Should I Smile in My Dating Profile Pictures? What the Two Studies Found, and the Honest Answer
One analysis in 2010 said men should not smile, and every list has repeated it since. A later study said the opposite. What each measured, who paid, and the answer that holds up.
You should smile in most of your dating profile pictures, with one neutral photo in the set, and the smile should be a real one. The advice not to smile comes from a single analysis OkCupid published in 2010, which found men’s photos did best when they looked away and did not smile. Photofeeler, a photo-testing company, later ran a more controlled test and found the opposite: smiling made men’s photos rate higher for attractiveness, trust and competence. Both are vendor data, neither is peer-reviewed, and the second is the better design. The honest answer is a genuine smile in at least half the set, and a quick test with your own photos.
On this page
What each study actually measured
OkCupid, 2010. The dating site’s research blog analysed which of its users’ photos received more messages, and reported that men’s photos performed best when the man looked away from the camera and did not smile, while women’s did best with a smile and a direct look. It was a large dataset of real behaviour, which is its strength, and it was an analysis of messages received, which is its weakness: the men who looked away and did not smile may have differed in other ways (the quality of the photo, who they were, who was messaging them) that the analysis could not separate. OkCupid itself has since changed its advice.
Photofeeler’s replication. Photofeeler, which sells photo testing, published a replication some years later in which raters scored men’s photos on attractiveness, trustworthiness and competence, with the expression as the variable. Smiling photos scored higher on all three for men. The company has acknowledged the limit of its own data: it is correlational, and men who smile naturally in photos may also be better at being photographed. It also has a commercial interest in the result, as OkCupid had in its own.
The psychology. The useful addition from the academic side, summarised in the Psychology Today piece cited above, is that not all smiles are read the same: a genuine smile (the kind that reaches the eyes and lifts the cheeks) is rated differently from a posed one, and a posed smile can rate worse than no smile. That is the detail that reconciles the two datasets better than either vendor’s framing does.
| Claim | Where it came from | What it measured | What it did not control |
|---|---|---|---|
| “Men shouldn’t smile; look away from the camera” | OkCupid’s blog, 2010 | Messages received per photo on one site | Photo quality, who the men were, who was messaging |
| “Smiling always helps men” | Photofeeler’s replication | Rater scores on three traits, expression as the variable | Whether men who smile naturally take better photos generally |
| “A genuine smile beats a posed one, and a posed one can lose to none” | The psychology of expression, as summarised for dating photos | How raters read different kinds of smile | Dating outcomes directly |
The same set, two expressions
He read that men should not smile. His six photos are all neutral or stern, two of them looking away from the camera.
A single old analysis applied to a whole set. Six neutral faces read as a man who is guarded, and the one thing a set has to convey (that there is a person here you might enjoy) is missing from all six.
The advice was for one photo in 2010, and he built six around it.
Same man, a week later. The window setup, twelve frames, and the friend chose the ones where he was about to laugh.
Four genuine smiles produced by actually laughing (the timer, a word said out loud), one half-smile, one neutral. The neutral photo reads as range because of the five around it, which is the thing the 2010 advice got backwards.
The set says there is a person here. That is what a smile is for.
What the smile argument does to men
- Building six photos around one 2010 blog post. The advice was from a single site’s message counts fifteen years ago, and the site itself has moved on.
- The posed smile. Teeth, no eyes. It rates worse than a neutral face. A real one comes from laughing at something, which is why the timer setup has you say a word out loud.
- Looking away in every photo. One photo looking just past the lens reads as thoughtful; six read as a man avoiding her.
- Treating either vendor as settled science. Both have a product to sell and both acknowledge limits. Use the better-designed one and test your own face.
- Never testing. Two friends, two versions of the first photo (a real smile, a neutral), three seconds each, “which one would you message?” Your face, your answer. The window setup produces both versions in ten minutes.
- A set with no neutral photo. Six grins are as one-note as six frowns. One serious photo in six gives the smiles something to stand against.
Use the better study, and then test your own face
The “don’t smile” rule survives because it is counter-intuitive and because it was said once with data behind it. The data was one site’s message counts in 2010, uncontrolled for anything, and the better-designed replication found the reverse. But neither is a reason to trust a vendor over your own evidence: two friends, two versions of your first photo, three seconds each, and a question about which they would message settles it for your face in a minute. The first photo has the three-second test; this page is why the answer, for most men, is the one where they are about to laugh.
Go deeper: The Attraction Map: The Five Places Attraction Is Won or Lost
Questions
Should men smile in dating profile pictures?
In most of them, genuinely, with one neutral photo in the set. The advice not to smile comes from a single OkCupid blog analysis in 2010; a later, better-controlled test by Photofeeler found smiling raised men’s ratings on attractiveness, trust and competence. Both are vendor data; the second is the better design, and the psychology of expression says a real smile beats a posed one.
Is it true men get more matches when they don’t smile?
That was OkCupid’s finding in 2010 from message counts on its own site, with nothing controlled for, and the site has since dropped the advice. The replication found the opposite. If you want certainty for your own face, test it: two friends, a smiling and a neutral version of your first photo, and the question of which they would message.
What kind of smile works best in a profile photo?
A genuine one, which shows in the eyes and the cheeks, not just the teeth. A posed smile can rate below no smile at all. The way to get a real one from a timer setup is to say something out loud or think of something funny between frames and pick the one where you were about to laugh, not the one where you held a grin.
Should I look at the camera or away?
At it or just past it in most photos, and away in at most one. Looking just past the lens reads as thoughtful; looking away in every photo reads as avoiding her, which is the part of the 2010 advice that aged worst. The set and the order has where each kind of photo belongs.
