Men judge very attractive women as less\u00a0trustworthy than average women … But they’re still\u00a0willing to date them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The research was inspired by online dating apps, such as Tinder, in which you merely look at a photo and swipe \u201cyes\u201d or \u201cno.\u201d From this briefest of judgments, Tinder matches you up. It would seem that the more attractive you can make yourself look in a photo, the more dates you can potentially get. And this does seem to be the case for both men and women, according to Denes and McGloin. But for women posting pictures, it comes with a caveat.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t want to portray yourself as so attractive you can\u2019t be real,\u201d says Denes. In other words: If you really look like that, why do you need online dating?<\/p>\n
On the other hand, men did not seem to suffer from this perception problem. Women who saw an enhanced male subject\u2019s picture rated him more trustworthy and dateable than the same male subject in a natural-state or dressed-down picture. Denes and McGloin speculate that perhaps men have fewer options for self-enhancement than women.<\/p>\n The researchers used pictures of just two people in the study, one man and one woman. Each person had two photos taken of them: one in a \u201cnatural\u201d state, and the other \u201cbeautified\u201d with makeup and\/or hair styling. Study participants saw just one photo, and had to rate the person on attractiveness, trustworthiness, and dateability.<\/p>\n The researchers focused on 305 participants who identified as heterosexual and ranged in age from 17 to 36. Participants were randomly assigned to view one of the four profile pictures of the male and female in \u201cnatural\u201d\u00a0 or \u201cbeautified\u201d state.<\/p>\n Participants were then asked a series of questions to determine the profile subject\u2019s physical attractiveness, similarity (to the participant), trustworthiness, and, ultimately, their date-ability.<\/p>\n In the future, the researchers hope to do a more nuanced study that looks at several in-between points to suss out how much smart clothing and better grooming really matter, and whether there\u2019s a perfect point of enhancement.<\/p>\n Additionally, because this study was done with photographs, it\u2019s not yet clear how far these results can be trusted offline, in the real world.<\/p>\n![\"Study](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/HoT_female.jpg\")
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