I talk to Dr. Jess Snitko, who has researched online dating and other online communication, about the signals and messages we send, intentionally and unintentionally, with dating app profiles and pictures. Jess earned her Ph.D. in Media, Technology, and Society from Purdue University in 2020. Topics discussed: Factors in pictures and profiles that cause people to swipe right or swipe left; the so-called “duck-face” expression some girls make in photos; men’s shirtless photos; men who post pictures of holding a fish or posing with dead animals; bathroom mirror selfies; pictures of partying and drinking; group photos and problems with those; cropped photos where an ex is being removed from the picture; how first impressions can be prone to errors; and more.
Episode links:
- YouTube (includes video)
- Spotify
- Apple Podcasts
Resources related to or mentioned in this talk:
- Jess Snitko’s LinkedIn
- Jess Snitko’s research on dating apps
- Related episodes:
TRANSCRIPT
Zach Elwood: Hi there. This is the People Who Read People podcast with me, Zach Elwood. This is a podcast aimed at better understanding other people and better understanding ourselves. You can learn more about it at behavior-podcast.com.
This episode is about online dating: specifically it’s about the signals we can send, intentionally or unintentionally with our pictures and profile copy on dating apps. I talk to Jess Snitko, who has researched online dating and online communication. Topics we discuss include: women who use pictures with the so-called “duck face” expression; guys who use shirtless pictures of themselves; people who use selfies of themselves taken in the bathroom mirror; guys who post pictures of themselves holding a fish or posing with other dead animals; pictures that can give the impression of being a big partier; and more. We talk about what makes people swipe left or swipe right; what they find attractive and unattractive.
Whether you use dating apps or are just interested in the conclusions we reach about each other and the signals we send, I think you’ll like this one. I have a couple past episodes that are also about online dating, so if you like this episode, you might like those. I’ll include links to those in the entry for this episode on my site behavior-podcast.com.
A little more about my guest: Jessica Snitko conducts research about computer-mediated-communication and the reciprocal relationship between online interaction and public perception. She’s interested in the online development and maintenance of romantic relationships and how mobile dating apps impact modern dating culture. She also owns Snitko Communication Consulting, which specializes in trial consulting, strategic communication, and brand management. I’ll put a link to her LinkedIn in the entry for this episode. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-snitko-welch52291/
Okay here’s the talk with Jess Snitko.
Zachary Elwood: Hi Jess, thanks for joining me on the show.
Dr. Jess Snitko: Thanks so much for having me.
Zach: Maybe we could start with how we got to talking to each other. What interested you about it? Because you reached out to me, maybe you could mention what interested you about my work.
Jess: Yeah, absolutely. I recently started doing jury consulting a little under a year ago. When I was doing research for that, I was looking up different resources and one of those was podcasts about jury consulting and trial consulting, and one of your episodes was one of the first ones that came up. So I listened to that, but then it was all of these different episodes about conversational analysis, psychology, all things that are relevant to my work and things that I’m interested in. That kind of just led me to listening to a bunch of your shows. And I think that some of the work I do might be interesting on this show, so I reached out and thought maybe you’d want to interview me as well.
Zach: Awesome. Yeah, and thank you for that. I wanted to mention that too, just to say to anybody listening or watching, if you do have interesting ideas for a show or an interview, do let me know because I’m always open to those ideas. And the interview you mentioned, Christina Marinakis who’s a jury consultant, that was one of my favorite interviews. So, people interested in jury and trial consulting should check that out. Yeah, maybe we can talk a little bit about your dating research.
Jess: Yeah, absolutely. I became interested in researching mobile dating apps… Actually, the interest started way back when I was an undergrad. I think this was probably 2011 or something, and I was in an introductory communication theory course, and I remember hearing about Dr Joseph Walther’s hyper-personal model of communication. That’s what really got me interested. The overview of that model is basically that the communication that people have on the computer-so, computer-mediated communication-is actually more intimate and more intense than the communication that often happens face to face. I remember being really interested in that and I thought it was really surprising. There’s a couple of reasons that that happens that I’ll go into because it is directly related to dating apps.
A few major reasons that this happens is, first of all, you have the sender. Let’s say that it’s two people communicating in an online platform, and I’m the sender. Because of the way that it’s situated, I am able to present myself in the way that I want to, right? It’s called selective self-presentation. That means that I can hide any of my undesirable qualities, but that I can emphasize or display any of my desirable qualities. That happens a lot in online dating, right? You want people to see the good things about you, but you’re hiding the things that, you know, maybe you’re terrified of spiders or something. You’re not going to advertise that. You’re going to advertise other qualities.
Zach: I guess the extreme version of that is like catfishing, where you’re completely misrepresenting.
Jess: Right. There’s a lot of research that goes into that, too. It’s like there’s this line between, yes, you want to present yourself in a positive way, but you still want it to be authentic. Right? So when we’re talking about the hyper-personal model, you’re still being authentic to who you are, but you’re highlighting the best parts about you. Similar to how you would in a job interview.
Zach: Right. Because most people know they might actually get to know somebody, so they want to be realistic. They just want to present the best… Yeah.
