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The 4 Big Myths of Profile Pictures
- mechanical_fish 17y agoSo, this post is lots of fun, and I want to encourage folks to do more blogging where they take a bunch of data, graph it up, and test hypotheses with it. Science is great! On the other hand, though I rarely cite Zed Shaw, I have a special fondness for the theme of his classic article "Programmers Need to Learn Statistics or I Will Kill Them All": http://zedshaw.com/essays/programmer_stats.html http://zedshaw.com/essays/programmer_stats.html ... and I used to review journal articles, so I can't resist nitpicking by pointing out that some of these conclusions are a lot more dubious than others. For example, this sentence: For women, a smile isn’t strictly better: she actually gets the most messages by flirting directly into the camera... Appears to be based on the difference between 9.1 new monthly contacts and 9.3 new monthly contacts in each category. Is that statistically significant? I rather doubt it. The correct conclusion here is almost certainly "making a flirty face is not significantly more effective than smiling, and you have to be sure to do it into the camera or the result will be a disaster, so smiling might be the more reliable tactic." Of course, if you really want to start picking nits you can bring up the need for some kind of multifactor analysis to correct for the fact that certain kinds of pictures are probably correlated with certain kinds of personalities. But that would go beyond what I understand. And it's not actually necessary to try for a Ph.D. every time you throw up a graph or two. Good fun! Publish more raw data and we can turn this into an great statistics problem set.
- mhartl 17y agoIt's worth noting in this context that the poster, Christian, is probably OkCupid co-founder Christian Rudder, who has a math degree from Harvard. So I'd guess the results are pretty solid, though I agree it would be nice to see the raw data as well.
- Tichy 17y ago"Is that statistically significant? I rather doubt it." Well do the maths then? Since you read the Zed Shaw essay, you are now an expert on statistics, no? Sorry to be cynical, but not ALL statistics out there has to be bad. I am too lazy to do the maths right now, but since you seem concerned, it seems fair to ask you to do it before complaining. For one thing, I think they have a fairly large sample, so maybe the 0.2 difference is significant after all (as I said I am too lazy to do the maths myself atm).
- matrix 17y agoFor those interested in more information derived from data mining online dating data sets, you'll find Andrew Fiore's work at Berkeley and MIT interesting - see the Papers section on this site: http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~atf/dating/ http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~atf/dating/
- seldo 17y agoAs usual, I would love to see the same-sex data. I'm willing to bet that gay men are MUCH more interested in good abs.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- icefox 17y agoThe most interesting things I found in the article had to be the "doing something interesting". To get a date you need to have a conversation and having something interesting makes that easier. This makes a lot of sense after the fact, but not something I had thought about before. For example a photo of yourself with a NES controller in your hand playing Mario 3. While I would have thought this would be a very 'bad' photo it might actually be very good because it is an easy fun (happy childhood memory for both sexes of a certain age) topic to start with.
- z8000 17y ago"Maybe women want a little mystery. What is he looking at? Slashdot? Or Engadget?" That made me chuckle. Yes, that's _exactly_ what she is wondering!
- chubbard 17y agoah yes when it's probably just run of the mill porn. mystery over ladies.
- nhebb 17y agoIf you're single, you could reverse engineer this to have a higher chance of getting a date. Look for attractive girls who have pictures with all the attributes that get poor responses, and it should lead to less competition and better odds for you.
- pohl 17y agoMaybe I read too much Roissy, but my first reaction to this idea was that competition-avoidance is more of a beta trait than an alpha one, so while your suggestion may be useful, it might be a good idea to bring some game along anyway. But if you had game to bring, then why would you have to pick off stragglers around the herd's periphery in the first place?
- lionhearted 17y agoIncreased competition =/= increased quality. Increased quality = increased quality. I had a life changing experience at age 22. A manic crazy group of Peruvian girls brought me home from a nightclub to their party. Okay, we had a nice night, but in the morning - seeing the girls without their hair, makeup, looking hungover - it's like, wow, highly sexualized doesn't mean beautiful. It just means highly sexualized, which comes from a lot of work on her part. But as you saw in the Okcupid article, highly sexualized draws men's attention - "flirty face", the Myspace pose, etc. But getting one of those flirty, sexualized girls doesn't mean higher quality! It just means you got a girl who put work into appearing highly sexualized, which if anything, is the sign of maybe a fun fling but not a quality girlfriend. Me, I stopped looking for that, and started looking more for just decent quality skin, a walk with some energy in it, awareness in her eyes, and so on. You can always teach a girl how to dress and make herself up to your tastes, which I did for my last serious girlfriend who was getting her PhD in physics. Too much jeans and sneakers when I met her, lots of skirts and dresses and leather boots and heels when I moved out of the USA. But I like a lot of other things that most men don't - I prefer taller women, and I prefer women who are built strong with good musculature, athletes, and girls with wider hips and shoulders. It always amazes me when I meet a girl who is an athlete and she's getting so much less attention from men than a girl who is on the alcohol + cigarettes + no food diet. But I digress, quality is quality, and if you can find quality with less competition, that's absolutely worth going and getting. Going for a girl who is equal or lower quality but more highly chased doesn't make your life better, it's headache for (at best) ego-gratification, at worst a waste of time.
