TL;DR: OKCupid’s study on male dating photos fails reproducibility

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If you’re a guy who uses online dating sites/apps, you’ve probably heard this one: don’t smile in your picture. Better yet, don’t smile and look away from the camera.

OkCupid is an intuitive, modern dating service. Setting up a profile requires that you answer some in-depth questions but isn’t so exhaustive that it feels tiresome. Free Online Dating. Well, this isn’t good. That page doesn’t exist.

This tip originated on the OkCupid’s OkTrends blog in January 2010. The post was called The 4 Big Myths of Profile Pictures.

One of many things our reviewers liked most about OKCupid had been the cool and interesting tone that your website has. It really is a playful and quirky website in a sea of boring, monotonous dating sites. A good example of this is actually the sign up process or, much more so, the profile creation procedure. OkCupid is the dating site version of the left-wing hipster who wears 'Make America Gay Again' hats. With over 50 million registered users and an average of 50,000 'Wanna get drinks?'

Growing skepticism

Since OkCupid published their data in support of not smiling in pics, the tip has been quoted as gospel truth on dating advice blogs, PUA podcasts, dozens of dating subreddits, forums, everywhere.

But, at the same time, widespread skepticism rose too. One Reddit commenter put it this way:

“Despite what OkCupid may say, I believe that in Tinder’s last roundup of the top 100 male profiles, basically all of them were smiling in their lead picture.”

Further — everywhere men floated the “don’t smile in pictures” advice, many women decried how much they hated these nonsmiling pictures. But, the men countered, women don’t necessarily know what they want. After all, OkCupid’s findings were based on behavior, not just talk, right?

Photofeeler steps in

This is where we at Photofeeler come in. Like everyone else, we believed in OkCupid’s conclusions. But the more data we collected about men’s dating photo attractiveness, the more it became undeniable: OkCupid’s advice wasn’t raising men’s photo scores.

At first, this realization was frustrating. We even worried our tool could be flawed. But every time we looked into this, we found the same thing: daters who used Photofeeler for photo testing were getting right-swipes like never before. In fact, users reported 3-5x (200-400%) more matches! So the opinions on our site were translating directly into behavior.

We decided it was time for someone to challenge the OkCupid study.

Using the massive stores of data on our platform, we set out to reproduce OkCupid’s process (as laid out by the Myths of Profile Pictures post). We narrowed the demographics of our data set accordingly, matching their 7,140-photo sample. Then we ran each picture through a variety of analysis scripts (in our case, neural nets that detected smiles and eye contact) as well as tagged each one by hand until total agreement was reached. Finally, we used Photofeeler attractiveness ratings to gauge the success of the various photo types (smiling, not smiling, eye contact, no eye contact).

What We Found (Results/Findings)

Here is OkCupid’s study results vs. our own:

OkCupid’s data said that not smiling and not making eye contact was better.

Ours says that whether you smile or not makes no statistically-significant difference (except in the case of eye contact and no smile, which is harmful).

Here are some possible reasons behind the differing results.

I. Evidence suggests OkCupid manipulated their data set to get a click-worthy result

Let’s be real here: research can be a racket. Back in 2010, no one would publish “smiling works great in dating photos!!1” because most people assumed that already. Affirming what people already know is boring. A counter-intuitive result (e.g. “smiles are actually unattractive!”) was far more sensational.

Most people think data ought to speak for itself. But data can be manipulated. To put it frankly, data can be manipulated to show practically any result that the scientist would like it to. And in OkCupid’s case, it’s reasonable to assume that they got the interesting result they wanted, in part, by cutting out particular populations from their data set.

OkCupid used a sample of 7,140 photographs from users aged 18-32, in big cities, possessing average attractiveness (that is, they lopped off the top and bottom 20%), and who had profiles containing only one photo and no text. Then “after a bit more sifting” (!), they landed on their study’s data set.

