grammar mistakes make you less attractive

© Sandy de Vries
Science proves it: grammar mistakes make you less attractive

Still want to check your Tinder bio?

If you still don’t after endless sweeping the one then maybe it’s time to check if there are any language errors on your profile. Tilburg University has shown that you are much more likely to be swept to the left when there are spelling or grammatical errors in your biography. aiii …

Negative review

It’s like this: Tilburg University compared 12,000 dating profiles from various websites and apps and showed them to participants with a set of fictitious profiles with and without language errors. They were then allowed to comment on the profiles. A third of the participants did not notice the errors at all. For people who spotted the mistakes, it immediately led to a negative review on the profile.

The biggest culprits? DT errors are particularly common. Additionally, profiles with ‘me’ instead of ‘my’ and ‘is’ instead of ‘okay’ also elicited negative reactions.

Magnifying glass

Searcher Tess van der Zanden explains why this happens: “There is very little information available in someone’s profile, often just a photo and a few sentences. You need to determine if you find someone attractive based on this. So everything is under a magnifying glass. When you have a drink or a coffee together, language errors are not that easy to notice, but online it is of course different.

beautiful head

Maybe you are now thinking, “well, luckily I have a beautiful face, so nobody pays attention to that spelling.” But then, this research is accompanied by a reality check. It turned out that the attractiveness of the person in the photos had no influence on the impact of language errors.

Even if the person in the photo has a good face, we always spend the same time on the text. “The attractiveness of the person in the photo did not influence the attention paid to the text, nor the impact of any language errors,” explains Van der Zanden. Ouch. Either way, we’re checking our Tinder, Bumble, and Happn bios. And then again, for the bail.