Lemondrop

Remember that episode of "Seinfeld" where George impressed a club full of models by showing them a photo of his beautiful "dead fiancée"? Turns out he may have been onto something.

In a recent study, participants were asked to rate how attractive certain men and women were by looking at their pictures. The researchers then showed them pictures of those same people, each in a couple. People who were paired with attractive mates were rated consistently higher in attractiveness than they had been alone. (Women in particular gave low ratings to men with "unattractive" mates.) The moral? Dating somebody hot makes you hotter by proxy.

Researchers believe that as women, we're biologically obligated to be choosier about who we mate with. It's also possible that women realize that context is everything, so if an average man can land a hot woman, maybe that average man is above average in other respects.

What does this mean for your dating life? Well, not much, unless you can manage to have every possible mate watch you have a very dignified breakup with Robert Pattison. And, perhaps, like the study suggests, both men and women should put pictures of themselves flanked by hot members of the opposite sex on their online profiles.