How to Not Die Alone: The Surprising Science of Finding Love

by Logan Ury

Select Great Photos Duh, photos matter. They take up the most real estate on most apps. People will often swipe on someone based on a photo alone and scroll down to see more information only if they like the first photo. Hinge researchers studied which types of photos elicited the most positive responses from its users, which it shared in a 2017 blog post. For this analysis, they randomly selected profile photos of a thousand members, tagged them based on their qualities (such as candid versus posed, smiling with or without teeth), and evaluated their performance. Here are practical tips based on their findings: Don’t create any guessing games about what you look like or if you’re single. Pictures that feature filters or possible significant others received 90 percent fewer likes than those without. That means no sunglasses and no pics in which you’re posing with someone people may think you’re dating. Potentially worse? A group photo with no clear indication of which person you are. I call these Where’s Waldo? shots. Select at most one group pic and clearly mark which face is yours. Women see around a 70 percent boost in their chances of getting a like simply by including photos where they’re standing alone, looking away, or smiling with teeth. Similarly, men see a boost in their chances of getting a like by standing alone, smiling without teeth, and looking straight toward the camera. Candids seriously outperform posed photos. While about 80 percent of posted pics are po...