# Dating profiles from first principles: heterosexual male profile design

*Update: I improved the profile of someone who reached out to me from this article. They went from zero matches in a year to ~2/week.*

*I think this is roughly the effect size one should expect from following this advice: it's not going to take you from the 5th percentile to the 95th, but you can go from the 20th to the 70th or something.*

Executive Summary
-----------------

*   While romantic preferences are idiosyncratic, certain attributes are widely considered attractive by heterosexual women. The evidence for this is particularly strong in populations frequently studied by psychologists (i.e. psychology undergraduate students).
*   My general advice is to consider these frequently-desired attributes and orient your profile towards signaling that you are at least average in each of them. They are: aesthetics, mental health, social capital, wealth, physical attractiveness, and niceness.
*   There is some evidence that women are risk-averse rather than expectation maximizing, i.e. it's more important to indicate that you are at least acceptable on each of these dimensions than it is to indicate that you are exceptional on one of them.

If you only have two minutes
----------------------------

If you only have 2 minutes, I would suggest the following exercise:

> Imagine it's after your first date. Your date goes home and texts her group chat "you won't believe it but I met the most amazing guy! He _____." What's that thing she is so excited about? Make sure that thing is immediately visible from your profile. 

Epistemic Confidence
--------------------

Part of why I'm writing this is that I think people are terrible at dating by default, so even mediocre advice is likely to make them better. I do not claim that this advice will make any man more attractive to any woman, but do think it's quite likely to make the median man more attractive to the median woman.

I have had writing this article on my to-do list for a while, and decided that I would never actually write it if every claim was individually cited. Instead, I am including a list of all works that I've drawn on at the bottom. It's important to emphasize that I think this information is more helpful than not to the median straight man, but psychology research is often not that rigorous (I somewhat recently found out that a paper I frequently mentioned had some of its major claims retracted), and even when it's good there is simply so much human variation that it's hard to make universal claims.

Basic principles
----------------

The secret to an attractive profile is:

1.  Understand what your partner wants
2.  Signal that dating you will give them that

This seems basic, but I'm surprised how few people understand it.

When someone asks me whether they should grow a beard or double text or go to a club on the first date, the answer is always: "well, what does the person you are trying to attract want?"

Figuring out what someone wants is a complicated skill, but this article attempts to summarize common preferences in heterosexual women. It draws heavily on academic psychological research, which means that the claims are most true for young undergraduates in top Western universities.

I believe the advice in this article will be helpful to the average single man, but it is no substitute for actually getting to know the person you want to attract.

Traits - Introduction
---------------------

### Thresholds and Homophily

We examine a variety of traits when evaluating potential romantic partners. Some traits have constant or even increasing marginal returns. For example, being more physically attractive will get you more romantic attention, and there's no "maximum" point at which being more attractive is not beneficial.

In contrast, other traits seem to have a "threshold". Frequently, this threshold is “the same as me”, i.e. we want partners who score at least as well as we do on some trait. Dating someone who is the same level as you is referred to as “homophily”; hypergamy and hypogamy are the terms for when your partner has more or less of the trait than you do, respectively. Some examples:

[People prefer](https://sci-hubtw.hkvisa.net/10.1016/j.paid.2016.12.031) dating those who have approximately the same number of years of education as they themselves do:

![](https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/6VxSrN9aWcOaZDfpsUpU2eYDbJ-2vB7M-6hghmNYfctP4h5sMs3iJU9A5V6dOQULnqOGc7z1UACM3QQmqGTIwJqXRdzstvSEMgMezZCprI5nj_-eHH29VqXaoKWb6rjtxfrvWdaM=s1600)

[Women prefer](https://sci-hubtw.hkvisa.net/10.1016/j.paid.2007.08.008) dating taller men (and men prefer dating shorter women):

![](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/iPqjnOmlJVBQJcz5KX5FuB8PW8Xt6YCmEdT6kZGIIsOem1U9T3hRLCHy_11TchAOGdalpNcQ__Sz1c8PUkB6eBsBGhGaLgOBTkJbBexObzGRaAwFNyUxMO6UDFyP9aGMmCVHhxQn=s1600)

These examples are preferences that can be easily quantified, but even a brief conversation with someone will turn up similar “thresholds” for less quantifiable traits: “I would never date someone who had stains on their clothes/lives with their parents/doesn’t text me back within an hour/etc.”,

This document is oriented around helping you reach this "threshold" in each trait. Unfortunately, there is no universal threshold. Instead, you will have to consider the sort of person you want to date and what criteria they may have. Asking female friends who are similar to those you would like to date what their criteria are may help you identify the appropriate thresholds.

### T-shape

I generally suggest being "T-shaped" in the sense that you are at least adequate across all dimensions, and then go deep along one particular dimension in which you excel. 

