Should You Enhance Your Online Dating Profile Image? Study Says It Depends on Your Sex

Online dating can be tricky enough as it is, now a new study found just how helpful photo enhancement was in the world of virtual love and discovered these benefits depend on whether you are man or woman.

According to eurekaalert.org, researchers at the University of Connecticut studied 305 participants ages 17-36 and found that men viewed women with enhanced photos as more attractive but less trustworthy. However, it turns out women viewed men with enhanced photos as more attractive and more trustworthy.

"Trust is an important part of any relationship and it certainly plays an important role in the forging of new social bonds in the dating context. Yet, we found an interesting relationship between attractiveness and trust for males who were viewing female profile pictures. Specifically, men typically found the more beautified and therefore more attractive profile to also be less trustworthy," researcher Rory McGloin said.

"This finding provides an empirical highlight to the concept of cat- fishing and the larger phenomena surrounding online dating, in which it is both normal and acceptable for individuals' to mislead or deceive their potential suitors."

"Our research also found that males found the beautified profile as more attractive and had a higher desire to date the person in the picture despite the lower degree of trustworthiness they reported," he added. "This finding suggests that even when men suspect that a woman may not look exactly like she does in her profile picture, they are willing to take the risk and pursue a date with her. In our sample, attraction seems to be more important than trust."

The findings were to be presented this month at an International Communication Association meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Research presented at meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.