If a picture is worth a thousand words, a single person’s dating app profile photo is practically priceless.

In today’s app-saturated culture, where everyone is looking for love at first swipe, dating is a visuals game dictated by split-second impulses based on the most trivial of details.

It’s not just the obvious things that are under scrutiny - such as your dashing smile or your sartorial flair - as one study has revealed posture plays a crucial role in a person's likelihood to be left or right-swiped on an app.

According to a team of researchers at Princeton University, New Jersey, people are more likely to be successful on dating apps if they adopt expansive postures in their photos i.e. their arms are facing outward rather than folded or their legs are apart rather than crossed.

The study, which was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, claims that these postures indicate traits such as openness and dominance, which are typically perceived as attractive.