Fact: you donât want your profile picture to look like something that goes âbumpâ in the night.
But accidentally giving off creepy vibes is easier than you might think â especially if youâre a man.
Why? Because people â especially women â worry about their safety when interacting with and eventually meeting strangers from online.
As the Margaret Atwood quote goes: âMen are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.â
Not everyone realizes this, but the word âcreepyâ is used to connote a subtle sense of danger. We say it about people and situations that make us feel unsafe. To be more specific, psychologists have recently defined creepiness as a state of unpredictability that makes others feel threatened.
So letâs talk about some common photo mistakes that can make a photo look creepy â hurting your chances at connections on LinkedIn and dating apps.
#1 Taking the Picture Too Close-Up
âHey man, why are you in my face? I donât even know you!â
According to research out of Caltech, pictures taken two feet away or less are consistently rated as less trustworthy and attractive.
Thatâs because pics taken very close-up mimic the feeling you get when youâre standing very close to someone. This can be uncomfortable for someone whoâs never met you before, setting off subconscious alarms.
#2 Ambiguous Expression
Sometimes you think youâre making one face, but other people see something completely different. Okay, not sometimes â all the time.
Most people who look threatening in their profile pics have no idea that they do.
When scientists go to study photo impressions, volunteers generally express great certainty that they can guess personal qualities of the people in the pictures.
This is unfortunate because they are dead wrong. All theyâre actually doing is extrapolating a whole lot from each picture â exaggerating anything they see and downplaying what they donât. (e.g. Smile = friendly, kind, happy person. No smile = unsocial, bad, negative person.)
Neutral (i.e. not smiling) expressions are risky for this reason. Someone with no other information about you to go on might just misinterpret your so-called neutral expression as âhostileâ or âsinisterâ depending on everything from what else your body language is doing, to the lighting, to their own mood at the time they view your picture.
Now, Iâm not saying you canât pull off a non-smiling picture, but youâll definitely need to test it on Photofeeler to ensure creepy vibes are at bay.
#3 Bad Lighting
Creepy lighting includes:
- Fluorescent light
- Overhead or underhead light that casts shadows
- Camera flash
- Color-hued light
- Low or uneven light
Why? Because they discolor skin and/or obscure your face.
To you, the photo might look perfectly normal. But thatâs because youâre familiar with what you look like in regular, daytime conditions. A stranger doesnât fill in the blanks this way â they just see an obscured face.
According to Photofeeler data, natural daylight is where itâs at. In fact, this has shown to be one of the key differences between photos of the same person with very low and very high attractiveness ratings.
For best results, find a window in the daytime (preferably when the sun is on the other side of the building / not in direct view). Itâs best to take pictures directly across from the window to illuminate your whole face evenly, free of shadows.
#4 Intimate Situation
Donât appear to be naked in your profile photos. You should also avoid being pictured in bathrooms or bedrooms.
Look, you probably already knew I was going to say this. But do you really understand why? The answer is similar to the explanation that we already covered for avoiding very close-up photos.
A photo of someone in a bedroom, bathroom, and/or in a state of undress is very intimate in nature. This intimacy can come across as being overly forward, aggressive, or predatory. So, remember: using that selfie you took in bed is not without real consequences.
On the other hand, pictures taken in public places more closely mimic the way we typically interact with strangers, so theyâre less likely to set off alarms.
#5 Picture Not Self-explanatory
âUm, what am I looking at???â
Donât let potential connections be thinking this when they see your photo.
Thereâs a misconception going around that being ârandomâ makes you seem spontaneous and fun. This is actually false.
Sure, in the company of a friends, the unexpected can be hilarious or just downright intriguing.
To strangers, however, weird stuff is just weird. And if itâs in your picture, it probably means something is off about you.
That said, profile pictures should stand on their own without explanation needed.
Well anyway, that concludes some of the most common photo mistakes that make a person look creepy. So save the scary for Halloween and put these tips to use to make consistently better impressions online!
Photofeeler is a tool for testing profile pics, as seen in Time, Forbes, The Today Show, and more. Know for certain how youâre coming across in your business, social, and dating pictures. Itâs free to use here.