Physical attractiveness is important for those choosing a partner followed by similarity, familiarity and being liked back.
The effect of hot people on your cognitive abilities, revealed by research.
The effect of hot people on your cognitive abilities, revealed by research.
People become cognitively impaired in the presence of an attractive member of the opposite sex, research finds.
The drop in intelligence is particularly strong for men.
The more attractive the woman, the more men’s test scores plummeted, psychologists found.
It may be because men are so concerned about making a good impression that they have few mental resources left over for anything else.
The study involved people talking to members of the opposite sex before completing cognitive tests.
Both sexes performed worse on the tests when they were trying to make a good impression on the other person.
It made no difference whether or not they were already in a relationship or single.
However, men were more often struggling to make a good impression, so their cognitive powers weakened the most.
Impression management is no easy task for the human brain, as the authors explain:
“…leaving a favorable impression on an opposite-sex partner may not always be easy.
Impression management requires careful monitoring and modifying of one’s own behavior to optimize the overall impression an individual wants make on the interaction partner, making it an effortful and cognitively demanding endeavor.
Research by Vohs and colleagues (2005) suggests that impression management indeed generally requires relatively high levels of cognitive control.”
The study was inspired by an experience of one of the study’s authors:
“Some time ago, one of the male authors was chatting with a very attractive girl he had not met before.
While he was anxious to make a good impression, when she asked him where he lived, he suddenly could not remember his street address.
It seemed as if his impression management concerns had temporarily absorbed most of his cognitive resources.”
The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (Karremans et al., 2009).
Why some people automatically ‘click’ better than others: it’s more subtle than looks, appearance or status.
People ranked the most desirable characteristics in a partner for the survey.
People ranked the most desirable characteristics in a partner for the survey.
The four traits people look for in a partner are kindness, easygoingness, intelligence and physical attractiveness, research finds.
In a twist on these familiar findings, though, people can have too much of some these traits, the psychologists also found.
People who are too intelligent and too easy-going are less attractive.
It may be because intelligence can make other people insecure and being too easy-going might be a bad sign.
Dr Gilles Gignac, the study’s first author, explained:
“Previously published research suggests that elevated levels of intelligence may incite feelings of insecurity in some people, which may reduce desirability.
Correspondingly, exceptional easygoingness may be viewed as an indication of a lack of confidence or ambition.”
The conclusions come from a survey of 383 people in Australia.
They were asked to rank the most desirable characteristics in a partner.
Once a potential partner was in the top 10 percent for IQ or easygoingness, they became less attractive.
However, being in the top 10 percent for physical attractiveness and kindness was not detrimental, although desirability ratings did not increase at this level.
Dr Gignac said:
“So, on average, there doesn’t appear to be any gain to being exceptionally kind or exceptionally physically attractive in the context of attracting a romantic partner.”
A minority of people are especially interested in the highly intelligent, the research showed.
However, the research could not pinpoint what type of people these were.
It certainly wasn’t more intelligent people who preferred other more intelligent people — which is what you would expect.
Dr Gignac said:
“This result is surprising, considering there is assortative mating for intelligence that indicates a correlation between people in a romantic relationship having similar intelligence levels.”
The study was published in the British Journal of Psychology (Gignac & Starbuck, 2018).
Learn the surprising way your eyes influence your attractiveness.
Both sexes unconsciously do the same thing when they meet someone they are attracted to.
Both sexes unconsciously do the same thing when they meet someone they are attracted to.
Both men and women unconsciously lower their voices when they are attracted to someone, research finds.
Men, in particular, keep their voices low to indicate their interest.
Surprisingly, women also lower their voices when speaking to the most attractive men.
For the study, 30 speed daters met in a café, half men, half women.
The researchers monitored voice pitch and asked everyone who they were attracted to.
The study’s authors explain that men lowered their voice when attracted to a woman:
“…men lowered the minimum pitch of their voices when interacting with women who were overall highly desired by other men.
