Attractiveness

Prosopagnosia: ‘Face-Blindness’ Affects Around 2%

Prosopagnosia or being face blind is a condition where people find it hard to recognise faces: even of those closest to them.

As a social species we rely on being able to recognise other people by looking at their faces.

This is a skill most of us take for granted.

So imagine if you couldn’t recognise the faces of people close to you: your parents, your partner, your children.

This condition is called prosopagnosia or face-blindness and about 2 percent of people are affected at some level.

Prosopagnosia and judging attractiveness

A study shows that people with face-blindness have difficulties judging other people’s attractiveness.

Eight face-blind participants (i.e. with prosopagnosia) were shown a series of anonymous male and female faces and asked to judge their attractiveness.

Their ratings were compared to a control group who were not face-blind.

The results showed that those with face-blindness only rated the more attractive slightly higher than average faces.

One of the researchers, Professor Jason Barton explains:

“While the beauty of a face might seem a more fitting topic for an artist, this work helps settle a debate by showing that areas that code the identity of a face also play a key role in the perception of beauty.”

Face blindness has a variety of causes: some people have the condition from birth, others develop it after conditions such as strokes or brain.

Is beauty a curse?

However prosopagnosia is caused, its very existence prompts some interesting thoughts.

If many more of us were face-blind and consequently had difficulty judging the attractivity of others, our culture would undergo some subtle shifts.

Here’s a few speculations I came up with:

We would be exposed to more talented actors, singers and other performers. Let’s face it, the less attractive have a harder time getting their faces in front of our faces.
We would feel less pressure to be attractive. Upward comparisons are bad for our self-esteem. If Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie didn’t look so super-hot in comparison, you’d feel better about yourself.
Plastic surgeons would go out of business.
Less attractive people would earn more money. We tend to infer a variety of positive qualities into those who are more attractive. This is bound to affect the hiring process. In the brave new world there’d be a level playing field.
People would be happier with their partners – upward comparisons with more attractive potential parters creates dissatisfaction. One study has found teachers who are surrounded by young fresh-faced students all day are less happy with their partners than others.
World peace resulting from more interracial/inter-cultural marriage. Obviously I’m pushing it but perhaps one of the barriers to world peace is simply that we don’t like to partner up with people who don’t conform to our particular cultural stereotype of attractivity. Take that away and BOOM! we all intermarry and so…world peace!

Strangely, only positive effects came to mind off the top of my head.

Hence beauty might not be a curse for an individual, but it might well be a curse for our society.

I’m sure you can come up with many more both positive and negative…

The study was published in the Journal of Vision (Waite et al., 2007)

Small Facial Scars Are Attractive On Men’s Faces — Sometimes

Facial scars on men are seen as attractive to women but only under certain circumstances — they are signs of bravery and health.

Women find small facial scars attractive when looking for a short-term relationship, research finds.

Previously it was thought facial scars made men look less attractive in this context.

However, it seems women may link facial scars to bravery and health.

For long-term relationships, male facial scarring made no difference to women’s perceptions of attractiveness.

When men looked at pictures of women with small scars and without, it made no difference, whatever type of relationship they were considering.

Dr Rob Burriss, the study’s first author, said:

“Male and female participants were shown images of faces that displayed scarring from injury or illness, and were asked to rate how attractive they found the person for long-term and short-term relationships.
Women may have rated scarring as an attractive quality for short-term relationships because they found it be a symbol of masculinity, a feature that is linked to high testosterone levels and an indicator of good genetic qualities that can be passed on to offspring.
Men without scars, however, could be seen as more caring and therefore more suitable for long-term relationships.

Study tests if facial scars are attractive

The results come from a study of 223 people who were asked to look at pictures of opposite-sex faces.

Some people had small facial scars, while others did not.

The facial scars made men 6 percent more attractive, on average.

Dr Burriss said:

“The results demonstrate that we may have more in common with non-Western cultures than previously thought.
The perception that scarring is a sign of strength is a view shared by the Yanomamö tribe of Venezuela for example, who use face-paint to accentuate scars that result from ritualised club fights designed to test a man’s endurance against repeated strikes to the head.
The assumption that scarring is a sign of bravery is also consistent with the historical tradition of academic fencing in Western culture, whereby scarring on a man was often evidence of his courage and ability to withstand an opponent’s blow.”

The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Burriss et al., 2009).

How To Be More Attractive

How to appear up to 40 percent more likeable and attractive.

Nodding the head increases attractiveness to others by up to 40 percent research finds.

Head nodders were rated as both more likeable and more approachable.

It was primarily people’s personality that appeared more attractive when they nodded.

