It's Official—Posting Sexy Facebook Photos Makes People Think You're Incompetent
So, it's official. Putting up a sexy Facebook profile pic—if you're a woman anyway—makes everyone hate you and treat you like crap. Well, that's kind of a massive generalisation but a recent detailed study (always the source of all journalistic truth) by Oregon State University has indicated that if you post a sexy pic your peers see you as "less physically and socially attractive and less competent to perform tasks."
Researcher and assistant professor of psychology Elizabeth Daniels set up two fake Facebook profiles for a non-existent 20-year-old called Amanda Johnson. Each account said it liked things such as Lady Gaga, the Twilight books (that's enough to make me hate anyone) and various other pieces of popular culture that the average 20-year-old likes.
But what differed in the accounts was the profile pic. One had Amanda wearing a revealing red dress—cleavage, thigh and garter belt showing. The other had her wearing jeans, a white shirt and a scarf—not so revealing. Then volunteers rated her on a scale of 1-7 on a number of questions relating to the pics—is she attractive, would you be her friend, could she get a job done, etc.
When they counted up the scores, the non-sexy photo scored higher. Indicating that among female peers you're seen as a less desirable friend and less competent to perform tasks (where the biggest score difference was) if your profile pic is revealing. Not sure what tasks exactly, but hey. "This is a clear indictment of sexy social media photos," said Daniels. Someone better tell Rihanna.
Maybe they should try this with those Russian social media pics and see what the results are. Or how about people who post endless duckfaces? How would their peers rate them? Actually, I think we all know the answer to that one.
