Identifying Profile Photos That Reveal More Than Meets the Eye While Dating

Some dating app users resort to deceptive or strategic tactics to present themselves in a more favorable light. While only sometimes malicious, these tricks can create a mismatch between expectation and reality. Here are some common dating profile tricks.

Petfishing

Lots of people love animals, and an adorable pet in a profile picture can make the person appear more nurturing and likable by association. It leaves the impression that the person is caring and compassionate. Some users might exaggerate their love for animals or even borrow a pet for a cute picture.

This tactic backfires easily, as people.com reports that 40% of dating app users swipe right just to meet someone’s dog. 39% of participants in the same survey revealed that they borrowed a friend’s dog for their picture.

Hatfishing

Hatfishing is the act of posting images to a dating profile while covering the head with a hat or another head cover. This is done to conceal baldness, a receding hairline, or, in the best case, a bad haircut.

Group photos

When someone posts a group photo, it often becomes unclear who the profile owner is. The person might seem more social and fun when others surround them. What’s more, standing next to an attractive friend can sometimes make someone appear better by association or even harder to spot.

Group photos can be confusing for the person viewing the profile, leading to frustration if they can’t easily identify who they’re supposed to be looking at. It gets even worse if the profile owner doesn’t immediately shed light on the situation.

Bodyfishing

Bodyfishing involves using strategic poses or cropping to conceal certain aspects of the body, like only showing shoulders up or wearing bulky clothes to hide weight. This often creates a distorted expectation about someone’s body type, which can lead to awkward moments upon meeting in real life.

Heightfishing

Tall men are attractive, according to 96% of women, with 6′1 being cited as the perfect height for a man. Men on dating sites know this, and some might try to conceal their height. Posting pictures next to someone even shorter than them or altering background details are two examples of heightfishing.

How common are misleading photos?

A survey of 2,004 single Americans who used dating apps like Match.com and Tinder revealed that 51% of men lied on their dating profiles, compared to 44% of women.

The most common lie was about current hairstyles, followed by careers (61% resp. 55%). An earlier study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin found that 80% of people lied about themselves in the context of online dating.

Spotting altered photos

Then there are those photos that aren’t just misleading but also altered. The main giveaway that an image has been tweaked is abnormal lighting. The source of light should be reflected in people’s eyes. If they look different between the eyes or the size and color don’t match the location, it could be a cause for doubt. How objects and subjects appear on reflective surfaces can also provide clues.

If the image has been assembled from several images, shadows of objects might not line up. It helps to look at how light plays across the person’s face. Their ears might look red if they have their backs to the sun. AI can produce inconsistent lighting and shadows, but people are starting to perceive AI-generated faces as more real than human ones as algorithms improve.

AI still needs to improve at rendering ears and hands, mangling their proportions and shapes. As other aspects of fake images become more “real,” these imprecisions come to the fore. The unnatural or unusual positioning of clothes or limbs in an image can indicate that the person copied or altered a portion of the image in some way.

One test is to look at other elements of the picture in the same field of position and focus. It helps to consider if the breeze is ruffling them in the same way or if they look blurry compared to nearby features.