Essentially, nodding makes people more likely to approach you in social interactions.

Dr Jun-ichiro Kawahara, study co-author, said:

“Our study also demonstrated that nodding primarily increased likability attributable to personality traits, rather than to physical appearance.”

How to be more attractive research

The research, carried out in Japan, compared nodding with keeping the head still and with shaking it, as in indicating ‘no’.

Shaking the head had no effect in comparison to keeping it still.

Nodding, though, increased perceived approachability and attractiveness by 40 percent in comparison to keeping the head still or shaking it.

The Japanese researchers have previously found that bowing increases perceived attractiveness.

However, this finding may have less universal relevance in cultures that do not customarily bow.

The study used computer-generated female faces, as below.

Dr Kawahara said:

“Generalizing these results requires a degree of caution because computer-generated female faces were used to manipulate head motions in our experiments.
Further study involving male figures, real faces and observers from different cultural backgrounds, is needed to apply these findings to real-world situations.”

But, watch out, there are dangers to nodding too much.

Researchers have found that nodding makes you unconsciously more inclined to agree, as the study’s authors explain:

“Participants in [one study] were asked to move their heads vertically (nodding head movement) or horizontally (shaking head movement) while they listened to music or an editorial.
The result indicated that participants who had nodded agreed more with the persuasive message than did participants who had shaken their heads, suggesting that overt head movement produced a persuasive impact on individuals.”

The study was published in the journal Perception (Osugi & Kawahara, 2017).

How To Make Your Face Look Younger Revealed By Research

How to make your face look younger using the facial contrast effect.

When women’s facial features stand out more, they look younger, research finds.

What the researchers call ‘facial contrast’, was linked to an appearance of youth, regardless of ethnic group.

Naturally, people’s facial features merge into each other with age.

Ms Aurélie Porcheron, the study’s first author, said:

“Facial contrast refers to how much the eyes, lips and eyebrows stand out in the face in terms of how light or dark they are or how colorful they are.”

Higher facial contrast has also been previously linked to looking more healthy and more feminine.

How to make your face look younger

This is the first study to test the effect on Caucasian women as well as those from other ethnic groups.

The researchers included Chinese Asian women, Latin American women, South African women and French Caucasian women.

Women were aged between 20 and 80 years old.

The researchers showed digitally manipulated photos to people and asked them to judge who was younger.

The photo with the higher facial contrast was picked as the younger face 80% of the time.

Ms Porcheron said:

“People of different cultures use facial contrast as a cue for perceiving age from the face, even though they are not consciously aware of it.
The results also suggest that people could actively modify how old they look, by altering how much their facial features stand out, for example by darkening or coloring their features.”

Cosmetics make your face look younger

Ms Porcheron is currently the head of research at Chanel, the cosmetics manufacturer.

No need to wonder why Chanel might be interested in this psychological finding.

The study’s authors conclude:

“Because cosmetics were shown to enhance facial contrast, this work provides some support for the notion that a universal function of cosmetics is to make female faces look younger.”

The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology (Porcheron et al., 2017).

Shoulder Swagger And Hip Sway: How To Walk Attractively

A shoulder swagger for men and a hip sway for women increase people’s perceived attractiveness.

Attractiveness is about more than just body shape and facial features — it is also about the way people move.

Women who sway their hips while walking increase their perceived attractiveness by 50 percent, research finds.

Men who walk with swagger in their shoulders more than doubled the perception of their attractiveness.

Swagger involves dipping the shoulders slightly with each step to create a rolling motion.

Dr Kerri Johnson, the study’s first author, said:

“People have always tried to identify the magical formula for beauty, and we knew body shape was important, but we found movement was also key.
When encountering another human, the first judgment an individual makes concerns the other individual’s gender.
The body’s shape, specifically the waist-to-hip ratio, has been related to gender identification and to perceived attractiveness, but part of the way we make such judgments is by determining whether the observed individual is behaving in ways consistent with our culture’s definitions of beauty and of masculinity/femininity.
And part of those cultural definitions involves movement.”

The findings come from a series of five studies in which over 700 people took part.

They watched various animations that represented people moving.

Dr Johnson said:

“The current findings bolster our understanding of how and why the body is perceived attractive.
Body cues bring about the basic social perception of sex and gender, and the compatibility of those basic precepts affects perceived attractiveness.”

Dr Johnson continued:

“We appear to effortlessly judge the aesthetics of both landscapes and buildings – it is certainly possible that the same evolved cognitive mechanisms are operative whether we judge a person to be attractive or a landscape to be beautiful.”

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Johnson & Tassinary, 2007).

