Attractiveness

The Scientific Way To Choose A Profile Picture For Dating, LinkedIn And Facebook

Let’s face it, many people seem to have no clue how to pick their own profile picture.

You should let someone else choose your online profile picture, new research suggests.

The advice is sound whether it is for a dating profile, LinkedIn, or just for Facebook.

Other people pick more flattering profile pictures for us than we select for ourselves, it emerges.

Others seem to know better which pictures make us look more attractive, competent or trustworthy — whichever the context requires.

Dr David White, the study’s first author, said:

“Our findings suggest that people make poor choices when selecting flattering images of themselves for online profile pictures, which affects other people’s perception of them.
This effect is likely to have a substantial impact on online interactions, the impressions people form and the decisions they base on them, including whether to employ, date, befriend or even vote for someone.

Previous work has shown that people make inferences about an individual’s character and personality within a split second of seeing a photograph of their face, so our results have clear practical implications; if you want to put your best face forward, it makes sense to ask someone else to choose your picture.”

For the study, 102 students rated their own photos and those of strangers.

People were consistently better at picking profile pictures for others than for themselves.

Some examples are below.

Along the top line are the best and worst photos that people selected for themselves for each context: Facebook, dating and professional.

Along the bottom are the images that other people selected for each of those contexts.

The pictures they picked for others were a better fit for the intended site, Dr White said:

“Our results demonstrate that people know how to select profile pictures that fit specific networking contexts and make positive impressions on strangers: dating images appear more attractive, and professional images appear more competent.”

The study was published in the journal Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications (White et al., 2017).

The images are taken from White et al. (2017)

This Common Personality Trait Leads To More Sex With More Partners

First ever study to link this common trait to mating success.

First ever study to link this common trait to mating success.

People who help others out have more sex, new research concludes.

The more altruistic people are, the more sexual partners they have and the more frequently they have sex.

Could it be, then, that being nice to other people is the ultimate aphrodisiac?

Who would have thought it?

Dr Pat Barclay, one of the study’s authors, said:

“This study is the first to show that altruism may translate into real mating success in Western populations, that altruists have more mates than non-altruists.”

For the study people were asked about their altruistic tendencies and their sexual histories.

A second experiment tested whether people were as altruistic as they claimed.

The more altruistic people were, the more sex they had, the study revealed.

More altruistic men also reported more sexual partners.

Professor Steven Arnocky, the study’s first author, said:

“It appears that altruism evolved in our species, in part, because it serves as a signal of other underlying desirable qualities, which helps individuals reproduce.”

In other words: we are all generally descended from more helpful people.

Presumably, all those unhelpful people we still have around got here by pretending to be helpful in order to get a date.

Nice guys and gals

Of course this study is not saying that being nice is the only factor that’s important.

Indeed, altruism would need to be weighed up against the other traditional indicators of attraction.

Professor Arnocky said:

“Also, given the importance we place on attractiveness, resources and intelligence, it would be worthwhile to explore how individuals ‘trade-off’ altruism against other desirable qualities.”

Clearly there are plenty of people around who are tremendously unhelpful and still manage to get some action.

The study was published in the British Journal of Psychology (Arnocky et al., 2016).

8 Current Psychology Studies Every Lover Should Know

The power of nonconformists, neural synchrony, pathological personality traits and more…

The power of nonconformists, neural synchrony, pathological personality traits and more…

1. Men and women prefer nonconformists

When it comes to dating, both sexes prefer a non-conformist partner, research finds.

Although most people know a rebellious man is sexy; the results upend the common assumption that men prefer women who play by the rules.

Women in the study guessed that the personality trait of conformity would attract men, but it didn’t.

The study’s authors write:

“Women overestimated how attracted men would be to the conformist women.
People think that men prefer conformist women, but this impression is discrepant from reality.”

2. Neural synchrony

People who find each other’s emotions easy to read are naturally drawn to each other.

Reading emotions successfully gives people the feeling of understanding and connectedness.

Brain scans showed that interpersonal attraction was linked to a kind of neural synchrony.

