A new study from the University of Kansas has found Tinder users should think twice before they swipe left.
Scientists found selecting a match based purely on a psychical attractiveness (like swiping left or right on a photo) is problematic because you won’t be able to stop comparing that person to their hot online alter ego.
And why exactly is this problematic? Well, because you’re more likely to find your date attractive after having a positive face-to-face interaction with them.
Lead researcher of the study and Associate Professor at University of Kansas, Jeffrey Hall, said, “With Tinder and user-directed online dating services, people try to manage the vast number of profiles by picking the most attractive people.”
The research was an interesting process where volunteers had to rate the attractiveness of individuals based on photos, then rate them again after a 10-minute real-life conversation.
Professor Hall explained the findings, “Two characteristics played an important role in whether the rating changed. One was social attractiveness, which is whether we think we could be friends. It’s not sexual attractiveness or romance, but likability. The other was combined sense-of-humour or being-a-fun- person measure.”
“If you are rated more highly in those two things, your appearance rating goes up more, those who benefited the most were rated mid to low attractiveness, to begin with.”
So basically, the thing about personality being the sexiest trait a person can have is true, and Tinder makes it very tough to showcase you non-physical attributes.
Could mathematics could help your odds of finding love?
Is there a mathematical formula for finding love?
Dr Hannah Fry is a mathematician who believes that there a certain calculations you can apply to your dating life that will up your odds of finding “the one”.
In search for patterns of how lonely singles talk and interact with each other online Fry studied data collected by dating site OKCupid – a site that was incidentally started by mathematician Christian Rudder – and began to unearth the maths behind attraction.
“Now you have this world of data that allows you to look into the way that people speak to one another, and the way that people talk about themselves and interact with one another, in a way that we were never able to before,” Fry said in a recent interview with The Guardian.
Fry said that from a statistical point of view the entire history of an online relationship can be tracked, and that opens up this type of dating to analysis and investigation which could result in formulas that could optimise outcomes.
How do you get more people to message you online?
One surprising result that Fry writes about in her book is that looks have an effect on online dating, but not in quite the way you would expect.
During a TED talk at Binghamton University, UK, when Dr Fry discussed her findings she declared that on an online dating site “how attractive you are does not dictate how popular you are,” and actually “having people think you are ugly can work to your advantage.”
Using a graph that scored people from really attractive to really ugly, Fry explained that if you want to up your chances of finding love online you should seek to have a spread of where people would rate you on that graph from hottest person to ever live to put a paper bag over your head ugly.
“It’s this spread that counts,” said Fry, “It’s this spread that makes you more popular on online internet dating websites.”
Fry says this all starts to make more sense when you actually think of the other people online looking to reach out to their cyber crush.
“Let’s say that you think that somebody is attractive but you suspect that other people won’t necessarily be that interested,” said Fry. “That means that there is less competition for you to get in touch whereas, compare that to if you think somebody is attractive but you suspect that everybody is going to think that they are attractive as well, why would you bother humiliating yourself?”
Fry goes on to say that instead of picking online dating pictures that minimise those things that make you different – like your weight or height or baldness – you should actually just embrace them because they could be the advantages that make you divisive and earn you that desired spread on the graph.
so all is not lost!
Remember, there are plenty of fish in the sea and a bucket load of online dating success stories.
Just make sure not to judge a book by its cover too harshly… unless your date is reading 50 Shades of Grey, then you judge them and their stupid book.
