Do looks really matter most in online dating?

If you’ve ever spent time fine-tuning your dating app bio only to get fewer matches than you’d hoped, you’re not alone. A new study suggests that your bio may matter less than you think, and that your photos do most of the heavy lifting.

But before you close your apps in despair, take a breath: Those findings tell us something important about the first impression stage of dating, not the whole journey. And there are encouraging lessons there for anyone navigating today’s digital dating world.

What Matters Most in a Swipe?

To test which profile traits actually determine daters’ swiping decisions, Witmer, Rosenbusch, and Meral (2025) created realistic dating profiles and asked 445 participants in Germany to make swipe decisions between them.

The profiles varied in:

• Physical attractiveness (the profile picture)
• Height
• Occupation
• Biography text (the ‘bio’)
• Intelligence (shown as an IQ score)
• Similarity to the user in looks, intelligence, or height

Their finding: The photo dominated the decision. A more attractive profile picture dramatically boosted someone’s odds of being chosen. Other factors, i.e., bio, job, intelligence, similarity, helped a little, but nowhere near as much.

Why Do Looks Matter So Much (Online)?

Researchers have been studying mate preferences for decades. In survey research, men often say they value physical attractiveness, while women emphasize the importance of traits like intelligence, kindness, or financial stability. But when researchers look at the actual choices we make, this picture changes. Several speed-dating studies found that people’s stated preferences rarely match the partners they actually choose. For example, someone might say that intelligence is their top priority, yet when meeting face-to-face, physical appeal often outweighs everything else (Todd et al., 2007). In other words, what people say they want or value does not always align with what they actually go for (Eastwick & Finkel, 2008).

Online dating seems to magnify this disconnect. Most dating apps are designed for quick, almost reflexive decisions, as users swipe left or right in seconds. With profile pictures displayed first and text often tucked away, looks become the fastest — and sometimes the only — piece of information people process before making a choice. Add to that the enormous volume of profiles and the game-like design of swiping, and appearance often ends up carrying far more weight than people admit or even realize.

The importance of attractiveness can be explained through the “halo effect”: When we have a positive impression of someone (such as attractiveness), we unconsciously assume they also have other positive qualities like kindness, humor, or intelligence (Langlois et al., 2000). Thus, a photo creates an instant mental shortcut to evaluate the other person, while reading a bio takes effort most swipers don’t invest.

Words of Encouragement

At first glance, these findings might feel discouraging or superficial. But (luckily) there’s more to the story.

1. Attractiveness is more flexible than we think: “What is good, is beautiful.” What counts as “attractive” isn’t just about facial symmetry or model looks. Smiles, eye contact, body language, grooming, lighting, and authenticity can all boost how others perceive your appearance (and your profile pictures). Also, attractiveness is further shaped by other perceptions we have of a person. In one experiment, for example, simply reading a positive description of someone’s honesty made their face appear more attractive, even when their appearance didn’t change (Niimi & Goto, 2023). This suggests that while photos are critical for first impressions, attractiveness is determined by many things, which means you have many ways to make your profile stand out.
2. There’s huge diversity in preferences. Even though looks mattered most, individual tastes vary widely. The same face that fails to impress one person might be seen as perfect by another (Ibáñez-Berganza et al., 2019). And similarity (homophily) matters too: People gravitate more toward people (or profiles) that feel familiar or relatable.
3. Other features can help level the field. Certain dating apps, like Hinge or Bumble, give more space for personality — for example, through prompts or voice notes. These features allow intelligence, humor, and values to shine through, which can make swiping slower and more intentional.
4. Looks only decide the first swipe. This study measured initial selection, not what keeps someone interested. In the long run, factors such as personality, shared values, emotional connection, and communication play a far bigger role. A photo may start a connection, but it won’t sustain a relationship.
5. This one study doesn’t tell the whole story. The research by Witmer and colleagues (2025) is eye-opening, but it’s not the last word on attraction. For starters, the pictures in the profiles in their study weren’t of actual people, but were AI-generated. This means that little quirks and the warmth and individuality that characterizes humans may have been missing. Without those, general perceptions of physical attractiveness may have seemed even more important in informing swiping decisions than it may usually be. Also, as the authors also suggest, the experimental design may have induced a short-term dating mindset, which tends to inflate the importance of physical attractiveness over other qualities. This also aligns with the idea that real attraction is a process, not a moment. What makes you swipe right in the heat of the moment is not always what future decisions are based on, such as what makes you want a second date or what keeps you interested months or years down the line.

In the end, your profile is just the doorway: Pick photos and words that make it nice to walk through, but know that what really matters is what they find once they step inside.