Face 12x more influential than height on swipes
A study found facial attractiveness was 12 times more influential than height on swiping behaviour on a gamified dating app without height filters.
Snapshot · Modern Wisdom
The New Science Of Female Attraction - Psychology Roundtable - #1133
Explore episode
Aug 6, 2026
Where this was said
What Matters More: Height or Looks?
At 1:17:04 · chapter starts 1:16:54
Chris Williamson cites a Whitmer study in which a gamified dating app without height filters found facial attractiveness to be 12 times more influential than height on user swiping. Macken Murphy, who tweeted the finding, pre-empts the obvious objection — 'it's a photo competition app, so of course photos matter' — by noting the study specifically controlled for this with a sophisticated design that impressed even prominent challenging scholars. The lack of a height filter is crucial: in real apps, height influences behaviour partly through filter exclusion, not pure visual assessment. Rob Henderson raises whether the preference for 6 feet specifically is partly arbitrary — pointing out that in Europe, 180cm (5'10.5") serves the same cultural function as a round number threshold. The segment closes with the group joking about 'metric maxing' as the new height hack.
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