The study’s authors explain:

“Individual changes in interpersonal attraction were predicted by activity in the participant’s reward circuit, which in turn signaled how well the participant’s ‘neural vocabulary’ was suited to decode the other’s behavior.”

3. Similar height

People choose partners who are a similar height to them because it’s in our genes, a new study finds.

For years its been known that people tend to choose partners who are a similar height to themselves.

This is despite the well-known preferences women have for taller men.

The link between partner’s height is surprisingly accurate, Dr Tenesa said:

“Using one partner’s genes for height, we estimated the height of the chosen partner with 13% accuracy.

4. Pathological pulling power

People with pathological personality traits — such as impulsiveness and neuroticism — have more luck in love.

Those with certain dark personality traits tend to have more partners and more children.

The conclusions come from almost 1,000 heterosexual men and women with a wide range of personality traits.

Find out more in the study’s full description.

5. Don’t smile (guys)

Women find swaggering or brooding men more attractive than happy guys, research finds.

Less smiling makes a man look more masculine, it turns out.

The results were the exact opposite for women.

Professor Jessica Tracy, the study’s first author, said:

“While showing a happy face is considered essential to friendly social interactions, including those involving sexual attraction — few studies have actually examined whether a smile is, in fact, attractive.
This study finds that men and women respond very differently to displays of emotion, including smiles.”

6. Shock finding: young and thin!

Women who are almost underweight are most attractive to men, a recent study finds.

Dr Lobke Vaanholt, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Although most people will not be surprised that extreme thinness was perceived as the most attractive body type, since this prevails so heavily in media, culture and fashion, the important advance is that now we have an evolutionary understanding of why this is the case.”

And, the simple reason men find a low BMI attractive is that it signals youth.

7. Expansive posture

Both men and women look more attractive when they adopt an expansive posture, a new study finds.

Expansive postures include having the arms outward rather than folded, generally leaning backwards or with the legs apart rather than crossed.

Expansive gestures tend to signify openness and dominance, which is why they are seen as more attractive.

The researchers recorded a speed dating event and used data from the dating app Tinder to verify their hypothesis.

In both cases people were more likely to be picked when they adopted more expansive postures.

8. A glass of wine

One or two glasses of wine can make the drinker look more attractive to others, a recent study finds.

Three or four glasses, though, does not make a person look more attractive than when they are sober.

This is different to the ‘beer goggles’ effect, which is well known: that alcohol makes other people look more attractive.

This is the first study to show that it works both ways, as the authors explain:

“The present study suggests that alcohol consumption increases ratings of attractiveness of the consumer by other people.”

Deodorant Changes Attractiveness Of Men And Women In Different Ways

How men who appear low in masculinity can be more attractive to women.

How men who appear low in masculinity can be more attractive to women.

Wearing deodorant makes men who are seen as low in masculinity more attractive to women, new research finds.

The boost to attractiveness was not seen for men whose faces are already perceived as being high in masculinity.

The research underlines the fact that women are more sensitive to odours than men.

Dr Caroline Allen, who led the study, said:

“We’re all aware that fragrances are often marketed as being feminine or masculine – take Old Spice for instance, who have recently parodied this with their hyper-masculine adverts, claiming that their product will allow you to smell like a super masculine guy.”

The conclusions come from a study of hundreds of women and men who rated pictures and odour samples.

Dr Allen explained the results:

“Our study found that when women apply a deodorant it does increase their rated body odour femininity, as would be expected.
Though it seems as though something else is at play when it comes to male body odour and male deodorants.

Only those men who were rated low in masculinity to start with showed a significant increase after applying their deodorants, and the men who were highly masculine initially showed no increase after deodorant application.
This means that men are able to use deodorant to artificially raise their game so to speak, levelling the playing field by making themselves comparable, at least as far as odour is concerned, to more masculine men.
Our evolutionary preferences have likely shaped this difference in fragrance design: research findings show that we actually don’t like high levels of masculinity which are often associated with aggressiveness and hostility, but we show no upper limit on our femininity preferences.”

The study was published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior (Allen et al., 2016).

Smell image from Shutterstock

Your Popularity Revealed By Answer To A Classic Moral Dilemma

Whether you sacrifice one innocent person to save the lives of others?

