How to Take the Perfect Profile Picture

Turning 30 and still using your college crop out picture? Using your work / linked in photo? Is your picture not even you?? ALL BAD. Not equally all bad, but still bad. In this digital age we’re living where we probably communicate too much on social media and can multitask like it’s nothing – we need to look as good as we can on these sites that are ruling our lives right?!? That sounded terrible, but really, if we can’t ditch our phones like we might like to, we may as well take these tips from research to kill the selfie game.

Bump Up Your Perceived Competence, Likability, and Influence

• Eye blockage from sunglasses significantly harms your impression, lowering your likability
• Wide open eyes commonly denote fear, whereas slightly squinted eyes portray comfort and confidence
• A shadow line that outlines the jaw all the way around gives off competence, likability, and influence
• A smile with teeth visible scores high with competence and influence, but most highly, likability
  
• Wearing a dark suit with a light collared shirt scores very high in regards to competence and influence
  

Things to avoid:

• Hats
• Sunglasses
• Hair, glare, and shadows over the eyes
• Laughing smile
• Sexiness

 

To look approachable pay close attention to your mouth, it makes total sense- as previous research shows that your smile is the key to approachability. To look youthful, it’s all about the eyes – previous research shows large eyes are correlated with a youthful appearance. Dominance is correlated with a more masculine look – a strong jaw line, strong eye contact, and eyebrow height.

Why is the picture key??

OkCupid ran a study examining “the picture and the text together” and  “the picture alone” and found that the text is less than 10% of what people think of you. 

 

 

Now when you actually take this picture, remember the Rule of Thirds. Think a large hashtag over your image (which should be at least 600 pixels wide) “these intersections are where the eye is most likely to be drawn.”

 

OkCupid also found some gender differences:

• For a woman’s profile picture, the greatest effects were noticed when looking at the camera.
• For a man’s profile picture, the greatest effect came when looking away from the camera.

Try it Before You Change It

Wanna try out your picture before you post it?? PhotoFeeler comes in clutch. You upload a photo and people rate you… seriously.