Jess: Exactly. Because for most people-well, for a lot of people on dating apps who are using them for their intended purpose-the end goal is to meet face to face. So you don’t want to say like, “Oh, I’m an astronaut and I’m 6’5″,” if you’re not. Right?
Zach: Yeah, few people are lying to those extreme degrees. Yeah.
Jess: Right. And those are mostly the people that are just kind of on there for ‘it’s a form of entertainment.’ They’re not really using it for its intended purpose. So, that’s the one component of the hyper-personal model, it’s that I can present myself in positive ways. The other thing is that receivers, if they have a favorable first impression of you-for example, this goes back to dating apps as well-if I have a favorable first impression of someone, then in the process of getting to know them, there are all these blanks that I need to fill in because I don’t know a lot about them yet. If my first impression was good, I tend to fill in those blanks with more favorable things. So in the hyper-personal model, when you’re first starting to get to know someone online, you’re only getting the best information or their best presentation of themselves. Then you’re filling in the blanks with more favorable information, and then they’re actually exaggerating the ways in which you are similar and downplaying the ways in which you are different. Because as humans, we’re just more comfortable talking to people who are similar to us and who agree with us about things. And that just leads to more positive interactions, right? So it’s in our best interest to do that. It makes sense that we do that.
The other thing about the hyper-personal model is that because of the channel, so it’s asynchronous communication, meaning that it’s not happening simultaneously, it means that you can spend a lot more time crafting your messages. If you and I were sitting and having a conversation, I couldn’t pause for five minutes to craft a really good response to give back to you if we’re talking in person. That would be awkward. But it happens all the time when you’re getting to know someone through texting or dating apps, that there’s a five-minute delay between your responses. That’s just normal. During that time, sure, someone could be busy, but they could also be writing a response and editing it and deleting it and asking their friends for feedback. And so the actual quality of communication that you’re having is a lot better. You’re also not having to worry about things like interrupting each other during face-to-face conversation. Like the first date, that beginning conversation can always be a little bit awkward, even if people do come with good intentions and are fairly socially adept. There will be things like interruptions, there will be lulls in conversation, maybe there will be weird things like having to think about eye contact and having to think about what you’re doing with your hands. Versus when you’re just talking online, you’re only focused on the quality of the words that you’re saying. So that leads to better conversation that happens online. And I was just really interested in that.
Zach: To rephrase it, these are all things that lead to the study that you found about extremely quick bonding that can happen in online communication.
Jess: Yeah, so this is what really sparked my interest in it. Learning about this hyper-personal model is what inspired me to go to grad school and start studying dating apps. And I actually caught it at the perfect time. So, Tinder came out in like 2012. I started grad school in 2014. And there’s a couple of year delay when things first launch. It really didn’t start getting popular until 2014 or so it’s when people were really on dating apps. And so it was kind of the perfect timing of I’ve been interested in online dating, but now there was this brand new thing of mobile dating apps that was perfect for me to research for my master’s thesis and then for articles beyond that. So, what really got me interested is that there were thousands of people using dating apps and they had become really popular, but very few of those people were actually meeting face to face. They were using them, but they weren’t using them for their intended purposes. That led to my research of, okay, they’re having all these great conversations like the hyper-personal model says, they’re using the apps, but they’re not meeting. So, why are they using the apps?
Zach: Right, what’s the point? Yeah. You had written about how some of that was about validation and almost like a game-like approach entertainment to using the dating apps. Maybe you could talk a little bit about those motivations for using the dating apps.
Jess: Yeah, definitely. For my master’s thesis, I looked at the reasons that people are using dating apps. So, they use the Gratification Theory that says that every media that we use, we are using it to gratify some need. The reason that we watch TV at night, a lot of people watch TV just for entertainment, some people will watch the news to get information, but you’re not going to use a form of media unless it is satisfying some type of need for you. So, if people are using dating apps, that means it’s satisfying a need. So my master’s thesis looked at why people were using them, and I found four primary reasons. Like you said, one is validation. People are using dating apps because it makes them feel good about themselves. Women are more likely to use it for this one because women get on dating apps, they upload pictures, and all of a sudden they’re bombarded with messages about how pretty they are. Right? So validation is a big reason for using them.
Zach: Yeah, I’d like that. Yeah.
Jess: Yeah, right? It’s like, okay, you’re having a down day, let’s have some strangers online tell me how pretty I am. Right? Another reason is entertainment. This is often used in social settings. Maybe people are just with their friends and they decide to open Tinder, and they’re swiping left or right but together. Like, the whole group is deciding, “Oh, swipe right on him. Swipe left on him.” It can be a group activity, right? Or it can be something instead of doom scrolling while you’re waiting for something to happen or if you’re in line at the grocery store, instead of doom scrolling online, maybe you’re swiping on a dating app. In those instances, they’re still on it, but it’s more so just like something to do. It’s like in place of playing a video game, it’s in place of being on Instagram. Those are two reasons, and those are the main ones that my research found that women use them. That being said, that research is about 10 years old, so I think the users have evolved since then. I did find that there’s two main reasons that men use them, which are different. Men are specifically using dating apps for relationships. Those could be serious relationships or just friendships, and they’re using them for hookups or casual sex. It differs a little bit based on gender of why people use them, but I did create this scale. It’s a 17-item scale. Think of it as a BuzzFeed quiz. You could take it, and your score would indicate what your main reasons are for using dating apps.
