The experience is common for people meeting through online dating sites – often with the decision of whether someone is liked or disliked made in just a few seconds.

First impressions do count for a lot, according to a new study in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, that claims we can learn a lot about each other’s personality just from appearance alone.

Almost 700 million people have online profiles

A staggering 700 million people worldwide spend time social networking online and most have profiles on several sites with their photographs.

The study found that putting the wrong picture online could give people a completely inaccurate impression about you.

Researchers for the study looked at full body photographs of 123 people that they did not know or had ever seen before. The photos either had the subject in a controlled pose with a neutral facial expression or a natural pose.

The researchers were then asked to rate each person on 10 personality traits by just looking at the photos.

The ratings were combined to work out how well the observers were able to guess the traits.

Even people standing in the controlled pose had their major personality traits accurately predicted, including extroversion, self-esteem, and even how religious they were.

Pick up a partner’s vibe from their photo

For people in a natural pose, the judgments were accurate for nine of the 10 personality traits, like extroversion, agreeability, conscientiousness, emotional stability, openness, likability, self-esteem, loneliness, religion and political orientation.

The message is that however hard you try to be someone you are not, people soon pick up on your real personality and whether they like you or not.

Translating this to your online profile pictures, depending on how the site controls the size of images you can pose, don’t zoom in too close and if possible, show a full body photo.

This gives potential partners a better opportunity to judge your personality rather than flicking on to the next profile. Likewise, before setting on a meeting, ask your friend to send you a full body picture to see what sort of vibe you get.

…And always post a profile picture or you are likely to be ignored, as observers have nothing to make a judgment against.