It seems like if you’re posing for a portrait, there are some common-sense rules. Look at the camera lens. Don’t hold a phone in front of your face. But somehow when people use a mirror to take their own portrait, these basic rules are forgotten. I documented 100 consecutive mirror selfies on popular dating apps (Bumble, Coffee Meets Bagel, Hinge, The League, and Tinder), noting whether they failed and how. The main conclusion: The vast majority failed.
Out of 100 mirror selfies, in 69, the woman stared at her phone screen instead of looking up. (I understand the need to glance at the screen to frame a shot, but I don’t understand the difficulty in glancing up when it’s time to press the button.) Of those, in about half (34), the phone actually obscured part or all of her face. Surely, even when staring at the screen, the fact that one’s face is obscured should be apparent.
Of the rest, the phone obscured the face in 5. In 10, people were oh-so-close to success: They looked at the mirror, but stared at the reflection of their eyes instead of that of the lens, so they appeared to be looking away from the viewer rather than making eye contact. And then there were 16 winners: The women looked at the lens in the mirror and did not block their face. (Whether they failed in other ways, such as by making a duck face, or taking their selfie in a public restroom, I didn’t note. I also put aside for now wether using a mirror selfie on your profile is a fail in itself; certainly it’s not ideal.)
It’s really kind of a shame. I’m not sure I can see myself marrying someone who believes in a god. I’m also not sure I can see myself marrying someone who doesn’t understand mirrors.
A few notes on methodology and interpretation:
Sixteen percent is statistically significantly different from the expected, or hoped for, 100% (p<.001). Despite the headline, the sample was not necessarily a representative sample of women, or even of women on these dating apps; numbers may differ among different demographics (age, location). Some women apparently obscure their faces with their phones because they specifically do not want to show their faces on their profiles; if a profile included no clear pictures of the woman’s face, I didn't count it. I counted only one mirror selfie per profile, the first to appear. I surveyed only women’s profiles, but I have no reason to assume men would be any better; judging by a Google image search,
they are not.
There are a few possible reasons for so many “failures.” Maybe people don’t fully grasp how reflections work. Maybe they do if they put their minds to it but can’t be bothered to think about it. Maybe they don’t realize how easy it is to look up for a second after framing a shot. Maybe they do but can’t be bothered. Maybe they don’t feel these “failures” are actually failures and think it looks good to be staring at one'e phone or using it to block one'e face, or at least think it looks no worse than the alternatives. But I would hate to conclude that 84% of mirror-selfie-takers are ignorant, stupid, lazy, and/or tacky, in part because of what it might say about humanity in general. If you have other hypotheses, please share them in the comments below. I am hopeful there's a more generous interpretation for these results.
In the end, my judgement of "failure" is subjective. For an objective judgment, one would need a controlled experiment in which people held a pose, took back-to-back mirror selfies with different techniques, and then used them in otherwise identical profiles in a dating app. Then we could see which techniques led to more matches. (Alas, there would remain some subjectivity, as different techniques might lead to different types of matches, and one would then have to judge which matches were "better.") A less controlled experiment might simply compare the popularity of profiles with different types of mirror selfies, but it could be that different types of people take different types of mirror selfies, and other personal traits lead to differences in popularity. That potential confound suggests another research question, though: What does your selfie style say about you? One could correlated them with age, education, or personality as inferred from textual analysis. If you work at a dating app and would like to collaborate, please contact me.
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