The Mail Online published an interesting online dating article recently about a new University research study which compares the attractiveness of a man’s online dating profile picture and his profile text. The results were interesting, though I’m not that surprised at their findings.
Basically, the study got together one hundred male dating profiles and broke them up into groups of 25 based on either a guy’s picture OR his profile text. Then they had one hundred women rate either the profile photo or text of each, ensuring that no woman would rate both profile aspects for any particular man, making sure that there was no biased influence by having both picture and text in the same group.
So what were the findings? Well, they basically concluded that men who were rated attractive from their photos, also were rated attractive and confident based on their stand-alone profile text.
The same was true for men rated unattractive, who also had unattractive unconfident profile text. Essentially having a positive correlation between the attractiveness of one’s profile picture and the attractiveness on one’s profile text.
This is not surprising, since it makes sense that men who are better looking tend to be more confident, which often displays itself when those men communicate to the opposite gender, whether that be talking, non-verbal body language or the written word in this case.
So what does this mean for unattractive guys in the online dating world? Not much in my opinion, as there seems to be a consensus amongst the top online dating gurus that if you don’t at least have good attractive looking photos on your dating profile then it’s highly unlikely that your written word will do anything anyways, it just adds as a supplement to your profile picture. Which is why a guy’s first priority should be getting in shape, looking sharp, and learning how to be more photogenic.
Is it fair? Probably not, but it’s also not fair in the real world dating mareket either. In fact, I’d say the imbalance is far more skewed with Internet dating than meeting people in the real world where you have a fighting chance, and not becoming just another face on a page. There’s probably about 1% of guys who are really cleaning up in online and the rest of us 99% are left struggling for the scraps… it’s an outrage I tell ya – this is why we must OCCUPY PLENTY OF FISH! 
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