- timmaah 17y agoThey act like the photo is all that decides if someone will make contact or not. Is it possible that people that don't look into the camera also haven't put much time into the rest of their profiles, thus lower contact rate? I do love that they publish this info so openly and in such a readable format.
- wvenable 17y agoThey do talk about controlling for profile quality. This isn't the first stats post from OkCupid, they do this every few months approaching a different aspect of the profile. There are previous entries about race, religion, contents of the first message, and so on.
- CWuestefeld 17y agoNot to mention the wild assumption of cause-and-effect. It seems to me that it's just as likely to be true if I say that "someone having other qualities that get them more contacts is more likely to do X in their picture".
- dlytle 17y agoI thought the "having animals" numbers were pretty interesting too; it looks like having a pet in the picture may lead to a fairly sizable increase in contact rates.
- timmaah 17y agoFor men.. for females it is the worst possible context they graphed. Having an animal tells a female the male is responsible and cares for others??
- barrkel 17y agoAnd on the other hand, it seems more likely to lead to a real conversation.
- huherto 17y agoyeah. Same for the guitar. It is a good conversation starter.
- nihilocrat 17y agoPrecisely. This is nothing new. Go to a park with a dog or a guitar (that you can play, of course). See what happens versus going there to just take a walk.
- Tichy 17y agoNo surprises here.
- maxklein 17y agoRather than spending 2 years in the gym, one could just borrow the neighbours dog and get even more responses.
- seldo 17y agoI fired off an email to my dog-owning friend the moment I hit that graph.
- stevenj 17y agoTo borrow, or to inform?
- seldo 17y agoTo borrow. He's married (Hence the dog. Dogs are like training wheels for people planning to have kids.).
- greendestiny 17y agoFor a date, duh. Didn't you read the article?
- mcantor 17y agoSo I need to get ripped like Jesus, then take a shirtless self-picture while petting my cat, playing the guitar and not-smiling at something off-camera. See you soon, ladies!
- callmeed 17y agoDon't forget to hide the beer bottles
- bugs 17y agoNormal people just throw them out.
- ironkeith 17y agoYou should be recycling, you're wasting valuable nickels.
- bugs 17y agoRecycling is not reasonable where I live ( even if I want local trash pickup I have to pay a company that isn't the city), but throwing out and recycling should be synonomous where recycling is popular or common.
- aaronblohowiak 17y agoshould be ? they connote which bin to place the item in..
- callmeed 17y agoI meant the non-empty ones
- wushupork 17y agoI would be curious to see if Photoshopping all that together would have the same effect
- dryicerx 17y agoCorrelation does not imply Causation For example, people who are more interesting, approachable and extroverted just happen to make more eye contact, not the other way around. Or girls who are more outgoing, open and easy-going are willing to expose a bit more and simply go with the 'myspace cleavage shot' Either way, a fascinating data analysis!
- Tichy 17y agoYeah but on a dating site you don't see how interesting/approachable/extroverted somebody is, you just see if they make eye contact in their picture or not. Even if you are very introverted, you could still create a photograph looking into the camera or showing cleavage (if you are a girl).
- rudin 17y agoYou could, but would it have any effect? I'd like to see okcupid doing some controlled experiments and see if stuff like changing the photo to look into the camera works or if people don't look into the camera for another reason that correlates negatively with attraction. The aspect of "signalling" how biological animals act a certain way to show abilities (i.e. stick out chest for masculinity) is interesting because there is so much room for cheating. I wonder if we are hard wired in a sense to only signal the truth or if there is a arms race going on between the cheaters and the evaluaters.
- gruseom 17y agoI don't like the way these people restrict the axes on their charts to make their data look more significant than it is (e.g. http://cdn.okcimg.com/blog/four_myths/women_smiling.png http://cdn.okcimg.com/blog/four_myths/women_smiling.png). I seem to recall that they did this in earlier posts too.
- pgbovine 17y agogood point, but if they are trying to show a relative (percentage) difference, then their restricted axes make sense, right? perhaps they should be labeled with percentage differences as well as absolute diffs
- orblivion 17y ago> For women, a smile isn’t strictly better That's because some people make forced smiles. The Asian lady on the left might look a lot better with a more subtle smile.
- khafra 17y agoRepeat the study for Duchenne vs. Pan-American smiles?
- barrkel 17y agoISTM there's a strong risk here of mixing different people with different agendas. If some people are trolling for casual relationships, it's likely they're evaluating profiles in a different way than those who are looking for something more. Also, those looking for casual hookups are likely to be more active users, so over-represented in the "success" metrics.
