Hi, we're here from curiosity.com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes.

I'm Cody Gough.

And I'm Ashley Hamer.

Today you learn about why you're bad at choosing good pictures of yourself,

how scientists could repurpose existing technology to detect dark matter particles

and a questionnaire to help you figure out how left or right-handed you are.

Let's hand off some curiosity. Listen up if you want to look good on social media or a dating app.

According to research, you're bad at choosing photos of yourself.

If you think you're the best person to pick a flattering image of yourself for your social media accounts,

then a 2017 study says you should

probably think again. Fortunately, researchers have a solution for your picture-picking problems.

For the study published in cognitive Research Principles and Implications,

Researchers rounded up 102 students and collected a dozen pictures from each of their Facebook accounts.

The students then rated each of their own pictures on a scale from 1 to 10 in categories like attractiveness and confidence.

Then 160 strangers rated the same pictures in the same categories.

The rankings did not match. The pictures that the students thought were the best

ones of themselves actually ranked less favorably among strangers and vice versa. Which means

that if you want to pick the best picture of yourself

then you should ask a stranger to do it. Believe it or not, several dating sites have

already figured this out. In 2016, the dating app Tinder started using an algorithm to choose

users profile pictures for them based on which ones got the most right swipes.

So why are we so bad at choosing the best ones?

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