Why did OkCupid eliminate users outside of the ages of 18 and 32? Why did they eliminate users who were most and least attractive? The explanation given (that they “[feared it] would skew [their] results”) is no explanation at all. They didn’t have to “fear” anything because, in all likelihood, they first ran their numbers with these populations included. They just didn’t get as interesting of a result that way.

The over-sifting of the data set likely obscured other trends that were more responsible for profile success than the photo characteristics the study claimed to be measuring. For instance, it’s possible that the men in the top 20% of attractiveness were attractive and smiling, and the men in the bottom 20% of attractiveness were unattractive and not smiling. This leaves only smiling ugly guys at the bottom of the spectrum and grumpy hot guys at the top, making it look like being grumpy makes you hot.

II. OkCupid had far too little data to draw conclusions

Building on the previous point, there’s the question of how many pictures of men not smiling and not making eye contact were in the data set to begin with.

Giving OkCupid the benefit of the doubt, let’s say their sample was 50/50 male and female (even though it would likelier have skewed female). 7,140 photos is only about 3,570 per gender.

This is a good sample if you’re measuring a condition that will be present in all of the photos. But the number of men who were not smiling and looking away (especially in early 2010, before OkCupid advised it) would be in the hundreds at most. Even today, less than 15% of photos have no eye contact. Before OkCupid declared it superior, it was likely 5-10% (200-300 photos split into 3 groups: smiling/not/flirty).

We know for certain that OkCupid knowingly made claims based on too little data because they had approximately 7 photos of male “flirty face” with no eye contact and they still drew conclusions about its effectiveness.

Not to mention, the metric they were using to gauge a male dater’s profile effectiveness (“women met per attempt”) is a wildly varying and unbounded metric; one guy with a particularly interesting photo that gets one unsolicited message per day could have easily made their whole result.

III. OkCupid had a biased population sample

Trends change. In data science, we know it can be difficult to find consistent trends even between visitors of the same website from one week to the next.

Is it likely that trends found among a very specific niche of male daters long ago — those who chose to upload only one photo and no profile text to OkCupid in 2009 — could translate to a viable Tinder strategy for all men in 2017?

The truth is that societal and dating norms have changed a lot in this amount of time. For instance, dating online used to be taboo. So perhaps giving an air of “I’m too good for this” with a non-smiling, looking away photo and no profile text appealed slightly more to women at the time.

Further, what kind of man uploads one photo and no profile text? Perhaps it’s this personality type (not the photo’s characteristics out of context) that speak to which photo strategies worked best for him.

IV. The OkCupid study itself spawned a new class of bad photos

Finally, let’s chat for a moment about what happens when a highly popular dating site disseminates misinformation about what works best in guy’s dating pics: a new class of male dating photos is born.

We hypothesize that the publicity of OkCupid’s results gave rise to a new type of dating photo within which the subject is purposefully avoiding smiling and eye contact, in which the subject seems to be awkwardly looking in another direction for no apparent reason. Internally, we labeled these photos as “avoidant” because they tend to come across to strangers as if the subject is too timid to make eye contact.

Fact is, these avoidant photos just didn’t exist before the 2010 OkCupid study. Before this advice was made popular by OkCupid, the only instances of not smiling and not making eye contact were at least somewhat contextually relevant. After: not so much.

Conclusions

OKCupid’s study on male dating photos did not pass the reproducibility test in 2017.

Is Okcupid A Good Dating Site Online

Our data suggests that there is no one-size-fits-all photo strategy for all men. Rather, it’s important to determine what’s appropriate and natural in context, and to consider what characteristics you individually have to offer a mate.

Truthfully, even if a particular photo strategy showed a slight difference in average effectiveness, the individual photos score all over the map.

That’s because certain strategies may work better for certain people or in certain contexts. If you want to know what works: try it, test it.

Photofeeler is a tool for testing profile pics, as seen in Time, Forbes, The Today Show, and more. Know for certain how you’re coming across in your dating pictures. It’s free to use here.

