Story highlights New research looks at ideal postures in quick dating contexts 
 
 Study finds that posing with stretched limbs in profile pictures increases odds of success 
 
 (CNN) The power of posture reigns in the animal kingdom, where peacocks fan their feathers and chimpanzees flaunt their limbs to assert dominance and attract mates. New research suggests that humans trying online dating apps and speed-dating might want to follow their lead. 
 
 Previous studies have shown that nonverbal cues such as a smile or a nod of the head garner interest from potential romantic partners. The gestures have what scientists call "positive signal value," meaning they create the impression that you are warm and friendly, someone others want to be around. 
 
 But modern courtship rarely lasts long enough to form an impression based on meaningful, real-life interactions. Decisions are made in a matter of minutes, even seconds, with a single swipe in digital dating or a passing encounter in the real world. 
 
 Research based on two studies found that literally extending yourself could make you more attractive in speed and online dating. In a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers found that body postures involving widespread limbs and a stretched torso nearly doubles the odds of success compared with closed postures involving limbs held close to the torso, hunched over. 
 
 It's called "postural expansiveness," and it basically refers to how much space you take up with your torso and limbs. Such "power postures" convey dominance and willingness to share those traits with others, study co-author Tanya Vacharkulksemsuk said. 
 
 Read More ||||| Manspreading might make you the villain of the morning L train, but a new study suggests it could also make you lucky in love. People who adopted “expansive postures”—widespread limbs and a stretched-out torso—in speed-dating situations garnered more romantic interest than those who folded their arms in “closed postures,” the researchers found. 
 
 For her recent paper, published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Tanya Vacharkulksemsuk, a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, performed two studies. First, she and her team watched videos of 144 speed-dates and correlated them with the participants’ ratings of each other. People who sat in expanded postures were deemed more attractive, and for both men and women, postural expansiveness nearly doubled their chances of getting a “yes” response to a second date. Even laughing and smiling didn’t work as well as spreading out, Vacharkulksemsuk found. 
 
 Next, Vacharkulksemsuk posted pictures of people in open and closed postures on a dating site. Again, those in the expansive postures were about 25 percent more likely to generate interest from another user. However, this strategy worked much better for men than women. Men, overall, received far fewer bites than women did, but 87 percent of their “yeses” came in response to an open posture. For women, meanwhile, 53 percent of “yes” responses came when they were in an expansive posture. 
 
 In a separate test, Vacharkulksemsuk found that both the male and female “expansive” photos were considered more dominant than the “closed” photos. That dominance might suggest an abundance of resources and a willing to share those resources. When potential romantic partners are evaluating each other for just a few seconds, in other words, money talks—mainly through bodily breadth. 
 
 So should you rush to change your Tinder picture to something a little less pouty and a little more Backstreet Boys cira Millennium? Like with almost every study, there are reasons to be skeptical. “Power poses” made a big splash in 2010 when it was found that adopting them could tweak hormone levels—then sparked controversy after a follow-up study failed to replicate the effect. ||||| This set of studies tested whether humans are more attracted to individuals displaying their bodies expansively, a behavior considered to express both dominance and openness. Results from two field studies—a speed-dating event and a controlled experiment using a Global Positioning System-based dating application—suggested that (i) expansive (vs. contractive) body posture increases one’s romantic desirability; (ii) these results are consistent across gender; and (iii) perceived dominance and perceived openness are mechanisms through which expansiveness exerts its effect. These findings indicate that in modern-day dating contexts, in which initial attraction often is determined by a rapid decision following a brief interaction or seeing a photograph, displays of expansive posture increase one’s chances of initial romantic success. 
 
 Abstract 
 
 Across two field studies of romantic attraction, we demonstrate that postural expansiveness makes humans more romantically appealing. In a field study (n = 144 speed-dates), we coded nonverbal behaviors associated with liking, love, and dominance. Postural expansiveness—expanding the body in physical space—was most predictive of attraction, with each one-unit increase in coded behavior from the video recordings nearly doubling a person’s odds of getting a “yes” response from one’s speed-dating partner. In a subsequent field experiment (n = 3,000), we tested the causality of postural expansion (vs. contraction) on attraction using a popular Global Positioning System-based online-dating application. Mate-seekers rapidly flipped through photographs of potential sexual/date partners, selecting those they desired to meet for a date. Mate-seekers were significantly more likely to select partners displaying an expansive (vs. contractive) nonverbal posture. Mediation analyses demonstrate one plausible mechanism through which expansiveness is appealing: Expansiveness makes the dating candidate appear more dominant. In a dating world in which success sometimes is determined by a split-second decision rendered after a brief interaction or exposure to a static photograph, single persons have very little time to make a good impression. Our research suggests that a nonverbal dominance display increases a person’s chances of being selected as a potential mate.
– You may not think of that guy manspreading across from you on the subway as a magnificent peacock, but he's more or less doing it for the same effect: a show of dominance and openness. And indeed, new research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that in online dating and speed dating, nonverbal displays showing "postural expansiveness"—i.e., how much space you fill with your body and limbs—can up your chances of scoring with potential mates compared to those with a more "closed" posture. "We've seen it in the animal world, that ... maximizing presence in a physical space is used as [a] signal for attracting a mate," co-author Tanya Vacharkulksemsuk says, per CNN. "By exerting dominance they're trying to signal to a potential mate, 'I am able to do things.'" Scientists filmed 144 speed-dating sessions, matching 12 pairs of men and women for four minutes a pop; subjects were asked whether they'd want to see each partner again —and those who gestured or moved hands or arms nearly doubled their chances of a "yes." Even a tried-and-true smile didn't attract mates as well, Vacharkulksemsuk says, per the Atlantic. In the study's second part, a mobile dating app gave almost 3,000 subjects the profiles of possible dates, with each featuring a photo, first name, and age, Smithsonian reports. Each of the six candidates had two photos: one showing an expressive, open posture, the other a tighter one. Those with the more-expansive look got about 25% more hits, with the success rate higher for men. In online dating, "we are forced to rely more on these instincts because time is so limited," Vacharkulksemsuk says. (Here, cougar speed dating.)