Instagram pictures with human faces more likely to get 'likes': Study

Instagram pictures with human faces are more likely to prompt users to hit 'like' than those with no faces, a new study has revealed.

Georgia Institute of Technology and Yahoo Labs researchers looked at 1.1 million photos on Instagram and found that pictures with human faces were 38 percent more likely to attract likes and 32 percent more likely to attract comments than those with no faces.

It was also found that the number of faces in the photo, their age or gender didn't make a difference and that men and women have same chances of getting likes or comments.

Lead researcher Saeideh Bakhshi explained that the more users post, the less feedback they're going to get, adding that posting too much decreases likes two times faster than comments.

Bakhshi said that faces are powerful channels of non-verbal communication and people constantly monitor them for a variety of contexts, including attractiveness, emotions and identity.

Advisor Eric Gilbert said that social media sites such as Flickr or Pinterest could increase their search ranking and keep consumers onsite and active by featuring human faces in their online content.

The study, titled 'Faces Engage Us: Photos with Faces Attract More Likes and Comments on Instagram,' is one of the first to examine how photos with faces drive engagement on large-scale, image-sharing communities.