Zach: Oh, interesting. Is that something people can take online? Have you put that online?
Jess: Yeah, it’s on Google Scholar. I could send you a briefer version of it if you wanted to post it on your website or something.
Zach: Yeah, that’d be cool.
Jess: It’s just 17 items, like, “Agree or Disagree with all of these questions,” and then that will give you the reasons that you’re using dating apps.
Zach: Oh, you should turn it into a Facebook quiz, you know, one of those button-clicking kind of… You know? People love that stuff.
Jess: People love stuff like that. Yeah, I really should.
Zach: When it comes to the more validation entertainment things, you said that was more significant amongst women. How much more significant was it? Was it a really small percentage of men who do that kind of thing?
Jess: Yeah, a really small percentage. A lot of that has to do with the ways that dating apps are being used. A lot of men aren’t getting much validation from dating apps. There are significantly more men that are using them, and so just from those numbers alone, there’s a much wider pool of men to compliment women. And we’re talking specifically about heterosexual cisgender people right now. There’s a much wider pool of men to compliment women than vice versa. So a lot of men actually struggle with lower self-esteem when using dating apps because they’re not getting a lot of that validation. They’re sending out messages that aren’t getting responded to.
Zach: Like reverse validation.
Jess: Right. I’m sure that there are some who use it for entertainment, like in groups with their friends like women do, but if people aren’t responding, then it’s less entertaining. Women, the reason they can use it so well for entertainment, is they’re getting bombarded with all these messages. They can respond to them without putting a lot of thought in, if they don’t really care, just to see how the guy’s going to answer back. Versus with guys, if you’re just sending out silly messages and most of them don’t get responded to, that’s not as entertaining.
Zach: Did you get the sense that that would explain that during COVID when people were talking and not meeting up, did you get the sense that men were wanting to meet up but women were just not as willing to, and that helped explain why there was still so much activity on dating apps?
Jess: I haven’t looked at a lot of research of it during COVID. I would say that’s probably part of it. But also, people just needed social interaction during COVID.
Zach: And the hope of meeting up even if they wouldn’t do it immediately.
Jess: Right, maybe eventually meeting up. I know some people that would do virtual dates. They would meet on a dating app, and then their first couple of dates were over Zoom. I do think that probably men were still more wanting to meet up than women were during COVID because that’s pretty like standard for the case. But I do think that a big part of it, too, was just needing that social interaction. There was probably an increase in the number of people using dating apps. I downloaded TikTok because of COVID.
Zach: Something to do online. Yeah.
Jess: It’s just something you do because you’re stuck in your living room. Yeah.
Zach: To your point about it being a group fun activity, I actually heard there was an entertainment show in Portland-it might have been a traveling thing, I’m not sure, but a woman basically does an examination of guys that she’s seen on dating apps, and they all as a group, they all mock the guys and what they said and how their interactions went. Which struck me as kind of cruel, you know? But then again, they were defending it because they were like, “Well, these guys were really bad to us, or said really bad things.” It reminded me of using those things for entertainment, all crowding around and being like, “Let’s go through this together.” Yeah, it’s just kind of an interesting thing that stood out to me.
Jess: I was going to say I think that is a tricky thing because, on the one hand, yes, sometimes men are sending crazy stuff to women on dating apps. But then you also fall into this area of cyber bullying and public shaming. I don’t think either one is really right.
Zach: Yeah, there’s some gray areas I feel like where it’s like, “Was that really that bad what that guy?” There’s those gray areas where it could be debated, like, did he deserve all this?
Jess: Did he deserve that?
Zach: Maybe he was even having some… A lot of the public outrage things, I think some of them boil down to mental health things too, where it’s like, I don’t think that person is mentally well. The things that they’re sending people, should we really pile on publicly? You know, some of those things get in that area too.
Jess: And we’ve all said dumb stuff in conversations with strangers, so now that it can be so amplified-especially those Tiktok influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers, if they were to get on and say this one guy said this one rude thing to me, I don’t know if necessarily the outcome or backlash always matches what was happening. Yeah, there’s a lot of gray areas and a lot of different variables there.
Zach: Definitely room for debate on some of the instances.
Jess: Yeah.
Zach: I’m curious, do you want to talk about what you found most interesting in your research? For example, we had talked about discussing what causes people to swipe left or right. That that’s one topic. But I want to leave it open to anything that came to mind that was most interesting in what you’d researched.
Jess: Yeah, definitely. I can talk a little bit about the swiping right and left article. That’s one that people find really interesting. It’s one I teach in college, it’s one that I share with my college students because it has these really cool graphs and people think it’s interesting.
Zach: And it’s most practically useful for people using dating apps.