In each trait, I will list

*   Ways in which you can bring yourself up to the threshold, if you are below it
*   Ways in which you can signal that you are far above the threshold, if you are above it

I recommend at least doing these things which bring you up to the threshold, for each trait, and then choosing one or two in which you want to signal being above the threshold.

You may also wish to signal being above average in some trait not listed here. That seems fine to me, but I would still recommend indicating at least averageness in all of these traits.

Trait list
----------

I'm mostly just asserting without argument that these traits are attractive – if you want to read a popular summary of why these traits are attractive, [Mate](https://www.amazon.com/Mate-Become-Man-Women-Want/dp/B01LTHXJVE) has the rare distinction of being a dating advice book which received [a positive review](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40806-016-0058-4) from a peer-reviewed academic journal and discusses them in depth.

I want to emphasize that these traits are genuinely all important. This is not "women actually only care how tall you are but I'm going to talk about 'inner beauty' because it's too mean to say 'short guys need not apply'." While excelling at one trait can offset underperformance in another, traits are not perfect substitutes and I genuinely do think it's important to do at least okay at all of these.

### Aesthetics

*   Bare minimum/if you are below average:
    *   Buy (or rent) clothes which fit and wear them in your pictures. Focus on fit over being "fashionable".
    *   Take pictures in unobjectionable locations. It's fine if you live in a dilapidated frat house, but do not take pictures there. Take pictures at the coffee house down the street or something instead.
*   If you are above average:
    *   If you are a fashionista you probably already know how to show that off in pictures.

### Mental Health

*Note: dating is often bad for your mental health. Men on Tinder average a ~94% rejection rate. Unfortunately, women generally want to go out with you to have fun, not to hear about your mental health problems. I don't have a clever solution for this, other than to state that it is perfectly reasonable to focus on improving your mental health instead of dating.*

*   Bare minimum/if you are below average:
    *   Smile in your pictures! Really! Even though professional models make a weird grimace in their photos! Prospective partners care more about you being fun than your bone structure.
    *   Also don't try to look tough. Either you succeed and women will be too scared to meet you or you fail and look stupid.
    *   Show that you have hobbies and leave the house. Take pictures outside.
    *   Keep the tone of your profile casual and fun. Don't message too intensely, at least at first.
*   If you are above average:
    *   If you are the sort of person who is always upbeat and positive, try to signal this through your expression, posture, and clothes.
    *   Certain activities require above average mental fortitude, e.g. caregiving. Mention or take pictures of yourself doing these activities.

### Social Capital

*   Bare minimum/if you are below average:
    *   Have at least two pictures of you with friends. If you don't have friends, find strangers to take pictures with. Preferably strangers who are less attractive than you.
*   If you are above average:
    *   If you are good at social organizing, include pictures of parties or events you've thrown. Include a caption to clarify that you are the one who organized the party. Screenshotting a snapchat with a message is a low-key way to caption your pictures without seeming like you're captioning them.
    *   Include pictures in which you are clearly the center of attention, e.g. you telling a story to an enraptured audience at a party.

### Wealth

*   Bare minimum/if you are below average:
    *   Take pictures outside. The forest looks the same no matter how much money you have.
    *   Showcase yourself doing hobbies that don't involve spending money. A poor hiker looks an awful lot like a rich hiker.
*   If you are above average:
    *   Instagram is basically a global exercise in showcasing wealth through photos. So you can look at those for inspiration.
    *   Pictures on yachts and exotic travel locations are two standard ways of signaling wealth in pictures.
    *   Certain hobbies (e.g. polo) are also associated with wealth.

### Physical Health/Attractiveness

*   Bare minimum/if you are below average:
    *   Test your photos. (See below.)
    *   Some advice on posing which I frequently reference: 
        *   Things which are close to the camera will look bigger and things further away will look smaller. Consider using side angles where your arm/bicep is close to the camera and stomach is further away. (Shoulder to waist ratio is well correlated with female evaluations of male attractiveness.)
        *   Phone cameras have fisheye lenses which distort images in a universally unflattering way. Move the phone back and zoom in to counteract this effect (or use a non-phone camera).
        *   Use lights from many different angles (or a ring light) in order to avoid shadows which exaggerate wrinkles.
        *   One standard trick is: point your feet 90° away from the camera, then twist your torso to face the camera while standing as tall as you can with broad shoulders. This will stretch your body out, making your stomach narrower.
    *   YouTube has a plethora of videos on posing advice for men.
*   If you are above average:
    *   Physical attractiveness is surprisingly hard to display for men, largely because clothes that show off your physique (e.g. tank tops) are considered low status/poor aesthetics.
    *   I would recommend against including shirtless pictures, even if you have well-developed abs, unless you feel like you have a strong aesthetic sense.
    *   Instead, search pictures of male models who have similar physiques to you and try to copy their poses.