How To Increase Sexual Attraction

The simplest strategy to increase sexual attraction is also the best.

Making it clear that you like someone is more sexually attractive than hiding your feelings, research finds.

It means that strategies like playing hard to get or being mysterious may not work well.

Creating uncertainty in new relationships is sometimes claimed to increase sexual desire — but this study found the opposite.

Uncertainty is also bad in long-term relationships, further studies found.

Long-term couples had more sexual desire for their partner when they were more sure about the relationship.

Dr Gurit Birnbaum, who led the study, said:

“People may protect themselves from the possibility of a painful rejection by distancing themselves from potentially rejecting partners.”

How to be sexually attractive

For the research, a series of opposite-sex pairs who did not know each other interacted.

The results showed that people were more turned on when they had more signals that the other person liked them.

Dr Birnbaum said:

“People experience higher levels of sexual desire when they feel confident about a partner’s interest and acceptance.”

He continued, that sexual desire may…

“…serve as a gut-feeling indicator of mate suitability that motivates people to pursue romantic relationships with a reliable and valuable partner.”

On the other hand:

“…inhibiting desire may serve as a mechanism aimed at protecting the self from investing in a relationship in which the future is uncertain.”

In two more studies, the researchers looked at the effect of uncertainty in long-term relationships, instead of people who have just met.

Once again, uncertainty turned out to be a turn-off.

Professor Harry Reis, study co-author, said:

“Well, they don’t put the final dagger in the heart of this idea, but our findings do indicate that this idea is on life support.
[The uncertainty idea was] never supported by solid science — but folk wisdom at best.”

The study was published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior (Birnbaum et al., 2018).

This Personality Trait Is Surprisingly Sexy To Men And Women

Women in the study guessed that the personality trait of conformity would attract men, but it didn’t.

Women in the study guessed that the personality trait of conformity would attract men, but it didn’t.

When it comes to dating, both sexes prefer a non-conformist partner, a study finds.

Although most people know a rebellious man is sexy; the results upend the common assumption that men prefer women who play by the rules.

Women in the study guessed that the personality trait of conformity would attract men, but it didn’t.

The study’s authors write:

“Women overestimated how attracted men would be to the conformist women.
People think that men prefer conformist women, but this impression is discrepant from reality.”

For the study researchers asked 115 people to rate a series of profiles for attractiveness.

They were asked to judge how attractive it was to them personally and how attractive it would be to someone else.

Both men and women preferred someone who ‘did their own thing’ rather than someone who ‘went along’ with everyone else.

Not only this, the researchers also found that people were…

“…most attracted to their ex-partners the more they judged their ex-partners to be nonconformist.”

The fact that women thought men would prefer conformity may be a leftover from more sexist times.

In the days when women were supposed to be agreeable, subdued and modest, the tendency to conformity would also have fitted the stereotype.

Thankfully those days are gone.

Sexy personality trait

The researchers didn’t just stick to pen-and-paper questionnaires though.

In another study they had 111 people meet in small groups.

When people rated how attractive the other members of the group were, it emerged that:

“…participants ostensibly in a small-group interaction showed preferences for nonconformist opposite-sex targets, a pattern that was particularly evident when men evaluated women.”

The study’s authors conclude:

“Dating success was greater the more nonconformist the sample was, and perceptions of nonconformity in an ex-partner were associated with greater love and attraction toward that partner.”

Other attractive personality traits include:

extraversion and having stable emotions,
kindness,
playfulness,
generosity,
intelligence and friendliness,
optimism,
and being compassionate.

The study was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (Hornsey et al., 2015).

Signs Of Lust In The Eyes: These Quick Movements Reveal All

How to spot the signs of lust in the eyes.

When a stranger looks into your eyes, it could signal romantic love, but if their eyes then slide down your body, they’re probably feeling sexual desire, a study finds.

This automatic judgement can happen in as little as half a second and likely recruits different networks of activity in the brain.

Stephanie Cacioppo, who led the study, which is published in the journal Psychological Science, said:

“Although little is currently known about the science of love at first sight or how people fall in love, these patterns of response provide the first clues regarding how automatic attentional processes, such as eye gaze, may differentiate feelings of love from feelings of desire toward strangers.”

In the study, men and women looked at photographs of strangers and indicated as quickly as possible whether they were feeling romantic love or sexual desire (Bolmont et al., 2014).

Some were pictures of couples, others of a single person of the opposite sex.

At the same time, eye-tracking equipment followed where they looked in the photographs.

By putting these two pieces of information together, the researchers found that people tended to be looking at the face first, and that’s where the eyes rested when thinking about romantic love.