Jess: Yeah, people can look at it and use it as a guide of what to or not to include on their dating app profile. Right? For anyone who’s not familiar with dating apps, swiping right means that you are interested in someone, swiping left means that you’re not interested. Historically, we found differences in what men and women prioritize when looking for romantic partners. And so I was interested if that held true on dating apps as well. Just because it is more modern times, maybe people’s priorities are shifting. Also, when using dating apps, you’re not necessarily looking for a long term partner and so the things you’re interested in or care about might be different. So I asked one thousand college students, basically, what makes them swipe left or right, and I created- It’s called a semantic network analysis, but basically, I summarized all of their responses. When it comes to swiping right, it’s no surprise, both men and women, their top priority is attractiveness. If they find someone physically attractive, they’re more likely to swipe right on them or indicate interest.
I think that people will often see that result and say, “Oh, people are so shallow now.” Well, partially, maybe yes. But also, you have to think about the interface of dating apps and the information that is available. Most dating apps, the main thing that you can see is pictures. Right? Sometimes there’ll be maybe a couple little prompts with their responses to them, maybe a short bio of 200 words tops, but the main thing you have access to is pictures. And so if that’s all the information you have to go off of, of course it’s going to come down to physical attraction.
Zach: And haven’t people always been shallow in that regard? I mean…
Jess: Yeah. Sometimes people just make the argument that technology or social media has made people more shallow. I always go back to, you know, wealthy men used to pay people to paint pictures of them in front of their desks, and then they’d hang those paintings on their wall in their office.
Zach: Yeah, the appreciation of attractiveness has always been a human thing. But to your point, it is the one clear signal we get from the dating apps. Yeah.
Jess: Right. We can see what they look like, and that’s sometimes all the information we have to go off of. So physical attractiveness was a big thing, but men and women both also value people who have shared interests and hobbies with them. Those were big indicators of whether they were going to swipe right. I thought that some of the things for swiping left were more interesting. So, what people are saying like, “Oh no, that’s an automatic no.” For both men and women, things like smoking and drug use, they were swiping left on, which I thought that makes sense. But also things like bad spelling and grammar, people were really swiping left on bad spelling and grammar.
Zach: That’s interesting. Yeah.
Jess: Yeah. And the reasons for that, I think we can get more into the psychology of that in a little bit, but I think there’s reasons behind that that explain it more. People also really don’t like group photos. So, when people post a picture of a big group of them and their friends, they don’t like it. The reason for that is that you don’t know which person is the person you’re swiping right on.
Zach: Oh, interesting. You need like an arrow in there. [chuckles]
Jess: Right, you need an arrow or a circle or something. Because people don’t like having to play detective and figuring out which one in the picture you are.
Zach: That’s funny.
Jess: Yeah. Political affiliation also came into my results. Men were likely to swipe left on women who they described as super liberal. Women would slay left on anyone who had pictures of Confederate flags. Women also didn’t like people who seemed like party animals, and they also didn’t like… They described it as dead animals. But a lot of men will post pictures of the deer they shot or the fish they caught, and the pictures of the fish is the-
Zach: Yeah, the fish. That’s a cliche. They’re holding up the fish, right? I’ve heard that is a cliche.
Jess: Yes. That’s a real thing that happens, and women do not like it. So any men who have pictures of dead animals on their profile, I think they do it to show that they’re outdoorsy and they have these different hobbies. For whatever reason, most women do not like that.
Zach: They’re a provider.
Jess: Right. They’re a provider. We can take care of you. We can go kill our own food. We’re outdoorsy. But yeah, women don’t… Yeah.
Zach: There’s probably a scale of badness from like an oyster up to trophy game hunting for badness perception. It’s like the fish is probably better than “I killed this lion in Africa.”
Jess: Right, I would say so. I think that women would probably be more accepting of a fish from a fishing trip, versus, “Oh, I went on a safari and killed a zebra.” [chuckles]
Zach: Just put it out there to clarify the scale that we’re working with.
Jess: Yeah, I would definitely think there’s a difference between those two.
Zach: I harvested this oyster. It’s probably the least offensive on the scale of providing, if you want the providing photos. Yeah. Anyway, carry on with the…
Jess: There were other things. Men didn’t like a lot of excessive piercings or tattoos, which I thought was interesting. I thought that was also a symptom of where I collected the data. When I talked to college students, they were all in sort of rural parts of Indiana in the US, and I think that their responses may have differed if we were in like LA, for example.
Zach: Portland, for sure.
Jess: Yeah. I think the thing with the piercings and tattoos, that really depends on the sample of the population that you’re talking to. Men also didn’t like duck faces.
Zach: Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. That’s an interesting one. Because I get the sense a lot of women think that’s an attractive pose, but…
Jess: Not for guys. And I think it’s because when women make that face, it makes their face look slimmer, and so they think that it’s a more flattering angle because it makes your cheekbones stand out more and so it makes your face look slimmer. That’s a lot of the editing they do in beauty magazines that’s kind of seen as a standard of pretty, and so making that duck face makes your lips look bigger, which big lips are seen as pretty, and pronounced cheekbones are pretty according to just Western beauty standards.
