Why Pictures Are Almost...Useless on Dating Sites

I was talking to my friend Sophie recently, and she was matched on OKC and was feeling a bit torn on whether to meet her match. She mentioned that she didn't know if this guy would be her type since he posted a lot of "sunglasses" and "motorcycle" type photos - or what I would call "bro' photos." And Sophie certainly, or so she says, wasn't interested in that type. The point is that people don't necessarily pick the right photos to represent themselves. People generally just post photos where they look most attractive but they could be at a party which gives people the impression they party a lot. Or in this case, just not representative.

In real life, this "bro'" guy turned out to be "a big teddy bear." She would never have known if she didn't take the random leap of faith to get coffee with him. Photos not only distract us from what builds a long-term attraction, it is also misleading to the end user.

As I dug further into this topic with my friend Randy, whom you all know by now, there were more studies that show why pictures just aren't reliable.

1. When we're talking about a picture we're really talking about attractiveness, which is very much affected by a person's personality; especially for those who aren't among the hottest people on the market, if someone likes their personality, they will later be perceived as more attractive than they would in a traditional image-driven app. Src: Lewandowski, Aron, and Gee (2007)

2. Now let's say attractiveness was accurately confirmed via a picture, there is another issue that people form opinions very quickly about that person's personality as well. We humans just can't help it, it's automatic. Furthermore, those judgments aren't necessarily very accurate and are often dependent on the idiosyncrasies of the picture. In turn, people become terribly confident in their ability to "read other people" which leads to incompatible matches. Src: Couch and Liamputtong (2008) & Todorov and Porter (2014)

3. On the flip side, a study shows that people are MORE accurate in making judgement about personal characteristics when they do not have a picture than when they do. Which says cover your eyes and trust your gut :) Src: Todorov and Olivola (2010)

String resolves these issues by changing the sequence of information presented to the user. We are not denying the importance of physical attraction, but it is however temporary and often distracting if not misleading in the course of getting to know a person in the beginning.

An OKC study revealed that "people are exactly as shallow as their technology allows them to be." On String, users will get to know the person first so when you really pick your match and decide if you want to meet this person, you'll have the ideal sense and instinct to make that decision. Go you!

ABOUT STRING 

String is a dating app for people who are searching for deep and potentially long-lasting connections -- because, who really wants a "no strings attached" relationship? You won't have to answer a long list of silly questions but rather a scientifically chosen set of questions that result in a meaningful connection based on criteria that really matter.

Helen Huang is the founder of String, a dating app that matches users based on their responses to meaningful questions, creating long-lasting and deep relationships. For the past five years Helen has overseen product development at TRUSTe and recently completed the highly-selective Startup Leadership Program in San Francisco. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. 

String's Interview With The Amazing Maria Pallas

ABOUT MARIA PALLAS

Maria Pallas is a Master Spiritual Healer and Teacher who works with women to help them overcome the fears and limiting beliefs that keep them from making their dreams a reality, and through the art of self love and acceptance, empowers them to boldly and fearlessly embrace their true essence and authenticity. As a result, these women experience a greater sense of empowerment and confidence, as they start to break through their barriers one by one, and become the divine feminine force that their hearts intended.

Check out her website at www.mariapallas.com where she has lot’s of free offers and programs. You can also follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for a regular dose healing tips and spiritual advice.

"...After all, nothing is more fulfilling than being loved for exactly who you are and not for who you might think someone wants you to be."

Q & A Begins:

1) "How does String stand out from other dating apps? What is String bringing to the table that doesn't exist now? 

Maria: What stands out the most about String for me is that it's one of the few, perhaps even the only, free online dating app that is specifically geared towards individuals that are looking to make real and meaningful connections. Other apps seem to either be over-populated with users who are just looking for no-strings attached relationships, or they require you to commit to some sort of a prepaid subscription that will keep you on the hook for months with no guarantees of ever finding what it is that you're looking for. 

String makes it absolutely clear upfront that it is specifically designed to serve those who are looking for 'strings attached' meaningful connections, and they've made it so simple and easy to use and at no cost to users. 

2) What do you think the 6 String questions really tell about the person?

Maria: I think the 6 String questions are great because they really give you insight into a person’s character. Many dating sites that are geared towards helping people find real and meaningful connections, are based on a copious amount of multiple choice questions that you have to spend hours completing when you first sign up  Then your responses are fed into an computer algorithm and compared to the results of other users who have similar responses, in an effort to find a compatible match. This is great in the sense that you can generally determine if you have common interests and habits, however it does very little to show you someone’s unique character and personality. Also, often times with multiple choice questions, there is no one right answer. So you have to guess or choose what you think is the most correct or dominant answer of your available choices. 

What I love about String and the 6 questions is that they really allow a person to express themselves authentically. Based on someone's responses, you can easily tell who this person is and what they are all about. They also give you glimpse into a persons particular style of communication, and how comfortable you are with that style of communication. These are all very important factors in choosing someone that you can have a real meaningful long term connection. 

3) Do you think there are benefits to forming relationships by first asking questions? 

Maria: I believe that lots of authentic and real conversation is at the core of every real and meaningful connection. And one of the best ways to spark such conversation is to ask thoughtful and meaningful questions, such as String does. Questions like this tend to generate real and unrehearsed responses that you can build on to facilitate in depth conversation.  

4) Are there any dating app industry trends that you see? What do you think is important to see more of in the dating industry? 

