What Science Says Actually Gets You Matches
You spent 45 minutes crafting the perfect bio.
You agonized over every word. Added a witty joke. Mentioned your love of hiking and tacos. Maybe threw in a self-deprecating line to seem approachable.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: it barely matters.
I'm not saying this to be harsh. I'm saying it because researchers have measured what actually drives swipes. And the results will probably frustrate you.
The Study That Changes Everything
In 2025, researchers at the University of Amsterdam published the most comprehensive study on dating app behavior to date. Witmer, Rosenbusch, and Meral analyzed 5,340 real swiping decisions from 445 dating app users in Germany.
Their goal was simple: figure out what actually makes people swipe right.
The results weren't close.
Improving your photo by one standard deviation increased selection success by approximately 20%. Improving your bio by the same amount? A 2% bump.
Let that sink in. Your photos are roughly 10 times more important than your bio.
Height, job prestige, cleverness of your bio. All of them are 7 to 20 times less impactful than your photos. This is exactly why professional photos often backfire. They look staged rather than authentic.
The Numbers In Practice
Here's what this looks like in the real world.
The profiles in this study were already matching with 1 in 4 people. These weren't even struggling profiles.
Better photos? 70% more matches. Better bio? Only 8%.
If you're matching way less than 1 in 4, your photos aren't average. They're tanking you. Your potential upside is massive.
If you're already crushing it? There's still 70% more out there.
This isn't opinion. This is what the data shows.
Why Photos Work as a Gatekeeper
An earlier study from UC Berkeley by Fiore and colleagues found something even more revealing about how profiles get evaluated.
For a male profile to be rated above average in attractiveness, at least two of the three main components (photo, free-text bio, fixed-choice demographics) must be attractive. But here's the key part:
One of those two must be the photo.
When the photo is unattractive, predicted whole-profile attractiveness falls below average. Regardless of how good everything else is.
Your photo isn't just important. It's the gatekeeper. If it doesn't pass, nothing else gets considered.
What People Say vs. What People Do
Here's what makes this even more interesting.
The Amsterdam researchers found that men and women showed nearly identical prioritization patterns when making actual swiping decisions. Both genders prioritized physical appearance. Even though they stated different preferences in surveys.
When asked what they care about, people say personality, humor, intelligence, shared values.
When they actually swipe? Photos dominate.
What This Means For You
I'm not telling you to abandon your bio. A good bio still helps. Just not nearly as much as you think.
What I am telling you is this: if you're struggling on dating apps, the answer probably isn't a better opening line or a funnier bio. The answer is almost certainly your photos.
Most guys spend hours tweaking their bio and zero time thinking critically about their photos. The science says that's exactly backwards.
Your photos are doing 90% of the work. Treat them like it.
The Good News
Photos are a solvable problem.
You don't need to become more attractive. You don't need to hit the gym for six months or get a new haircut. You need better photos of the person you already are. I went from 2-3 matches per month to 30-40 per week just by fixing my photos.
That's what we do at GetMatches. We build your complete profile. Photos, bio, everything. All in under 2 hours.
Because you're not ugly. You just have the wrong photos.
Sources
Witmer, H., Rosenbusch, H., & Meral, Y. (2025). What predicts swipes on dating apps? A conjoint study on the relative importance of physical attractiveness and other profile characteristics. Personality and Individual Differences.
Fiore, A. T., Taylor, L. S., Mendelsohn, G. A., & Hearst, M. (2008). Assessing attractiveness in online dating profiles. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, UC Berkeley.