Zach: Do you feel like there’s a scale there, too, where there’s probably better forms of the duck face, but too exaggerated? Is there some art to the duck face, basically?
Jess: I would say there’s definitely an art to a duck face. [both chuckle]
Zach: We need to research this.
Jess: Yeah, we should research the art to a duck face. Because I do think that the duck face is really just a pronounced pout, where a pouty lip look can kind of be seductive. And still is doing that same shape with your face. Duck face, I think, maybe came out of people over exaggerating that or maybe making fun of it.
Zach: Yeah, they’re doing an exaggerated Zoolander kind of pose or something.
Jess: Right, like this Blue Steel or whatever it was.
Zach: Yeah. I try to emulate that, but I can’t remember what it was.
Jess: Yeah, I don’t remember what it looks like. So I do think there’s an art to it, but yeah, guys are not a fan of the duck faces.
Zach: Yeah, interesting.
Jess: Women tend to also be pretty picky about the types of photos that men are posting. Not only are they not fans of group pictures, they don’t like low quality photos like things that are blurry. They don’t really like a lot of mirror selfies like standing taking your picture in front of the mirror. Shirtless selfies were also on there. I think that that depends on the context. It seems that women don’t like… They don’t like shirtless pictures if you’re only shirtless just to be shirtless. If you’re on the beach and you look good shirtless and it makes sense for the context, that’s okay. But if it’s like you’re in your bathroom and you just pop your top off and take a picture, they seem less receptive to that.
Zach: Yeah, I want to ask you about this. Maybe it relates to these unintentional signals we send, kind of thing. But for the mirror selfies, the thing that strikes me there why people might not like that is it signals you’re trying too hard. Maybe it signals you don’t have real photos to use, maybe you don’t have friends or a social life or something and maybe you have to resort to taking selfies in your bathroom. I don’t know if that’s maybe a signal that it sends, or what do you think people don’t like those?
Jess: Yeah, I would definitely agree with it. I think that’s part of it, especially if that’s all your photos. If all your photos are either you and your bathroom or your car, it’s like, okay, this is a person that doesn’t go places or doesn’t hang out with groups of people. Maybe they seem like a loner or maybe they seem like a homebody. I think it also signals vanity.
Zach: Yeah, like you’re sitting around taking photos in your bathroom, and that’s…
Jess: Like, “Oh, look at me in the mirror. Look at me in the mirror.” And I think that one thing that we do unfairly, but this is just like a psychological thing that everyone does, is with signaling theory or over attribution theory. So if we’re if we only have access to small amounts of information, we emphasize the significance that that information has. Everyone looks in the mirror every day, right? But if I have a picture of myself looking in a mirror, that may be subconsciously signaling to people like, oh, that person is vain. Right? Because they posted a picture of themselves in a mirror, and that just seems vain. The same thing as if, okay, we all get in our car every day and could potentially take pictures of ourselves in it, but if all your pictures in your profile are just pictures of you in your car, it’s like, oh, this person seems boring or they’re not going anywhere interesting.
Zach: Right. When you say it’s the same, I imagine it’s the same for a lot of these things. Like the shirtless photos from men, it signals a similar kind of like you’re trying… If there’s not a context for it, or even theoretically, if there was a context for it, the fact that you would post it kind of signals a vanity trying-too-hard-to-impress kind of signal. Do you agree with that?
Jess: Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. I think that it’s also attached to men who are just looking for casual sex, rather than more long-term things. Because if people are… The women they are are trying to attract with that, I think that subconsciously, people are thinking, “Oh, if you’re just going to post a bunch of shirtless pictures, it seems like you’re after something very specific.”
Zach: Right, which could be sophisticated on their part. They know what they’re trying to do, so they’re only attracting the people they want kind of thing.
Jess: Right. Yeah, and if that works, then great.
Zach: If it works, it works. Yeah.
Jess: Right. But then maybe women who are interested in something more serious aren’t going to slip right on that, because that signals to them that the man isn’t interested in something serious.
Zach: Yeah. And I think to your point, we can be prone to reading things wrongly, like putting too much emphasis on certain signals, like you said. Because there’s only so many signals we get. I think that accounts for some of the people being too picky in some cases where they’re like, “Oh, I read this thing as communicating something.” Let’s say the grammatical errors or something. Like, “I read these signals as communicating something significant about this person,” when in reality, it might not be that significant. The grammatical errors could be due the fact that they’re ESL and they’re actually writing English and speaking English at a very high level compared to, you know, they’re doing well on that front but we could be misinterpreting it. Or they could just be posting a picture at the beach because they thought it was a good photo to use and it doesn’t indicate that they’re vain or seeking a physical-only relationship. Just to say we can be prone to misinterpreting those signals. I’m not sure if that’s something that you’ve thought about or worked on in the signal theory dating areas.
