Study: Women Who Message First On Dating Apps Score Hotter Dates
Most women don’t want to message guys first on dating apps. But according to a new study, we should do it way more often because it can result in dates with people who are considered more attractive.
Recently, OkCupid released data describing the “woman’s advantage” in dating apps. And it turns out that if more women took note of the Bumble method and sent out the first message, they’d be rewarded.
Why? Because everybody on OkCupid and likely all dating apps is a “reacher.” Men tend to message women who are approximately 17 percentage points higher in attractiveness, whereas women contact men who are around 10 percentage points more attractive.
So basically, everyone’s trying to shoot for the stars here. The messages that women are receiving are generally from dudes who are considered less attractive than them. And the messages women are sending tend to go to guys who are considered more attractive than them.
By the way, we’re not just talking about hotness — these ratings of “attractiveness” are not solely based on looks, but rather based on the amount of “likes” that a user receives from other users which tends to involve profile information in addition to photos.
So we’re all messaging people who are out of our league. The difference, though, is that the guys women message are more likely to date us.
Yup, when women take the lead and message guys, we end up dating better guys. You may be wondering to yourself, “but if a woman is reaching out to a guy that’s out of her league, won’t he just ignore the message?” Sure, this might happen, but according to another OkCupid statistic, men are much more likely to respond to messages than women are, which shouldn’t be a surprise considering that dudes are hyped to find a girl that had the guts to message first.
Even if said dude doesn’t respond to your first message, so what? You may feel a millisecond’s worth of a blow to your confidence, but you’ll probably be too busy dodging messages from the hundreds of other guys flooding your inbox. Don’t limit your boldness to Bumble, show your confidence throughout your other dating apps and watch yourself reap the benefits.