- pgbovine 17y agoin general, okcupid is known more for casual hookups and flings than finding a serious marriage partner, so i think the results are pretty insightful for their target demographic
- steveklabnik 17y agoDo you think that's true? I mean, I know they have a pretty big bias toward the poly community... hm. I wonder if there's any data on that.
- nostrademons 17y agoI don't think that's really true - most of my friends who have used it were looking for potentially long-term relationships. Most of them have also complained about how hard it is to find long-term partners on OKCupid. So I think it's more likely that OKCupid is used to find long-term relationships, but it's successful at casual flings. (Which makes perfect sense, since long term relationships take a long time and a lot of effort, so naturally you'll see fewer of them.)
- gridspy 17y agoThat is a lot like most systems where once there is a successful matchup, the partners are removed from the system. So, most likely there are fewer suitable long term partners left in the dating pool on any successful site.
- og1 17y agoNone of the male photo contexts are mutually exclusive. You could satisfy all of them, even the bad ones at the same time.
- gyardley 17y agoIntrigued that the 'MySpace pose' is both the most widely known and most effective strategy for women, even though it's often ridiculed. Did the population of MySpace naturally evolve the optimal strategy for socializing, without anyone consciously realizing it? In an established social network, do the best strategy and the most common strategy gradually coincide?
- msluyter 17y agoI was also quite surprised by this, and also that the article didn't mention the other advantage of the myspace pose: it greatly masks weight.
- dkarl 17y agoA Myspace pose is also a good indicator that a girl is fun (meaning interested in sex) and doesn't demand much taste or sophistication. I've been on way too many dates with women who turned out to be wine snobs, music snobs, fashion snobs, literature snobs, or even TV snobs, who lost interest as soon as they realized I didn't meet their particular snob standards. People who are committed to being "better than" in any way would never post something as cliché and tasteless as a Myspace pose. Honestly, for the long term I'm looking for someone whose snob standards are sufficiently aligned with mine, but sometimes it's nice to go out with someone with no standards. (Actually, they have standards, but they're the kind of standards that can be applied before agreeing to a date.)
- maxklein 17y agoI believe people quickly know what works and what does not, even without directly being aware of it. If a woman wears a new type of lipstick, the signs that it is working or it is not working are very subtle, but over a few days, she will understand that it's not working. She will then change to one that works a little bit better, and when she tries one (recommended by a friend) she will see other subtle signs it works. It's the same with profile pics - the girls cycle through many different pictures and there are subtle vs not so subtle signs that a picture works better than some other one. To be introduced to that particular style, one has to see it somewhere, and as it becomes widespread, you get to see it more and the chances of you trying out increase.
- lpolovets 17y agoI wonder if blog posts like this noticeably affect the trends on the site. (e.g. will okcupid see a higher proportion of photos w/pets in the near future?) Also, the idea of applying results like these seems suboptimal. If you didn't post a shirtless photo or your cropped Rover out of your shot, then that is a hint about your personality and your priorities. Perhaps tweaking your photos will get a higher conversion rate but a lower quality of conversions.
- pyre 17y agoWhy are all of the x-axises drawn at different points on the y-axis? The x-axis for "The Effect of a Woman's Facial Attitude" is just below 8.7, but for "The Effect of a Man's Facial Attitude" it's at just below 0.6. And in both diagrams which are supposedly comparing the same thing the y-axis represents different information (i.e. "women met per contact" vs "new contacts monthly") I also find the style of graph misleading. It makes it look like the the numbers that go below the drawn x-axis are negative y-values, but they're not. They are just positive values that are less than where they chose to draw the axis. It's the same with "Popular Female Photo Contexts." The x-axis is drawn at just below 9 contacts made monthly and all graph values that are less than that are drawn in grey (instead of color) which further misleads to the viewer/reader into thinking, at glance, that the values are negative. Which doesn't necessarily make sense (you can't have negative contacts per month), but why not just start the x-axis at y=0 and be done with it? The relative sizes of the numbers would be the same.
- Perceval 17y agoAt the very beginning of the article the author writes: All my bar charts are zeroed on the average picture.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- angusgr 17y agoI hadn't noticed some of the other blog posts until they were pointed out to me, but they're worth looking at. "Your Race Affects Whether People Write You Back", "Rape Fantasies and Hygiene By State" etc.
- greenlblue 17y agoYou guys don't get it. The whole point is to convey yourself and not some pretend version that will get the most dates.
- philwelch 17y agoYes--thankfully, my identity doesn't hinge on whether or not I'm looking at the camera or smiling, so there's nothing "pretend" about me composing my self-portraits one way or the other in respect to those.
- jff 17y agoNot too much mystery when somebody is looking off-camera while taking a webcam shot... he's looking at the screen to click "take picture"! But don't tell the ladies or they'll stop emailing me.