Jess: Yeah, absolutely. I do teach, actually, my own intro to Communication Theory class now, and this is something that we talk about. It’s that a lot of times, what you think you’re signaling about yourself maybe isn’t what other people are receiving. So I think going back to the grammar and typos thing, how a lot of people said that they would swipe left on that, well, that’s because people value intelligence. Right? Or especially because these were college students, they value education. And so because we’re over-attributing just this one typo, now we’re saying, “Oh, this person’s dumb.” Well, it could have literally just been a typo. I’ve sent typos in emails all the time. I’ve spelled my own last name wrong in emails. And so it doesn’t mean… But because we only have such a small amount of information, that’s what we have to go off of. Same thing with just pictures of the beach. Maybe you’re like, “Oh, this was a really fun vacation and I thought the beach was really pretty behind me, I happen to be in a bathing suit because I’m at the beach and I’m going to upload it. But maybe people are interpreting that differently.
So I do think that one common mistake people make when they’re creating profiles is if they’re not getting as many matches or as much interest on their profiles as they expected or would like to, the first thing I always tell them is to go back and really pay attention to the messages you think that you’re sending because that might not be how people are receiving them.
Zach: Right. Yeah. And you’ve done some consulting for people that want to improve their getting profiles. Is that true?
Jess: Yes. And it all just started with some of my friends that I would see at coffee shops and stuff, and we would just be having casual conversations or someone would be like, “Oh my gosh, people never message me back.” And I’d be like, “Well, what first messages are you sending me?” And they’re like, “Oh, I just sent hey.” And it’s like, “Well, that’s why.” Right? So, yeah, I actually do some consulting work and I’ll have people give me like 25 bucks and I’ll look over their profile, and I guarantee results. If you don’t see an increase in the matches that you’re getting or in the messages that you’re getting back, I’ll give you your 25 bucks back. It’s just a fun little side hustle that I’m doing.
Zach: No, yeah. And it’s must be fun too.
Jess: It’s really fun.
Zach: And based on what I’ve seen, I actually interviewed a couple of people a couple years ago about their dating app experiences and I was talking about this one anecdote from an acquaintance-a woman I know-who was describing this guy who her and her friends knew and she just happened to see him on the dating apps. We were talking about his bio or his profile, and it was just so bad. It was like he was so clueless in how he came across. He came across as really bitter. I think he was trying to be funny, but he came across as just really bitter. It was almost like he was trying to be sarcastic about his bad experiences or something but it just came across very clueless and you’re like the chances of somebody being interested based on this profile of content that he wrote would be so slim. But yeah, to your point, it’s like there’s clearly a lot of people that could really benefit from looking at their profile from an outside perspective and thinking about those things. Because getting back to the incorrect perceptions we have, it’s like some of these things that we think indicate something really bad about people are just superficial, and if we actually hung out with them in person, they a lot of times might be much better than we assume.
Maybe that’s a way to segue into… I wanted to ask you about this ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ idea. I read some research on [00:36:11] Michael Norton had done some research on this and how it related to social media, which I think relates to dating apps too, where it’s like we can- Kind of the opposite of what you were talking about how we can bond really quickly when we start interacting, I think what can happen at the surface level on social media or dating apps is we see one thing that turns us off, and then we kind of write those people off too much, whereas if we actually got to know them, we’d see much more positive things and even the things we dislike might be perceived in a more positive form. That was the gist of that ‘familiarity breeding contempt’ research was that we can be prone to alienating ourselves from other people. I think it applies to the political polarization sphere too, in how we wrongly perceive acquaintances from one thing as being completely against us in all these different ways, or whether it’s just for personal relationships too, like how it impacts our personal and romantic relationships and such. But I wanted to ask if you thought much about those aspects and how maybe dating apps are doing similar things in the social media sphere of driving us away from each other a little bit too much.
Jess: Yeah, there is this problem of… One of the side effects of dating apps is that we are overwhelmed by choice. You can just get on your phone and swipe through hundreds of people in a matter of minutes. It’s led to what they’re calling ‘throwaway culture’ where maybe I go on one date with somebody and the first date goes well, but maybe I said one thing that I didn’t like. And because I’ve got fifty other matches on my phone, then I’m automatically dismissing that person. It also can lead to people being overly picky on dating profiles, where it’s because they have so many choices available to them that maybe because someone’s religious feelings don’t completely align with theirs, they’re going to automatically just swipe left on them. Whereas it used to be if you had fewer choices, maybe that’s something that you could compromise about, right? Or maybe that’s something that you could work through. But on dating apps, because we have so many options…
There’s a the psychological phenomenon in communication where you are less civil. You’re more likely to be in civil online than you are face-to-face. And we have all seen people saying crazy stuff in comment sections online that they would never say if you were together in Target. And so it also has that effect that happens on dating apps as well, where we’re more likely to just dismiss people because of small things because of this throwaway culture. And we’re more likely to be really rude about it because we have this distance between us. We’re protected by a screen, so we’re not seeing direct consequences of our actions. If we were face to face and I said something really rude to someone, I would have to see what that did to them in their body language or them just turning and walking away. But when you’re protected by a screen, you don’t have to see the consequences of that.
