Assessing attractiveness in online dating profiles

Online dating systems play a prominent role in the social lives of millions of their users, but little research has considered how users perceive one another through their personal profiles. We examined how users perceive attractiveness in online dating profiles, which provide their first exposure to a potential partner. Participants rated whole profiles and profile components on such qualities as how attractive, extraverted, and genuine and trustworthy they appeared. As past research in the psychology of attraction would suggest, the attractiveness and other qualities of the photograph were the strongest predictors of whole profile attractiveness, but they were not alone: the free-text component also played an important role in predicting overall attractiveness. In turn, numerous other qualities predicted the attractiveness ratings of photos and free-text components, albeit in different ways for men and women. The fixed-choice elements of a profile, however, were unrelated to attractiveness.