### Niceness

*Note: People seem very confused about niceness. Women don’t generally love assholes, but neither will basic “nice guy”-ness cause them to swoon. Women repeatedly mention niceness as a desirable characteristic in romantic partners, and this is true across a wide variety of cultures, but, as I repeatedly state in this document, being nice alone is not enough to be maximally attractive. Niceness needs to be combined with performance in other traits.*

*   Bare minimum/if you are below average:
    *   Smile in your pictures
    *   Use friendly messaging. Avoid unsolicited sexual aggression.
*   If you are above average:
    *   One advantage of niceness is that you often have above average social capital – display this by taking pictures with lots of friends etc.
    *   Mention or show pictures of you volunteering/helping others
    *   Take pictures with pets or small children

Objections to this approach
---------------------------

### I am only attracted to women who satisfy (obscure criterion). Shouldn't I orient my profile to that?

No. Even if your future partner is attracted to your love of 17th century Italian literature, being slovenly will still be a turnoff for them.

Additionally, dating apps are based on the (fairly well validated) premise that attractiveness ratings are well correlated across individuals. If some women find you unattractive – even if you are not attracted to those women yourself – your profile will not be shown as frequently to other women, even those who might be attracted to your idiosyncrasies. (Tinder implements this through assigning each user Elo rating which goes up every time someone swipes right on them and down every time someone swipes left. Profiles with lower ratings are shown less frequently.)

### I think that the opposite of your advice is attractive

This is sometimes reasonable, and can occur because of counter signaling. E.g. fashionistas will intentionally wear clothes which don't fit to signal that they are so fashionable they can violate standard rules of fashion.

Additional examples include:

*   Moody artists whose depressive traits are attractive, despite signaling bad mental health
*   Cocky athletes whose aggression is attractive, despite signaling poor niceness

If you are an expert in one of these traits then you should certainly ignore my advice. But do it thoughtfully – wearing stained clothes because you are too lazy to buy new ones is unlikely to be attractive.

Evaluating your photos
----------------------

Photos are an astonishingly inaccurate signal of a person's traits. For example, photos of me vary between the 30th and the 95th percentile of physical attractiveness – this is practically the entire range of human variation!

The good news is that this means that, by putting in the effort to take and evaluate a large number of pictures, you can outperform peers who just take a terrible phone selfie. The bad news is that, particularly since people are quite bad at evaluating their own photos, you are going to have to spend a lot of time taking and evaluating pictures.

I personally like [PhotoFeeler](https://www.photofeeler.com/), which has both free and paid versions. As a calibration point: I have evaluated 65 photos of myself on PF. I would be surprised if it was the right decision for anyone to evaluate less than 20.

Spend money
-----------

For most people, their romantic partner(s) are one of the biggest influences on their welfare. If you've made it this far into this article, you are probably one of those people.

I claim that this means that dating should be high on your list of priorities of things to spend money on. Paying to eat out or see a movie is probably a less cost-effective way to make yourself happy than spending money on dating.

Some ways of spending money:

*   Purchase premium versions of dating apps.
    *   The products called “Boost” in Tinder and “Spotlight” in Bumble generally seem worth paying for, in my experience. (Note: Bumble has a different product that confusingly is also called Boost, which is less important.)
*   Hire a professional photographer.
*   Hire a professional makeup artist.
*   Hire someone to retouch your photos
*   Buy better clothes or hire a stylist
*   Get cosmetic surgery

Other advice
------------

*   Location is key. Consider the gender ratio of where you live. Tinder allows you to pretend you are in a different location – try moving your profile to different places (New York City has one of the highest female:male ratios in the US) and see how that affects the number of matches you receive.
*   Women are consistently more likely than men to prefer longer-term relationships. If you are looking for a long-term relationship, be sure to signal that clearly in your profile. Certain apps (e.g. Hinge) are oriented towards longer-term relationships, whereas others (e.g. Tinder) are oriented towards shorter-term ones.
*   Similarly, men consistently prefer dating younger women. If you are attracted to older women, indicate that on your profile, or use apps like eHarmony which have older demographics.

Next Steps
----------

Online dating relationships generally progress through the following milestones:

1.  Getting them to swipe right on you
2.  Getting a response to your first message
3.  Having an online conversation of 4+ messages
4.  First date
5.  Second date

After the second date, there are a variety of different paths relationships take, based on what the people involved want.

This article was entirely about the first milestone of getting them to swipe right on you, but there is a lot to say about later stages. Depending on how much interest there is, I may go into more details on these later steps. In particular, there is a lot of “first date” advice, but relatively little about steps 2 and 3.

Bibliography
------------

*Note: as mentioned above, this bibliography is not very well done. It has some duplicates and misformatted citations.*

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