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A friend recently sent me this link for OK Cupid’s blog, where they talk about the four big myths of profile pictures. I was shocked by some of the things I read. To come up with the four big myths they “cataloged over 7,000″ photos on their site to see: how the person was smiling (staring with no smile?
grinning broadly), context of the photo (meaning the background, setting, and composition), and skin (meaning, how much did the person show.) The things they looked at were fascinating enough, but I was particularly concerned with this “smile” question. It’s something I talk to online daters about a lot. A lot!
OK Cupid came to the conclusion that women “smile almost twice as often as men do and make that flirty-face four times as often.” My first question then was “what are the men doing? not smiling?” Actually, yes. As I did a random test myself, I noticed that men by and large didn’t smile, or least didn’t pose the way women did. Some guys frowned (apparently giving the impression that they didn’t need to date online), some posed with beer (yikes) and some stared straight ahead like some tough guy in a movie.
I have to say that when I dated online myself I always went for a guy that was at least smiling. If he wasn’t, he gave the impression that he was boring or too serious. But I must be in the minority, because obviously these guys are getting contacted by the girls on the site.
So let me ask you: Do you smile on your profile picture? And if so, what does your smile look like? (Big grin? Smirk? Silly laugh?)
Image: sxc.hu.
That was definitely an interesting insight and the men’s smiling thing seems to fly in the face of all the general advice of the so called dating gurus out there. I think one reason that the guys with the more serious facial expressions get a higher response rate is that it gives them an air of mystery and intrigue, think more like James Bond than Jerry Seinfeld.
Also, in that study it shows that those serious faced males weren’t looking directly into the camera, thus making eye contact. I think this is important as it comes of as a non-threating/non-in your face dimension to that particular picture.