
ThIS is probably my favorite blog post ever ever ever and have been blogging for ten years. The more I read, the more joy and laughing occurred because of the absurd coincidence that myself was only on your website and registered for OKCupid about half an hour earlier. A 44yo who is finally comfortable in my skin and becoming a nudist to boot, I uploaded my profiles maximum of nine photos mostly of me while shirtless from last year. Then was very svelte and working out with weights and yoga too and like many celebrities say when taking daring and risque photos, may as well keep the best around for the memories by photographing, huh! Someday soon and already do not look quite that fit…I can say HEY THAT WAS SOMETHING, huh?
Glad to know for a change that am on or ahead of the trend and curve for what is acceptable and hot and popular too. SO now, if anyone complains about my torso on profile, or says am too old to bare, I will send them by RSS FEED (yes, I am a geek) a copy of this post. Superb and look forward to reading more with glee….
I love this blog, but I’d love to see more of the US specific stuff computed for Canada (my home and native land) and other countries. Even including a link would be fine.
PS I drool over you data at night….