Perhaps the greatest free dating website on earth, OKCupid could be the online that is latest dating internet site getting our review treatment.

Make no blunder, OKCupid is just a major online dating brand name. As soon as primarily US concentrated, it is currently commonly recognised by British daters too. The website is renowned if you are free to utilize for many of the things you will need being a solitary individual looking for love on the web.

Our OKCupid Review

The dating that is free isn’t quite because competitive yet because the membership based landscape, however with the emergence of Tinder, things are changing. When you look at the UK, PlentyOfFish (POF – see our review right right here) was once the player that is main. However with the emergence of OKCupid, the marketplace has welcomed a website who has optimised it’s features and design during a period of a long time in america and it is now using the British by storm. Certainly, against POF, your website appears like it really is an additional league; sleek, slick and trendy.

Exactly How Exactly Does work that is OKCupid?

This design is not only right down to the look of the website either. One of many things our reviewers liked most about OKCupid had been the cool and interesting tone that your website has. It really is a playful and quirky website in a sea of boring, monotonous dating sites. A good example of this is actually the sign up process or, much more so, the profile creation procedure. This can be ordinarily a listing of available ended questions that scare the socks singletons that are off nervous. With OKCupid, in place of dealing with a blank package and achieving to conjure an answer up for a question such as “Write about your individual strong points”, users are instead asked fast, easy concerns that populate their profile, making the procedure less interview-like and much more fun. An illustration question may be, “Are you a person?” that is morning along with your “yes” or “no” checkbox answer doing the time and effort for you personally and placing something such as “I’m maybe not just morning individual” to your profile. That is a great solution to draw out information for a dating profile, making sure you will get more attention while there is more details about yourself.

Despite all this work enjoyable material, your website could nevertheless be referred to as ‘no nonsense’ because of the fact so it concentrates solely from the dating experience and does not have any interesting free features if not written content, such as for example blog sites. With a niche site as popular as OKCupid, you had think this particular thing will be very easy to include on the internet site – Match.com (see review here) as an example, which will be owned by the same team, has several bloggers in addition to a myriad of other articles and information for the newbie dater to search through.

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Having said that, if you should be happy to spend there are many features available. ‘A list’ upgraders can pick from choices like eliminating advertisements, getting info on as have a peek at this web site soon as your outbound communications are read, hidden browsing, advanced searches, increased inbox size, the capacity to alter usernames and some other people.

The website design on OKCupid deserves a mention. Its simple and easy smooth, by having a helpful navigation club that quickly notifies you of the latest ‘likes’ or people to your profile. In addition it carries a shortcut towards the QuickMatch area, that is basically a ‘Hot or Not’ kind of search system that is common on numerous web web sites, except that here as opposed to showing one prospective match picture at any given time, it shows a few images from the member that is same. It’s a nice twist to a feature which can be only a little boring and provides you a far better go through the individual you are being agreed to contact, without slowing the method down.

The last noteworthy aspect of OKCupid is the fact that the site claims to understand the “type” of men and women you are thinking about so it can suggest new similar members for you as you go through your search journey and click/ like profiles. If this works, maybe it’s a time saver that is real. From our review the initial findings with this were quite good.

Is Okcupid A Good Dating Site Review

There’s not doubt that OKCupid is a dating website to be reckoned with. It is free, more trendy than POF and may also bring a grin to that person using its quirkiness. But at the conclusion of your day this 1 comes down to individual preference. are you wanting a website that is targeted on searching and does not work with associated content? Have you been very happy to put up times with individuals that aren’t ready to pay a cost to improve their look for love?

Okcupid Dating Site Free

Even as we mentioned, OKCupid is mainly a totally free site that is dating therefore does have a higher wide range of members. For this reason together with the other positives above, we would surely suggest OKCupid as being a free relationship choice to go with the subscription web web sites you presently utilize, specially if you’re located in the united states or Canada in which the database size means you would certainly be crazy not to offer it the possibility.