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What is beautiful is good, even online: Correlations between photo attractiveness and text attractiveness in men's online dating profiles

Published: 01 January 2012 Publication History

Abstract

Attractive people are considered by others to have many positive qualities and in the case of social skills and intelligence, these attributions are often true. In internet dating, individuals with attractive profile photos are viewed more favorably overall, but no research has yet established whether they indeed have more positive qualities. We addressed this issue by having 50 women independently rate 100 photos and free-written texts taken from males' profiles on a popular dating website. Photos rated as physically attractive had profile texts that were rated as more attractive, even though photos and texts were rated by different judges. Perceived confidence seemed to play a mediating role, suggesting that attractive men write appealing texts because they are aware of their high mate value. Thus, contrary to popular belief, the internet does not seem to ''level the playing field.''

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  1. What is beautiful is good, even online: Correlations between photo attractiveness and text attractiveness in men's online dating profiles

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    Published In

    cover image Computers in Human Behavior
    Computers in Human Behavior  Volume 28, Issue 1
    January, 2012
    284 pages

    Publisher

    Elsevier Science Publishers B. V.

    Netherlands

    Publication History

    Published: 01 January 2012

    Author Tags

    1. Good genes
    2. Internet dating
    3. Physical attractiveness stereotype
    4. Self-fulfilling prophecy

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    • (2022)The Effect of Facial Resemblance on Cooperative Behavior in the Sharing EconomyJournal of Global Information Management10.4018/JGIM.31530730:1(1-22)Online publication date: 15-Dec-2022
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    • (2019)Exploring the Relationship Between Developer Activities and Profile Images on GitHubProceedings of the 11th Asia-Pacific Symposium on Internetware10.1145/3361242.3361244(1-10)Online publication date: 28-Oct-2019
    • (2019)What Makes an Image Tagger Fair?Proceedings of the 27th ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization10.1145/3320435.3320442(95-103)Online publication date: 7-Jun-2019
    • (2019)What Is Beautiful Continues to Be GoodHuman-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 201910.1007/978-3-030-29390-1_14(243-264)Online publication date: 2-Sep-2019
    • (2016)How gender role stereotypes affect attraction in an online dating scenarioComputers in Human Behavior10.1016/j.chb.2016.06.00663:C(738-746)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2016
    • (2014)An experiment investigating the links among online dating profile attractiveness, ideal endorsement, and romantic mediaComputers in Human Behavior10.1016/j.chb.2014.04.02237:C(9-17)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2014

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