'Manspreading' makes a person more attractive when dating, according to a new study

Researchers have found that body language is vital in the initial seconds of dating

(Carlos Alvarez/Getty Images)

Reflecting your personality in a handful of words on an hook-up app or during a speed dating session is almost impossible. But simply having an open posture, which sounds suspiciously like "manspreading", can make a person more attractive according to a new study.

Researchers have found that adopting an expansive posture in profile photos makes other users twice as likely to rate a person as attractive.

Tanya Vacharkulksemsuk, an expert in human behaviour at the University of California, Berkeley, who lead the study, explained to Smithsonian that researchers defined an “expansive posture” as an “enlargement of the amount of space that a person is occupying.”

This is opposed to a photo where the person is pictured with their arms and legs close to their torso.

The paper explained people make decisions about attraction quickly when seeing a photo on a dating app or during a speed date. Having a confidence stance, therefore, impacts these initial seconds.

To make their findings published in the journal ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’, researchers studied footage of 144 speed dates event at Northwestern University, which involved 12 men and 12 women who spoke for 4 minutes at a time.

The attendees then reported whether they were attracted to their date.

A second experiment involved a dating app similar to Tinder, where users select potential dates according to photographs and text on their profile. Participants were shown dating profiles of the same people. This difference was that one featured a photo with an expansive posture and the with a closed posture. The other details were kept the same.

In a third study, researchers showed 853 participants photos of people with contracted or expansive postures in the images of the same people, and were asked to rate whether they were attracted.

The researchers believe that such body language is appealing because the brain associates it with dominance and openness.

And the technique worked equally for all genders, the study found.

Ms Vacharkulksemsuk said the results may go against the stereotypical idea that men prefer submissive women.