6 Reasons You Choose Awful Photos for Tinder, As Proven by Science

Oh, Tinder. Do you remember the new download smell when you first got the app? The possibilities! All you have to do is make your profile.

But wait, what pic do you use? Is it your Facebook pic (the one from Halloween that’s kind of an inside joke)? Should you just snap one right now in the bathroom mirror?

Actually it barely matters, seeing as how any picture you choose is sure to be a bad one. This is partly because…

1. You don’t feel stranger danger looking at yourself.

Do you sometimes look in the mirror and think, “That guy’s face seems kind of murdery”?

Of course you don’t. When you see a picture of yourself, that possibility doesn’t even cross your mind. You sooner assume that stone-cold stare looks “serious” or “assertive.”

The scientific explanation here is that we use different parts of our brain when we’re looking at pictures of ourselves vs. pictures of other people. We judge ourselves based on our inner world rather than our exterior alone, skewing our perception and rendering us utterly unable to see ourselves objectively.

2. You think goofy faces portray you as fun.

Think you’ll show potential dates your “fun side” by shooting them crazy eyes with a side of KISS tongue?

Mm, maybe not your best play. The problem is that these people know literally nothing about you yet. If a guy hasn’t yet seen your face neutral or smiling, he probably shouldn’t be seeing it stretched into an abomination.

According to research, different photos of the same person give impressions as varied as entirely different people. That’s because the viewer extrapolates a ton from each single picture.

If you’re doing something weird with your face, a stranger is unlikely to see that this is a rare but endearing side of your personality. Rather, they’re staring down what they assume is a 24/7 resident of Crayville.

3. You favor pictures that look the least like you.

Due to the invention of mirrors, you’ve likely become intimately acquainted with every subtlety of your own glorious human face.

The problem is it’s all been a lie. Mirrors have actually been misleading you this whole time by showing you a “flipped” version of what you look like, rather than what you actually like to other people.

Thanks to this phenomenon as well as exacerbating tendencies (like emotional lateralization and the left gaze bias), people prefer photos of themselves that don’t actually look like themselves.

Now, I’m not talking about preferring photos that show you as more attractive than you really are. I’m saying you tend to pick photos of yourself that don’t look like you in a completely arbitrary way by resembling your mirror image rather than your real-life one.

4. You hate other people’s selfies but give your own a pass.

Don’t you hate it when people take selfies in their car?

Of course you do. Except when you do it, because unlike them, you have *reasons.* (The lighting was great; you had on a new shirt; you had to kill a minute thirty.) Other people who car-selfie just do it because they’re garbage people, and that has nothing to do with how you do it.

Or, just maybe, having access to our inner thoughts, motivations, and intentions results in a tendency to give ourselves a pass for the kinds of bad pics we judge others for taking.

5. You’re too focused on one thing about how you look.

You might think it’s a good idea to use that badly-lit shot just because your hair looks okay in it. Or that mirror selfie that shows off your biceps, despite the toilet in the picture behind you.

Thing is, most people have physical features they especially like or dislike. According to research, when looking at our own pictures, we can quickly fixate on those features.

As a consequence, we end up instantly trashing any photo that shows our “flaw” or fails to focus on our “asset” — even if it had the most genuine smile of the bunch or the best composition. Hence the Tinder pic version of the proverbial “missing the forest for the trees.”

6. You think regular social norms don’t apply.

If I put my face directly in front of your face, we had better be acquainted already.

A lot of people, though — many of them men— think a shirtless pic in bed or one taken 3 centimeters from their eyeball is an okay way to present themselves to complete strangers.

According to research out of Caltech, pictures taken two feet away or less are consistently rated as less trustworthy. Fact is, photos like these are a bit too-much-too-soon to the point of setting off alarms. Some women might describe them as “creepy,” because they’re psychologically being put into an intimate situation with a man they do not know.

Wah wah wah.

Well I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that does it for why you can’t be trusted to choose your own dating pics — according to science. Tread carefully out there, friends!

Ann co-founded PhotoFeeler — a tool for testing profile pics, as seen in Time, Forbes, The Today Show, and more. Find out how you’re coming across in your dating pictures! It’s free to use here.