Visual Constructions of Attractiveness as Cultural Indicators in Online Dating: Differentiation Across Locations, Gender, and Sexual Orientation

This article examines patterned distributions of visual self-presentation in online dating across location, gender, as well asexuality, and asks whether interpretively reconstructed visual constructions of attractiveness can be used as scalable indicators for comparative cultural analysis. Grounded in the praxeological sociology of knowledge and a practice-theoretical understanding of habitus, Tinder images are treated as documents of tacit and conjunctively shared orientations through which attractiveness is anticipated and expressed in patterned visual practices under field-specific constraints. Based on abductive reconstruction and computational analysis of 73,206 images from 13,000 Tinder profiles across thirteen metropolitan locations, stratified by gender and sexuality, the study applies a typology of ten Constructions of Attractiveness (COA) and their patterned combinations as Repertoires of Attractiveness (ROA). Using correlation-derived distances, hierarchical clustering, and multidimensional scaling, the analysis reconstructs how ROA similarity relations are organised across geo-cultural location, gender, and sexuality. Results show that geo-cultural proximity is the dominant structuring dimension of self-presentation in online dating, while gender constitutes a strong global axis of differentiation whose configuration varies systematically across locations. Sexuality primarily modulates similarity within locations but to a lesser extent than gender. To assess their analytic viability as cultural indicators, the ROA-based similarity space is compared with the Inglehart–Welzel cultural value dimensions as an established reference for cross-cultural ordering and shows strong structural correspondence, supporting their comparative adequacy for analysing cultural differentiation. The alignment is read as structural correspondence rather than validation, bringing reconstructive visual analysis into dialogue with established value-based approaches to cross-cultural comparison.