Whether you sacrifice one innocent person to save the lives of others?

Would you kill one innocent person to save five others?

That is the impossible moral question that may help others judge how much to trust you.

Most people choose to save one innocent life rather than a group of others, new research finds.

Choosing to save one innocent life generally makes people appear more trustworthy.

Here is a typical moral dilemma that psychologists call the ‘trolley problem’:

“An out of control trolley (tram) is speeding towards a group of five people.
You are standing on a footbridge next to a large man.
If you push him off the bridge onto the track below, this will stop the trolley.
He will die, but the five others will be saved.
What do you do?”

The results showed that choosing not to push the large man off the bridge created the most trusting impression on others.

Those who did choose to push the man off the bridge, but only after finding the decision difficult, were trusted more than those who found the decision easy.

Mr Jim A.C. Everett, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Psychologists have argued deontological intuitions arise from ‘irrational’ emotional responses, but our work suggests another explanation: popularity.
If people who stick to moral absolutes are preferred as social partners, expressing this view will reap benefits for oneself.
Over time, this could favor one type of moral thinking over another in the overall population.
And this makes sense — we shudder at the thought of a friend or partner doing a cost/benefit analysis of whether you should be sacrificed for the greater good.
Rather than reflecting erroneous emotional thinking, making moral judgments based on rules may be an adaptive feature of our minds.”

Dr Molly Crockett, one of the study’s co-authors, explained the study’s premise:

“…we used several variations of moral dilemmas where a person must decide whether or not to sacrifice an innocent person in order to save the lives of many others.
We then asked whether people who made either rule-based or cost/benefit moral judgments were preferred as social partners.
Across 9 experiments, with more than 2,400 participants, we found that people who took an absolute approach to the dilemmas (refusing to kill an innocent person, even when this maximized the greater good) were seen as more trustworthy than those who advocated a more flexible, consequentialist approach.
When asked to entrust another person with a sum of money, participants handed over more money, and were more confident of getting it back, when dealing with someone who refused to sacrifice one to save many, versus with someone who chose to maximize the overall number of lives saved.”

The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (Everett et al., 2016).

The Facial Expressions That Appear Most Attractive To Others

People rated someone’s attractiveness after they demonstrated emotions including happiness and fear.

People rated someone’s attractiveness after they demonstrated emotions including happiness and fear.

Almost everyone has experienced a near instant attraction to another person, whether just social or something more.

According to new research, neuroscientists now think this could be down to an instant ability to read facial emotions.

People who find each other’s emotions easy to read are naturally drawn to each other.

Reading emotions successfully gives people the feeling of understanding and connectedness.

The study’s author write:

“Humans interacting with other humans must be able to understand their interaction partner’s affect and motivations, often without words.
We asked participants to watch different persons experiencing different emotions.
We found the better a participant thought they could understand another person’s emotion the more they felt attracted toward that person.”

For the research, people were shown pictures of six women whose attractiveness they rated.

They then watched videos of the women demonstrating different facial emotions such as happiness and fear.

Participants then rated the women’s attractiveness again.

Brain scans showed that interpersonal attraction was linked to a kind of neural synchrony.

The study’s authors explain:

“Individual changes in interpersonal attraction were predicted by activity in the participant’s reward circuit, which in turn signaled how well the participant’s ‘neural vocabulary’ was suited to decode the other’s behavior.”

In other words, being able to read someone’s emotions successfully is a rough guide that they are similar to you.

Similarity and connectedness are two of the most important factors for interpersonal attraction.

As the study’s authors write:

“Being able to comprehend another person’s intentions and emotions is essential for successful social interaction.
To accomplish a common goal, partners must understand and continuously update information about their partner’s current intentions and motivation, anticipate the other’s behavior, and adapt their own behavior accordingly.”

Or, as the slightly cynical headline writers at GQ would have it: “Crying On A First Date Could Get You Laid”

https://www.spring.org.uk/2016/02/why-couples-differ-physical-attractiveness.php

The study was published in the journal PNAS (Anders et al., 2016).

Crying image from Shutterstock