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Women love taking photos. They love taking photos of their surrounding, photos with their friends, photos with their pets, photos in new clothes and even random selfies. But a new study urges them not to take glamorous photos if they’re still looking for their significant other.
Researchers at the University of Connecticut studied more than 300 heterosexual people between the ages of 17 and 36, with online profiles collected from multiple dating websites. They were interested in finding out how much importance the photos that people use have in the overall decision process and what kind of signals they might send potential suitors.
Unknown to the participants, each men and woman had two different profile pictures from the same person to choose from. One photo was enhanced with practical effects like special lighting or strong make-up, the other photo was unenhanced, which is to say the person was photographed in natural lighting, with little to no make-up and hair styling.
Men were shown photos of women and asked several questions regarding the information that women share on their profile pages and were told to place each of them in category such as attractiveness, trustworthiness, dating desirability or similarity.
The researchers found that men considered women with enhanced photos to be untrustworthy but they also admitted to finding them much more attractive. In the end, men generally agreed that they would prefer to date a glamorous, untrustworthy woman, rather than the ordinary-looking women.
Roy McGloin, one of the researches of the study, explained that the results would suggest men are willing to take a change and pursue a date with a beautiful woman even when they suspect that she may not look exactly like she does in the her profile photo.
When it comes to men ranking women, McGloin concluded that “In our sample, attraction seems to be more important than trust […] they wanted to go on a date with her […] but they didn’t trust her”.
This goes somewhat against the popular belief that many women have, as they assume enhanced photos makes them seem more desirable, but also friendlier and that they make it easier to get date invitations from men who share their personal interests.
When women were questioned regarding the information that men share on their profile pages, their answer was much less controversial – researchers found that they preferred well groomed men. Their physical appearance made them look both more attractive and more trustworthy than other men that they had met or spoken to.
McGloin found it important to note that in online dating, both men and women find it normal and acceptable to mislead or deceive potential suitors, fully enabling the cat-fish phenomenon.
Interestingly enough, the researchers didn’t mention anything regarding photos enhanced inside image editing softer such as Photoshop.
Image Source: threadedbeauty.com