But, when participants felt sexual desire, their gaze quickly shifted down the body.

Here are the ‘heat maps’ which show where people were looking:

When people felt sexual desire, their gaze mainly focused on the faces at first, but the green area below shows their gaze moving southwards.

Love and sexual desire are surprisingly separate processes in both the brain and in people’s lived experience:

“Love is not a prerequisite for sexual desire, and sexual desire does not necessarily lead to love. Love and lust can exist by themselves or in combination, and to any degree.
In one study of 500 individuals conducted in the mid-1960s by Tennov (1999), 61% of the women and 35% of the men agreed with the statement, “I have been in love without feeling any need for sex,” and 53% of the women and 79% of the men agreed with the statement, “I have been sexually attracted without feeling the slightest trace of love.””

Image credits: Stephanie Cacioppo & Bolmont et al.

9 Facts About Attraction From Psychological Research

Facts about attraction include whether opposites really attract, the benefits of uncertainty in attraction and lots more…

1. Opposites only attract when people are single

When people are single they are more attracted to faces that are dissimilar to their own, research finds.

But, when people are already in a relationship, they are more attracted to faces that look similar to their own.

In other words: opposites attract for single people, but not for those in a relationship.

The reason that dissimilar faces attract could be down to avoiding incest or other people with similar genes.

2. Facts about attraction: Altruism linked to having more sex

People who help others out have more sex.

The more altruistic people are, the more sexual partners they have and the more frequently they have sex.

Could it be, then, that being nice to other people is the ultimate aphrodisiac?

Who would have thought that this would be one of the facts about attraction?!

3. The weight change required to increase attractivity

The face can reveal whether our weight has changed, but how much is required for others to see it and find it more attractive?

Dr Nicholas Rule, co-author of a study on the subject, explains:

“Women and men of average height need to gain or lose about three and a half and four kilograms, or about eight and nine pounds, respectively, for anyone to see it in their face, but they need to lose about twice as much for anyone to find them more attractive.”

Read the full write-up.

4. Facts about attraction: Men should NOT try to ‘sound sexy’

Women have no trouble changing their voice to make it sound more sexy, but men have no clue.

Women lower the pitch of their voice and make it sound more breathy — which men find more attractive.

Dr Hughes said men found it difficult to sound sexy:

“In fact, although not significantly, it got a bit worse when men tried to sound sexy.”

The reason for the differences could be down to practice, the researchers think.

Men do not really focus on making their voice sound sexier, but women do.

5. Uncertainty is key to attraction

Women are more attracted to men when they are uncertain of his feelings.

So the old dating advice about ‘playing hard-to-get’ may have some scientific basis.

It all comes down to how much we are thinking about the other person.

The study’s authors write:

“When people first meet, it may be that popular dating advice is correct: Keeping people in the dark about how much we like them will increase how much they think about us and will pique their interest.”

6. Beards signal long-term relationships

Women judge fully bearded men to be a better bet for long-term relationships.

This might be because it makes men look more ‘formidable’.

Certainly, beards make men look older and more aggressive.

Beards are also often judged to make men look like they have higher social status.

However, for short-term relationships, women judge stubble to be most attractive, the research on facts about attraction found.

7. Facts about attraction: Left cheeks are more attractive

Believe it or not, our cheeks were not created equal in attractiveness or emotional expression.

People’s left cheeks are generally seen as more attractive than their right, a psychology study has found.

It may be because people tend to show more emotion with their left cheek than their right.

The reason for this fact about attraction could be down to how emotions are processed in the brain.

8. Mixed race faces are most attractive

Mixed-race faces are consistently seen as the most attractive when compared with black and white faces.

The finding is dramatic among the most attractive people, writes Dr Michael Lewis, the study’s author:

“…40% of the faces in the experiment were mixed race but among the top 10% most attractive faces this proportion increased to 65%.
Of the top 5% most attractive faces, 74% were mixed race…
…people whose genetic backgrounds are more diverse are, on average, perceived as more attractive than those whose backgrounds are less diverse.”

9. The group changes how attractive you look

How attractive you look depends on the attractiveness of the people around you.

An average-looking person is rated as more attractive when surrounded by unappealing faces.

Dr Nicholas Furl, the study’s author, said:

“Last year’s film The Duff, – an acronym for the rather unfortunate and unfair term ‘Designated Ugly Fat Friend’ explored how the main character felt being physically compared to her friendship group.
As in life, this film showed that how we perceive beauty and attractiveness isn’t fixed.”

Compare this with the ‘cheerleader effect‘.

How to be alluring study