All of G-Max's Comments + Replies

I would prefer not to.

If you don't comprehend signals, it's quite possible that everyone else is signalling (and thus signalling can be determined from their pictures) but you are not (and thus it can't be determined from yours). So looking at your own pictures isn't going to demonstrate anything useful.

There is quite a bit of information. There is the earring; there is the facial expression, the pose, the bright, harsh artificial lighting, the flower in the hair. Let me consider the earring. The earring suggests both a pierced ear and sufficient disposable income to spend on the earring (and on the original piercing itself). The earring is large enough that it is designed to be noticed, to be seen; which implies that it is there to carry a message. It would be troublesome worn near live animals, small babies, or certain types of industrial machinery (or anything else that is likely to grab and pull); implying that she considers it unlikely that she is going to run into any of those in the near future. It also implies that she expects it to be seen; that is, she expects there to be enough people (probably strangers) around to see it. This requirement is, of course, fulfilled by the fact that the photo is going on a dating website; however, few people will purchase an earring for merely a single occasion. It is likely that the earring was purchased with the anticipation that it would be worn on multiple occasions, which in turn implies that the wearer of the earring would be seen by many strangers on multiple occasions. This implies an urban, rather than a rural, earring-wearer, as urban people are seen by strangers more regularly. (It doesn't prove urbanity, but it's enough evidence to update in the direction of urbanity). It's probable that someone else can tell more from the earring, but that's what I see in it. (I haven't mentioned what else I see in that picture, because I am deliberately concentrating on a single signal for demonstrative purposes).

That doesn't matter. Raters only have to think there are signals, and this subthread is an existence proof of such belief. That said, the preponderance of "1" ratings AND the excessively high number of messages received suggests to me that there is in fact something weird going on. Dishonest rating would be one reasonable hypothesis, among several.

Do you believe that the print on a graphic T-shirt carries information? Or, say, smiling? Because that's what we're dealing with here: a set of generally understood markers that you can wear or signify through your behavior or its context. Just because you don't see or, presumably, participate in it doesn't mean that it can't be a viable channel for others. I'm not especially keen on taking you up on your earlier offer, because it would be too easy to select unrepresentative photos. But imagine that some third party dug up... oh, let's say a hundred photos like these, of men of similar age and ethnicity. I'll bet at almost any odds that observers with typical neurology and relevant cultural experience could look at those photos and use them to gauge the subjects' social class, place of residence, musical taste, hobbies, and dozens of other things at rates better than chance. Much better, if they're good at it.

It looks like a signal to me. Maybe we're misinterpreting, but if so, we have multiple people making the same mistake.

Being neurotypical allows an interesting strategy; a neurotypical person can look at someone else, and ask themselves "under what circumstances would I, or someone like me, adopt that facial expression, adopt that posture, wear those clothes?" The answer to this question then becomes the first approximation for the answer to the question "what are that person's circumstances?" Of course, it only works if the other person is also neurotypical; but, since most people are (hence the 'typical') that is usually a fairly minor downside. Using this on non-neurotypical people can lead to entertainingly wrong conclusions. (It also helps a lot if both people are from the same culture).

Whether or not the subcultural signals are there or not, the only thing that matters if you want an explanation of the "1"s is whether many people would think that the subcultural signals are there. And I think that we've established that enough people not only think so, but don't understand why you can't see them.

Yes, proper estimates look like this: As for the signals, I will confirm: you are bad at reading these sorts of signals. (The most obvious one is the sexuality signal, which is determined by her pose leaning forward and the placement of her hand.)

There's nothing there that can prove anything I've mentioned, but there's quite a bit to suggest it. Sure, it's theoretically possible that I could be totally wrong; signals like this give evidence, not hard data. But I'd still bet at long odds that I've got most of it right. Particularly in this context. We're talking about pictures heading a dating site profile, not random photos dug out of someone's sock drawer; now, people do vary in their ability to control the impression they give, but within that scope people on a dating site are going to have clear goals that they'll tailor their profiles toward. Clothes, setting, body language, and photography all carry information that gets used to attract those they want to attract, and to deter those they don't. And very little about that photo looks accidental to me.

I haven't used OKCupid in a couple of years, but when I did, there were two paths to giving someone a star rating. You could look at their regular profile, usually including several pictures and a couple screens of text, and click a control at the top to rate it; or you could enter a quick matching system that'd show you up to three pictures and an abbreviated version of their profile text. (There were a lot of jokes about how no one reads the text, but I got the impression that most people at least skimmed it.) There was also a "My Best Face" feature that did look at individual pictures, but that used an up/down rating system rather than the star ratings, and context here suggests that we're talking about profiles. Not that any of that matters here, since everything I said in the grandparent depends only on the photos. If you can't see subcultural signaling in the picture on the right, I don't know what to tell you. She's fairly clearly urban rather than rural, and at least middle-class but probably not upper-; she's communicating a specific type of sexuality; and she's likely into the alternative fashion scene in some way; there are other things she's saying but those are the most obvious ones. You could call it "hipster", but that's less kind and more general than what I have in mind. The picture on the left is far less culturally marked, although I could probably venture a couple of good guesses. (Not my downvote, by the way.)

Or you're typical-minding? I'd give her a 4, but that doesn't mean that anyone and everyone is going to feel the same way. In my experience at least, perceptions of attractiveness are higher varience than most other preferences-and "no accounting for taste" is a proverb for a reason.

People who don't like the subcultural signals she's throwing out. The OKCupid ratings aren't supposed to be some kind of objective measure of beauty; they're supposed to capture the rater's subjective impression of how much they'd like to get to know the person in the photo. That means they end up depending on a lot of things other than raw physical attractiveness. A while back, lukeprog wrote on low-variance and high-variance strategies in the dating market. His examples were a guy in business casual and a guy in full goth regalia, but something similar's going on here.

I had to look up who she is. Apart from anything else, she's 74 years old, so not a part of this. But looking at her on Google Images, I noticed that I could tell just by looking at the picture whether it linked to a pro-Pelosi or anti-Pelosi web page. I guess that for Americans, how attractive someone thinks Nancy Pelosi is correlates rather well with political affiliation. She does have good teeth for her age.

There's plenty of research on reliability of rating scales - and the sweet spot seems to be a range from 7-10 choices at least according to quite a few studies designed to address this directly. An influential paper in this regard is Preston & Coleman's (2000) "Optimal number of response categories in rating scales: reliability, validity, discriminating power, and respondent preferences." link to PDF Abstract: Or if one prefers a more analytic approach, here's a 2012 conference proceedings paper by Kluver et al "How many bits per rating?" link to PDF

Don't knock it 'til you try it.