Why do men manspread? Is it a form of communication? Do women on dating apps prefer men who manspread their legs (and arms) in their profile pictures? Do men on dating apps prefer women who manspread?
A team of psychologists found that nonverbal displays epitomized by manspreading are quite beneficial for people on speed dates and dating apps. Lu and Tirth discuss this lovely study on S01E07 of the Recreational Science podcast (timecode 16:39):
Lu: So, this study I found showed that manspreading is attractive to potential dates.
Tirth: Okay. I’m very skeptical, but I’ll let the data speak for itself, I guess.
Lu: Spoken like a true scientist. The title of the study is “Dominant, open non-verbal displays are attractive at zero acquaintance.” Zero acquaintance apparently just means first encounter.
Tirth: Dominant, non-verbal. Okay, got it.
Lu: Dominant and open, non-verbal displays. Manspreading. It’s dominant and open in many ways…Anyways, this was published in 2016 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences…
Tirth: Great journal.
Lu: …or PNAS. I believe you like to pronounce it “P-nas”.
Tirth: Yeah. I mean, that’s how it’s supposed to be pronounced; it’s not just me liking it.
Lu: The scientists here wanted to figure out what non-verbal cues make people attractive to potential dates, so they did three different experiments. The first one is a field experiment where they videotaped 144 speed dates and then graded the participants on their non-verbal displays. Specifically, they scored them on their posture, which they categorized into two types. One posture type is the manspreading posture. You have your legs spread out, you have your arms spread out, and then you have your back straight, head upright. They call that the expansive posture. Flip side of that is the contractive posture. In the contractive posture you have your arms tucked in, your leg tucked in, not spread out, your back’s maybe a little bit hunched. They also took note of other nonverbal cues, like laughing, smiling, head nodding. Surprisingly, they found that the only nonverbal display that correlated with the likeliness of getting a second date is expansive posture, or manspreading. Meaning laughing, smiling, none of that mattered.
Tirth: None of that worked.
Lu: You could be having the best date of your life, laughing the entire time, but if you’re not manspreading, you’re not getting a second date.
Tirth: No second date.
Lu: Exactly. They graded the posture from contractiveness to expansiveness on a seven-point scale. With each increase by one point on that scale, the likelihood of getting a second date went up by 76%.
Tirth: That’s insane. That’s insane.
Lu: Yes. Well, but of course, you know, this is not a controlled experiment. It could be that the posture correlates with personality right?
Tirth: Yeah, confidence, self-esteem…
Lu: Maybe more confident people manspread more. If you’re hunched over and you have your arms tucked in, maybe you’re just more shy.
Tirth: Right.
Lu: So they did experiment number two. This is a dating app experiment. They called what they used a GPS-based online dating application where you swipe through people to determine whether or not you like them. So Tinder.
Tirth: Tinder. Yeah.
Lu: They made fake dating profiles on Tinder of three white men and three white women. The three men were all named Michael and the three women were all named Jessica. I don’t know if they specifically recruited Michaels and Jessicas or whether these are fake names.
Tirth: Well, maybe they thought these were the most generic names.
Lu: I guess so. And for each of the six people, they created two sets of profiles. One where all their pictures are expansive. They’re manspreading, spreading their arms, standing up tall, sitting up tall. And the other one is the contractive one, where they’re more tucked in, their arms are folded. So they put the 12 total fake profiles on Tinder and recorded how many right swipes they each got. They found that the expansive profiles, the one with manspreading, were 27% more likely to be swiped right on.
Tirth: For both the men and women?
Lu: Yes, but it was more effective for men than women. I’ll give you some details in a little bit. But first, I have a question for you: 1,500 women on Tinder looked at the six male profiles. How many right swipes do you think the profiles got?
Tirth: So I know, just having dabbled in dating app discourse, that it’s highly asymmetrical. Men will swipe right at way higher rates than women will. So I’m going to say 5%. So let’s say like 75.
Lu: Close, but incorrect.
Tirth: Okay. 50?
Lu: Still too high. 30.
Tirth: Too high? 30. Wow.
Lu: 2%.
Tirth: So 2%. Okay.
Lu: The six female profiles got 1,483 views. How many right swipes do you think they got?
Tirth: So let’s see. Let’s think about this…
Lu: By the way, these people, they’re moderately attractive.
Tirth: So 50% is 750, I’m going to say 700.
Lu: 790.
Tirth: Wow. So more than 50%.
Lu: More than 50%. So for the men, they got 30 right swipes total, 26 of the 30 were on the manspreading profiles, and just 4 were on the contractive profiles. That’s an over 6x difference, right? 26 versus 4.
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: They increased their odds of getting swiped right on by 6 times just by manspreading. Of the 790 right swipes on the female profiles, 53% were on the expansive profile, which is statistically significant, p=.02, but the difference is a lot smaller. So manspreading is much more effective for men.
Tirth: Right, makes sense.
Lu: Next, they wanted to know why people swiped right more on the expansive profiles. So they recruited 853 participants, showed them one of the 12 profiles, and asked them to rate the profile picture on dominance. Basically, how dominant do they think these people are. The results showed that people rated both the male and female expansive profiles, the manspreading profiles, as being more dominant. So it appears that expansive profiles make people look bigger and more dominant, and that’s why they get more likes.
Tirth: Okay. I see.
Lu: But I have an alternate hypothesis.
Tirth: Which is what?
Lu: Which is, manspreading is maybe a comfort thing, right?
Tirth: I see.
Lu: It’s not about the entire body being big maybe. Maybe it’s about a certain part of the body being big.
Tirth: I see.
Lu: So when you’re manspreading, it conveys that maybe, you know, you need the room and maybe that’s a cue that women pick up on and that’s…
Tirth: Well literally they’re like we do need a room…Oh, wait. So what you’re saying is this is basically like when a peacock spreads out its tail.
Lu: Very good. I think this should be the new definition of peacocking. Instead of like, you know, wearing flamboyant clothing or whatever, peacocking should refer to manspreading.
Tirth: Well the word cock is right there too. It’s right in there…we may have to edit that out.
Lu: The alternative hypothesis I came up with I think would explain why women don’t benefit from manspreading as much as men. So I think it’s a valid hypothesis.
Article citation
Vacharkulksemsuk et al., 2016. Dominant, open nonverbal displays are attractive at zero-acquaintance. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1508932113
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