Zach: I’ve seen some of that in some of those viral things that they share where people are rude to each other in the dating apps. Some of those have the sense of escalation, where it’s like one person says something that’s not really that bad, and the other person kind of ramps it up a bit and the other person ramps it up. I have a feeling that must be happening. Just like in the political spheres, there’s this escalation cycle where we take the other person’s statement in the worst possible way, especially because we’re distant from each other, and then it just goes haywire from there.
Jess: Yeah, absolutely. I have actually done some research in political discussions on different social media platforms, and what you’re describing is an incivility spiral where one person will say something that’s maybe just a slight disagreement, but then it will spiral into name-calling and threats and all these crazy things. That can happen on dating apps as well because, like you said, people are interpreting things potentially in the most negative way possible. When it comes to text, the actual words we write are communicating very little of our message. So [00:40:38] Media Richness theory tells us that just like sending emails back and forth or sending texts back and forth is not a very rich form of communication, meaning there aren’t a lot of signs or signals that are getting sent besides just the words. So going back to your point about how some people are trying to be funny or sarcastic on profiles, sometimes that can come across as really jaded or rude, because humor is just difficult to- [crosstalk]
Yeah, it’s hard to get without tone. Right? I think that’s another reason that incivility spirals happen so much online. Maybe people are joking around or being sarcastic or being kind of tongue-in-cheek about it, but we’re interpreting it as literal and offensive. That can quickly spiral out of control.
Zach: Yeah, there’s just so many ways to misunderstand people when it’s only text. I actually keep a Google Doc of examples of colleague or work-related misunderstandings based on saying something completely innocuous and the other person taking offense of it. Because I think that’s very interesting, and it’s much more prone to happen when it’s text only.
Jess: Yeah, absolutely.
Zach: Do you want to talk… I don’t know if we exhausted all your points about things that really bothered people in the dating profiles. Did anything else stand out as surprising things to you?
Jess: Um, let’s see one thing. I guess this wasn’t surprising, but I feel like there’s more to talk about with this one. So, women would say that men who seemed like they were party animals, they would tend to swipe left on. They weren’t interested in party animals. And I think it’s interesting that you could identify someone as a party animal just based on four pictures and maybe responses to a couple questions. And I think again, that goes back to over attribution of you only have so much to go off of. I even do this. When I used to be on dating apps-I don’t drink alcohol, so if someone had more than one picture of them holding an alcoholic beverage, I’d swipe left. And I know that’s not fair. I know it’s not fair. Because it could just be they like the picture of them. It doesn’t necessarily mean that like drinking is important to them. But because they only have so few pictures, I’m like, “Oh, if one quarter of your pictures is you holding a cocktail…” And I was doing it too, knowing that I was doing it.
Zach: Right, which I think gets into… I mean, for better or for worse, there can be value to using stereotypes even if we know that they’re not accurate. Because if you only have limited time on a dating app, it’s like, sure some of those people that you categorize as a party animal might not be. But you only have limited time yourself, so using some sort of algorithm to deduce things is an understandable approach. Which gets into the importance of why it is important to think about the signals you send.
Jess: Yeah, it’s narrow information processing, which means that we don’t have time to study every aspect of your profile. Especially on dating apps, I think it’s like within two to three seconds of looking at the profile, most people make up their mind about whether they’re swiping right or left. I think I used to take a little bit longer than that, but on average it’s two to three seconds. So we’re relying on all of these cognitive shortcuts to decide whether we’re interested or not, and sometimes it can just come down to, “Oh, does this person give a…” A lot of times it comes down to vibes. People be like, “Oh, do they give a creepy vibe? Do they give a party vibe?” So I do think it’s useful to have someone look at your profile and give feedback and say, “Hey, did you mean to sound this way right here?” Or, “Oh, the fact that you have only pictures of you in your living room, why would you not post something from your trip to Paris last year?” Sometimes I think it just takes an outside perspective.
Zach: Yeah, it’s almost like if you see a red solo cup and a ping pong ball, you make some deductions about that person’s lifestyle.
Jess: Right, and often unfairly. It could just be them and their best friend in the picture.
Zach: They just went to a cool party.
Jess: Right, they love their shirts in that picture.
Zach: Yeah, they like their face.
Jess: Yeah.
Zach: What about photos? How many people post photos where it crops really hard, like they cut their ex out of the picture? Does that come into play? [chuckles]
Jess: That’s a thing. I find that men do that a lot more than women do, and I think that’s mostly just because men take fewer pictures.
Zach: Yeah, exactly. I was going to say it. Because I can relate to that, where it’s like I don’t have that many good pictures because I take very few pictures, so I’m reduced to thinking about, “Can I crop people out?”
Jess: Right. You’ll see where clearly they had gone to a wedding together, and then oops! And it’s cut and that’s the end of it.
Zach: Hard crop.
Jess: Right, hard crop. And I think that cropping them out is better than leaving them in. Women are more likely to swipe left if there are both genders. Both groups are more likely to swipe left if there’s someone of the other gender in their pictures.
Zach: Yeah, because you’re like is it just a baggage thing of there might be some hang-ups if they’re using that photo or something?
Jess: Right. Or maybe this is their best friend, and maybe you don’t want them to have a hot blonde as their best friend.
