We're all about giving people a chance with their online dating profile

What 500,000 ratings tell us about online dating photos
You might say very fascinating and very shallow and you won't be wrong.

Isn't it interesting that we perceive online dating photos as shallow, but online dating bios as deep? In all other cases, we say that a picture is worth one thousand words.

In this report, you will find our collation of last years ratings and pictures - and our analysis of that. We do apologise for the heteronormative perspective held here. Our excuse is that this simply reflects the data we hold.

I'm cupid, and I will be here for you throughout your journey of discovering our data.

Setting the scene

What do we do? We help people get more and better matches online, by providing feedback on their photos. Specifically, we provide a judgement-free experience for users to find out how to look even better in their photos.

It may be blatantly obvious, but for the avoidance of doubt, our user base consists of mostly male users.

To illustrate this further, it takes us 7 days to collect enough ratings to get a man enough votes to have statistically significant results. For a woman, that number is 3 days.

Our gender split

How attractive were the women?

How attractive were the men?

Who are our users?


Their life story, self-reported

1
50%
What is your main purpose here today? More casual sex
Just in it for sex

55% of our male users indicated that they were just looking for hook-ups and were using Tinder.

2
98%
I was a teenager at or after the turn of the millennium.
Millennials & Gen X

Our users are mostrly under 35, but don't let this discourage you! All ages are welcome.

3
43%
I am mostly here to find out if I look good in this picture
Looking for validation

Our female users usually join for validation and not to get matches. That is our assumption at least.


Beauty is Relative

We know, this is all a sensitive topic, and we're not shining the light on what is arguably one of humanity's flaws. We want to present our findings plain and simple, but do so in a respectful way. This document does not pretend to represent any or all individuals views on beauty and attraction but is an average of the ratings of our users. There is a subtle but important difference between those two things.

Beauty is subjective, and you will find that what one person likes in a picture, another one doesn't like. That must be recognised. There are, however, of course, patterns, and that's what we're here to shine a light on.

We're not about judging people. We're about providing the best environment for our members to find what they're looking for in online dating. We truly believe the small part we play in the dating puzzle can help our members find love. We're all about providing for that moment when you fall in love with someone if you can still remember that feeling?

Where is our community from?

W.E.I.R.D.

What we can see from our users is that they certainly fit into the WEIRD category. Whether they're weird or not we shall not say, but the majority are certainly from White, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic nations. As such, don't take this to represent the entire world's average views.

Age of our voters

Pre-Requisite

Before we go any further, let's agree on a few basics. We're simply presenting our votes. We're also, not so simply, implying conclusions that you may want to draw from this data.

The data has been gathered from our members. We have not trained them to view beauty in any particular way, so your mileage may vary. Categorization of our photos is then done by our AI which currently has a very high specificity.

Today's topics

Wear me, wear me not

Do sunglasses make you look really look fashionable and cool?

Flash those whites

Is mysterious better than friendly? Let's find out!

Hats off!

For everyone, no matter what you have under that hat. Right or wrong?

Glasses

Bear with us one second. To really find out, we need to select users who wear glasses in one photo and don't in another. All other aspects of the photos do not make a difference, for now, they should even out with our data.

Our dataset is becoming smaller as we do this, so our statistical significance reduces drastically. This is all still very interesting though.

Her, without glasses

Her, with glasses

Would you go out with her?

How about those lovely shades?

There is no denying that men like to wear sunglasses in their profile pictures. Initially, isn't it a shame that you can't see their eyes? What does our data say?

Well, the difference in percieved beauty is negigable. But whether women would swipe you right when you wear those shades? Huge difference!

It is also interesting to discuss that men who wear sunglasses in at least one of their photos are on average more good-looking than men who have no photos with them in sunglasses.

Him, with sunglasses

Him, without sunglasses

Would you go out with him?

Let's talk about that smile

What do you think? To smile or not to smile? This has been debated infinitely, by our friends at OKCupid and Photofeeler. We have to admit that our users may be a limited representation of humanity's views on the matter, but we hope you find our insights useful nonetheless.

With a smile

Without a smile

Whereof men

Whereof women

How about the hat?

Again, we split our dataset out and looked at all members who have at least one picture wearing hats.

Not wearing hats

Wearing hats

Simply, don't wear hats. But it's not that simple...

Receding hairline... Of our members who wear a hat in one photo, and don't in another, who also have a receding hairline, we've found some interesting data. You may think we've sliced our data up twice now, and it's becoming thin, but what we find is that users wearing hats very often have a receding hairline. Our members are conciously, or subconciously, testing exactly this.

It's a bold claim to say that our members with receding hairlines wear hats because of it, but please just go with it for now.

Why do they wear a hat?

With hats

Without hats

Now that's a lot to take in

I'm glad you made it this far! This is a lot to take in. If you are interested in our raw data, please get in touch, we'd love for more people to use it and draw even more deep conclusions on it. For our members integrity, we do not share their photos. Our AI is one of the most powerful image recognitions in the world from what we can tell.

Our next report

What to expect in the next report

Long, short or no beard?

Find out what women say about beards

Look away or at the camera?

That moody look into the distance. Yay or nay?

Suggest a topic you're interested in

What do you want us to discuss? Let us know at data@datenhance.com.

Don't miss out!