Men also lowered their mean voice pitch on dates with women they selected as potential mates, particularly those who indicated a mutual preference (matches).
Women also lowered their voice when attracted to a man:
“…although women spoke with a higher and more variable voice pitch toward men they selected as potential mates, women lowered both voice pitch parameters toward men who were most desired by other women and whom they also personally preferred.”
Women, though, were more discerning in their choice: only lowering their voice for the most attractive men.
The study was published in the journal The Royal Society Proceedings B (Pisanski et al., 2018).
Study tested the effects of poor sleep on two consecutive nights.
Could a clear sense of direction in life make you more appealing to potential partners?
How less attractive men can make themselves stand out from the crowd.
How less attractive men can make themselves stand out from the crowd.
Plain-looking men can boost their attractiveness to women by being creative, research finds.
The same boost in attractiveness, strangely, does not apply to plain-looking women.
In fact, for less attractive women, creativity could actually be a dating handicap.
Dr Christopher Watkins, the study’s author, said:
“Creative women with less attractive faces seem to be perhaps penalised in some way.”
The boost for average-looking men, though, was substantial, said Dr Watkins:
“Creative guys with less attractive faces were almost identical in attractiveness to really good looking guys who were not as creative.”
Top of the pile, naturally, were men who were both good-looking and creative.
The importance of displaying creativity may be partly that imagination suggests intelligence.
Dr Watkins said:
“Women on average are a more selective sex when it comes to choosing romantic partners.
Creativity is thought to be a signal that an individual can invest time and effort into a particular task or can see things in novel ways that may be useful for survival.”
Unfortunately, those who are creative may not have a chance to show it in the modern, superficial world of online dating.
Dr Watkins said:
“Certain platforms that we have now for dating might not be favourable for assessing people on more complex attributes.”
Creativity is not just attractive in a dating context, but also in friendships, the study found.
Compare this study with another piece of attraction research testing whether personality can beat looks:
“Women say they prefer the personality traits of friendliness and respectfulness, but new research reveals it’s really all about looks.
When tested, women pick men who are physically attractive over those with better personality traits.
Younger women, in particular, pay little attention to whether men are trustworthy, respectful and honest — just whether they are fit.
[…]
The results revealed that personality made little difference when men were unattractive.
Perhaps, though, creativity can do the trick in place of being friendly and respectful.
The study was published in the journal Royal Society Open Science (Watkins, 2017).
The top trait women find attractive in men.
The top trait women find attractive in men.
Helping others with no thought for yourself is more attractive than good looks for a long-term relationship.
Women rated an average-looking man giving money to a homeless person as more attractive than a better looking man who walked right past, the researchers found.
The study suggests that good looks are not everything in the dating game, especially when it comes to long-term relationships.
When women were asked about short-term relationships, though, the research revealed a weird twist — being altruistic was then a liability.
For short-term relationships women preferred a man who was not altruistic.
This could be related to the fact that darker personality traits, such as narcissism and psychopathy can make men more attractive in the short-term.
Clearly these type of men are not going around rescuing kittens from trees.
For the study women were shown pictures of two different men — one was more attractive than the other.
They then read different scenarios describing how each man was behaving — sometimes altruistically, sometimes not.
Being both altruistic and attractive was the mother lode, the researchers explained:
“The preference for altruistic men was also further influenced by their physical attractiveness, such that the increase in desirability of men as attractiveness increased was significantly greater when they were also altruistic.
This suggests that altruism can have an additive effect to other mate choice qualities (in this case, physical attractiveness), such that possessing both qualities has a greater effect on a man’s desirability than just a combination of their individual desirability.”
For short-term relationships, though, the better looking man was the preferred choice for women, no matter what he was pictured doing.
If you had to choose between being selfless or good-looking, then this study suggests that a generous and charitable is more attractive for long-term relationships.
The study was published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology (Farrelly et al., 2016).
Join the free PsyBlog mailing list. No spam, ever.