Maria: I can't really speak to the industry itself but what I can say is that people are becoming increasingly busy and are living very demanding lives. No one has time anymore to go through endless amounts of profiles or waste their precious time on sites that are flooded with no strings attached possibilities. People want to find the real thing and they don't want to make a second career out of doing it. And I think that String really has an advantage to facilitate that.

5) How is String's mission aligned with Maria Pallas' mission? 

Maria: My mission is to help people find happiness and fulfillment by creating a life that they absolutely love! One that's in complete alignment with their true essence and their highest intention. Having said that, one of the fundamental components of a fulfilling life is to have real and meaningful relationships - of all kinds. String is a great tool that gives people the means to bring that particular component into balance. 

8) Any other advice for single users online? 

Maria: Always, always, always be yourself! So often when we meet someone we become so determined to make a good impression that we unconsciously start to alter who we are and what we're all about. The key to a long lasting and meaningful connection is to be open, to be vulnerable, and to be authentic so that the person can get to know us at a soul level. After all, nothing is more fulfilling than being loved for exactly who you are and not for who you might think someone wants you to be.

ABOUT STRING 

String is a dating app for people who are searching for deep and potentially long-lasting connections -- because, who really wants a "no strings attached" relationship? You won't have to answer a long list of silly questions but rather a scientifically chosen set of questions that result in a meaningful connection based on criteria that really matter.

Helen Huang is the founder of String, a dating app that matches users based on their responses to meaningful questions, creating long-lasting and deep relationships. For the past five years Helen has overseen product development at TRUSTe and recently completed the highly-selective Startup Leadership Program in San Francisco. 

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. 

How to Achieve a Deeper Connection in Online Dating

Instead of writing about how technology has affected dating today (which is a fantastic topic that deserves more in-depth discussion), I wanted to speak more on how dating applications can help. With the rise of photo-centric platforms, target niche audiences, and gamification of the entire experience, these exploding types of curation have left people feeling more lonely and empty than before. The feeling of exhaustion attributes to going through the motions of swiping with no emotional fulfillment. Study done by a Harvard Business School Professor shows that men find browsing countless photos of women entertaining, but not vise versa when the genders are switched.

So, the question is how do we help turn it around and how do we leverage technology in the right way? This blog will focus more on how a dating application that encourages self-disclosure can help users expand their parameters on dating, and have more success and efficiency with finding meaningful relationships online. The other topics of how everyone now has an increase in the dating option pool and how photos are more misleading than helping will be documented on separate blogs since these topics belong to different schools of studies and deserve their respective discussions.

String was inspired by the study conducted by Arthur Aron who developed the "36 questions that lead to love," made popular by the famous article on NY Times. The idea was of course also initially inspired by personal experience. I had recently appeared on the Dating & Tech panel hosted by The Expat Woman speaking about the encounter of this wonderful guy I met at a dive bar. We went on a couple dates but in my head, I kept asking myself - which dating application would have curated this guy for me? Being that dating applications are getting more and more superficial, I'm not sure if we would've been matched. Do I really have to go to "all the bars" to meet guys in order to expand my dating parameters?

After researching more on Arthur Aron's study and enlisting the help of my friend Randy, a Ph. D. in Intimate Relationships, there is overwhelming evidence that technology when leveraged in the right way can jumpstart online encounters into meaningful and long-lived relationships. The key is encouraging users to self-disclose and become vulnerable. String does this by asking the users scientifically curated questions that are designed to generate deep emotional responses to draw the user in. The profile sets the premise for greater insight and generates a level of interest to discover more about the person behind those answers. In an age where users are just looking at photos and Facebook page likes, there's not much information that really pulls at the user's heartstrings or instills a deep motivation to get to know the person beyond photoshopped pictures and random musings.

Numerous psychological studies show the tremendous benefits of meeting online over in person, how anonymity can be used to generate intimacy and using this knowledge, break down that initial barrier to bring two people closer together online.

1. First of all, people are more likely to skip past superficial conversation and engage in deeper questioning and self-disclosure in computer mediated rather than face-to-face discussions. This supports the hypothesis that dating technology can be a more intimate context for meeting people than many real life interactions. Src: Tidwell and Walther (2002)

2. In addition, believe it or not, meeting someone online instead of face-to-face leads to more mutual fondness, both during the initial and subsequent interactions. The study concludes that, in addition to increasing self-disclosure, the internet fosters relationships by allowing people to better express their true selves, especially shy or lonely people. They also argue that another advantage of meeting online is the relative absence of gating features (such as physical appearance, stigmas, social anxiety, etc.), which often derail potential relationships before intimacy and disclosure can even begin. String will only allow the users to expand matches after they've formed a connection via liking each other's self-disclosure responses. Src: McKenna, Green, and Gleason (2002)

3. When asking the right questions, people can feel more intimate and (guess what) passion online; or in the true words spoken by a wise friend: "Intimacy and passion are derivatives of self-disclosure." Src: Baumeister and Bratslavsky (1999)

4.  Finally, self-disclosure, which is what String is all about, leads to three major effects: people who disclose are more liked, people disclose more to people they like, and people like others to whom they have disclosed. String leads to liking all the way around! Src: Collins and Miller (1994)

String is built on all these raw principles of emotions and honesty. Although other dating applications are great in their own way, String is here with a mission in mind to help people self-disarm and online dating is a great venue to do so.