It turns out that women who pose in bikinis and men who cuddle dogs in their dating app photos have the best chance of landing a match, according to a new study by Eharmony.
The research compiled a range of profile pictures and asked people to rate them in terms of confidence, attractiveness, friendliness and dateability.
To ensure results were fair, the same female and male model were used across 18 separate scenarios.
While bikini shots were rated as the most attractive female profile picture, preferred by one in five men, photos featuring a dog scored highest for dateability among both men and women. This suggests that while bikini photos might spark initial attraction, showing a caring, responsible side pays off in the long term.
Similarly, men photographed with a baby or child rank highly for all categories – demonstrating that revealing a paternal side has a positive impact on overall desirability.
In terms of male attractiveness, close-up shots came top, while bare-chested shots came bottom, with one in five agreeing this type of photo was their least favourite profile pic. Men also lost out when they featured a woman in their profile pics.
It turns out that for each additional profile photo uploaded, men increase their chances of getting responses to their messages by 10% and women by 8%.
The research also indicates that attractiveness and confidence are intrinsically linked as both categories gave similar results in regard to which photos seem the most compelling.
Rachael Lloyd, relationship expert at Eharmony, said: ‘Our photography experiment suggests women who pose in bikinis are considered the most attractive but not necessarily the most dateable.
‘Similarly, men who pose topless on dating apps –- be it in swimming trunks or gym shorts – are likely to see a drop in interest from women.
‘With this in mind, I think both men and women need to think carefully about the type of relationship they want to attract before they pose in beachwear. It’s great to be body confident, but if you’re serious about finding love – is being semi-nude the best signal to send?
‘On a brighter note, both genders do well when they pose with pets, which suggests they have caring, nurturing traits.
‘At Eharmony, we screen all our profiles for nudity, cartoon faces and even swearwords. We want our like-minded singles to enjoy a really supportive and empowering experience.’
Dating terms and trends, defined
Breadcrumbing: Leaving ‘breadcrumbs’ of interest – random noncommittal messages and notifications that seem to lead on forever, but don’t actually end up taking you anywhere worthwhile Breadcrumbing is all about piquing someone’s interest without the payoff of a date or a relationship.
Caspering: Being a friendly ghost - meaning yes, you ghost, but you offer an explanation beforehand. Caspering is all about being a nice human being with common decency. A novel idea.
Catfish: Someone who uses a fake identity to lure dates online.
Clearing: Clearing season happens in January. It’s when we’re so miserable thanks to Christmas being over, the cold weather, and general seasonal dreariness, that we will hook up with anyone just so we don’t feel completely unattractive. You might bang an ex, or give that creepy guy who you don’t really fancy a chance, or put up with truly awful sex just so you can feel human touch. It’s a tough time. Stay strong.
Cloutlighting: Cloutlighting is the combo of gaslighting and chasing social media clout. Someone will bait the person they’re dating on camera with the intention of getting them upset or angry, or making them look stupid, then share the video for everyone to laugh at.
Cuffing season: The chilly autumn and winter months when you are struck by a desire to be coupled up, or cuffed.
Firedooring: Being firedoored is when the access is entirely on one side, so you're always waiting for them to call or text and your efforts are shot down.
Fishing: When someone will send out messages to a bunch of people to see who’d be interested in hooking up, wait to see who responds, then take their pick of who they want to get with. It’s called fishing because the fisher loads up on bait, waits for one fish to bite, then ignores all the others.
Flashpanner: Someone who’s addicted to that warm, fuzzy, and exciting start bit of a relationship, but can’t handle the hard bits that might come after – such as having to make a firm commitment, or meeting their parents, or posting an Instagram photo with them captioned as ‘this one’.
Freckling: Freckling is when someone pops into your dating life when the weather’s nice… and then vanishes once it’s a little chillier.
Gatsbying: To post a video, picture or selfie to public social media purely for a love interest to see it.
Ghosting: Cutting off all communication without explanation.
Grande-ing: Being grateful, rather than resentful, for your exes, just like Ariana Grande.
Hatfishing: When someone who looks better when wearing a hat has pics on their dating profile that exclusively show them wearing hats.
Kittenfishing: Using images that are of you, but are flattering to a point that it might be deceptive. So using really old or heavily edited photos, for example. Kittenfishes can also wildly exaggerate their height, age, interests, or accomplishments.
Lovebombing: Showering someone with attention, gifts, gestures of affection, and promises for your future relationship, only to distract them from your not-so-great bits. In extreme cases this can form the basis for an abusive relationship.
Microcheating: Cheating without physically crossing the line. So stuff like emotional cheating, sexting, confiding in someone other than your partner, that sort of thing.
Mountaineering: Reaching for people who might be out of your league, or reaching for the absolute top of the mountain.
Obligaswiping: The act of endlessly swiping on dating apps and flirt-chatting away with no legitimate intention of meeting up, so you can tell yourself you're doing *something* to put yourself out there.
Orbiting: The act of watching someone's Instagram stories or liking their tweets or generally staying in their 'orbit' after a breakup.
Paperclipping: When someone sporadically pops up to remind you of their existence, to prevent you from ever fully moving on.
Preating: Pre-cheating - laying the groundwork and putting out feelers for cheating, by sending flirty messages or getting closer to a work crush.
Prowling: Going hot and cold when it comes to expressing romantic interest.
R-bombing: Not responding to your messages but reading them all, so you see the 'delivered' and 'read' signs and feel like throwing your phone across the room.
Scroogeing: Dumping someone right before Christmas so you don't have to buy them a present.
Shadowing: Posing with a hot friend in all your dating app photos, knowing people will assume you're the attractive one and will be too polite to ask.
Shaveducking: Feeling deeply confused over whether you're really attracted to a person or if they just have great facial hair.
Sneating:When you go on dates just for a free meal.
Stashing: The act of hiding someone you're dating from your friends, family, and social media.
Submarineing: When someone ghosts, then suddenly returns and acts like nothing happened.
V-lationshipping:When someone you used to date reappears just around Valentine's Day, usually out of loneliness and desperation.
You-turning: Falling head over heels for someone, only to suddenly change your mind and dip.
Zombieing: Ghosting then returning from the dead. Different from submarineing because at least a zombie will acknowledge their distance.
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source https://metro.co.uk/2019/10/16/profiles-with-bikini-pics-and-cuddling-with-dogs-more-likely-to-be-successful-on-dating-apps-10928440/
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