Zach: It’s some sort of obstacle of some sort. Yeah.
Jess: Right, it sends some type of signal and there could be a lot of reasons for it. But a lot of times, I think that it’s a sister or an aunt or something, and if they don’t specifically say that, then you’re getting swiped left on because they think it’s like, “Oh, he hangs out with all of these women, that seems interesting.” [chuckles] But yeah, I do think that it’s very common for men to have really close crafts, or I see even them put just an emoji over the girl’s face. And it’s just because they’re not taking as many pictures of themselves, a lot of those times, those pictures are the ones where they were the most dressed up and think they look the best.
Zach: Right, makes sense. Yeah.
Jess: So maybe if you are on dating apps, make more of an effort to just take some pictures of just you. I think that all men could benefit from just taking more pictures of themselves.
Zach: But not necessarily in the mirror in the bathroom.
Jess: Yeah, not necessarily topless in the mirror.
Zach: Yeah, topless in the bathroom. That’s the worst combo. Holding a fish in the bathroom is even worse.
Jess: [laughs] Fish in the bathroom. Yeah, we don’t want that. That’s a bad combination.
Zach: I was going to ask… Oh, yeah, it made me think that you could probably create a pretty cool algorithmic… Sorry, there’s a loud bird. I don’t know if you can hear that. You could probably create a pretty cool algorithm using visual identification or picture identification algorithms, where it’s parsing people’s profiles for liquor bottles, red solo cups, a hard crop, all these kinds of things we’ve talked about that would automatically analyze and reduce it to some sort of stereotype, which is kind of like emulating what people are doing on their own. But it just made me think there’s probably some interesting algorithm where you could analyze somebody’s lifestyle just from the pictures and run it through some app.
Jess: Yeah. No, you definitely could. There are.. Which one is it? Hinge, I believe will go… If you give it permission to go through your Camera Roll, it will select your best photos for you.
Zach: Oh, wow, interesting.
Jess: But it’s not a super smart algorithm. Sometimes it doesn’t realize who is you and if that’s a really pretty picture of your sister. So you do have to double-check it.
Zach: But it’s helping you. Because it knows what works. The apps know what kind of pictures work and get the-
Jess: Yeah, the apps know what’s working and so it can go through and be like, “Oh yeah, these four are your pictures that are most likely to get good responses.”
Zach: Yeah, that’s interesting. Anything else you want to mention that we haven’t covered that you find really interesting in these areas?
Jess: Um, let’s see. Is there anything else? I don’t think so. We’ve talked about… I have some notes here I’m going through.
Zach: I think we covered a good amount.
Jess: I think we did too.
Zach: Do you want to mention… You’re doing some jury trial consulting? Is that the same? I was wondering, is jury consulting the same as trial consulting?
Jess: Sometimes people use them interchangeably. Jury consulting is like a subcategory. So, trial consulting is like every process of the trial you can be a consultant for. Jury consulting is specifically related to aspects of the jury. That could be the jury selection process, it could be looking at mock trials to see how the jury responds, it could be prepping witnesses specifically to talk to specific jury members. But yeah, jury consulting is just a little bit more specific than trial consulting. Trial consulting could be the whole grand scheme of the trial.
Zach: Were you doing the jury consulting?
Jess: Yeah, I was doing specific jury consulting. My first case that I was brought on for was just one year, and then a little bit of witness prep in terms of we helped select the jury and then came up with kind of some of the best techniques of how witnesses could explain their side of the story in a way that was going to resonate the most with the jurors. Yeah. It also helps to once you know who the jury is, there are certain things that attorneys can do too that are going to relate to that jury more. So I think very often the attorneys think, “Well, we’ll just give them the facts of the case.” Facts sound a little bit different and are interpreted differently based on who you’re giving the facts to. If you have someone who has a lot of experience maybe in healthcare, and you’re doing a medical malpractice case, and one of your jurors works in healthcare, you’re going to want to approach that in a certain way. So some of what we do is looking at who the jury is, coming up with some of their demographics and their characteristics, how they’re likely to believe or how they’re likely to feel about certain things, and coaching the attorneys on the best way to present the facts. And really, what about the story to emphasize that is going to resonate with the jurors most?
Zach: Yeah, that stuff is very interesting. I was remembering the interview I did of Christina Marinakis, the jury consultant, and that stuff is very interesting.
Jess: It’s so interesting.
Zach: Well, maybe we can talk about that one day in the future, your work on that front.
Jess: Yeah.
Zach: Yeah. Well, this has been great. Anything else you want to add before we sign off, Jess?
Jess: No. Just, if anyone is interested in consulting, whether that’s trial consulting or they would just want some quick feedback on their dating profile, you can just message me on LinkedIn.
Zach: Okay, thank you.
Jess: Thank you so much.
Zach: That was a talk with Jess Snitko. You can get a link to her LinkedIn at the entry for this episode on my site, behavior-podcast.com, and that entry will have links to other things that we talked about in this episode. I’m Zach Elwood, thanks for your interest in this podcast and for watching it. Okay, bye-bye. Music by small skies.