It’s not the sort of news you want to hear if you’re cripplingly self-conscious, but a new study has found that negative comments on your profile picture can make you less attractive to people who see those comments. Well, at least to people who gauge attractiveness from nothing but a profile picture.
The study, conducted by the University of Missouri, involved pairing profile pictures with different surrounding comments. It turns out that bad comments resulted in lower scores of attractiveness, while nice comments increased the perceived physical, social and professional attractiveness of the person in the photo.
According to Seoyeon Hong, one author of the study, it all has to do with the fact that people are going to trust other people’s perceptions of you (the comments) more than the message you’re trying to send (the picture), or even what they think when they see it. Even sarcastic comments or jokes can have an effect, so “Lol, u look so trashy loljkjk” could knock you down a peg on top of betraying the fact that you socialise with idiots.
It’s not just the comments though; action shots or pictures that suggest you have interests and friends also tend to be rated as more attractive than solitary self-shots in the bathroom mirror or your old yearbook picture. Of course, it’s up to you to decide whether it’s worth meticulously policing your profile page — or if you should just take your picture in a lobster costume and let the haters hate. [MU News via Mashable]