Attractiveness

The Amount Of Makeup That Is Most Attractive — Evidence Of A Weird Bias

Both sexes agree on the ideal amount of makeup to enhance attractiveness, but completely misread what others want.

The amount of makeup that looks most attractive is about 40 percent less than many women use.

Whether judged by other men or women, less is more.

In other words, many women apply makeup past the point they need to in order to increase their attractiveness.

For the research, a group of students were photographed with and without their makeup.

From these, psychologists created a series of images including varying degrees of makeup.

People were then asked to look at the photos and choose the one that looked most attractive.

People also judged what might look most attractive to other people.

Makeup mistakes

The first finding was simply that people judged the pictures with about 40 percent less makeup than women typically wore to be most attractive.

However, when people tried to imagine what others would say was most attractive, an interesting bias appeared.

Both men and women thought that other people would find more makeup more attractive.

The bias was particularly strong for men.

Men thought other men were attracted to a lot of makeup, but none of them were attracted to women wearing heavy makeup themselves.

The study’s authors think that by wearing too much makeup women are trying to conform to stereotypical ideals:

“Our female observers indicated the amount of cosmetics for optimal attractiveness was lower than the amount worn by the models, who were a sample of similarly aged peers.
This suggests that while there is a sense of what is optimally attractive, it may be overlooked in order to conform to stereotyped ideals, and mistaken notions of what others will find attractive.

The study was published in the The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (Jones et al., 2014).

Listen For This Simple Clue That Someone Is Attracted To You

How people signal attraction with their voice.

People signal attraction to each other by lowering their voice pitch.

For both men and women, a lower voice pitch signalled attraction.

Dr Susan Hughes, the study’s first author, said:

“We found that both sexes used a lower-pitch voice and showed a higher level of physiological arousal when speaking to a more attractive opposite-sex target.”

For the study, 48 people were asked to leave a scripted voice message while viewing a picture of an invented person.

When they looked at a picture of a more attractive person, people used a lower pitched voice for the message.

Men were expected to lower their tone to signal attraction, which is what they did.

Dr Hughes expected that women would raise their voices to seem more attractive, but the opposite happened.

Dr Hughes said:

“There appears to be a common stereotype in our culture that deems a sexy female voice as one that sounds husky, breathy, and lower-pitched.
This suggests that the motivation to display a sexy/seductive female voice may conflict with the motivation to sound more feminine.”

It could be that women learn to lower their tone as it is an accepted signal, Dr Hughes said:

“When a woman naturally lowers her voice, it may be perceived as her attempt to sound more seductive or attractive, and therefore serves as a signal of her romantic interest.”

The research also found that the change in voice tone was large enough that people could spot it.

Dr Hughes said:

“These findings may have implications for the important role voice plays in mate selection and attraction.
If people can perceive changes in others’ voices when speaking to attractive individuals, this perception may be adaptive for identifying interested potential mates, detecting partner interest in others, and possible detection of partner infidelity.”

The study was published in the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior (Hughes et al., 2010).

These 2 Dark Triad Personality Traits Are Highly Attractive

The study showed 128 young women personality profiles of various men.

Extraverts with stable, or non-neurotic personalities are particularly attractive.

However, both of these personality traits also help explain the attraction of the ‘bad boy’ to women, who also tends to be laid-back and extraverted.

Narcissist and psychopaths are seen as both extraverted and having stable, non-neurotic personalities, the study found.

Both of these contribute to the attractiveness of men with ‘dark triad’ personalities.

The ‘dark triad’ of personality factors includes narcissism and psychopathy, along with Machiavellianism.

The study’s authors write:

“Women, particularly in respect of short-term mating, may be attracted to ‘bad boys’, possessing confidence, hard-headedness and an inclination to risk-take – all accurate descriptors of Dark Triad [DT] men; all attractive to women.”

Another explanation for the attractiveness of bad boys could be their superficial charm, the authors write:

“Women may be responding to DT men’s ability to ‘sell themselves’; a useful tactic in a co-evolutionary ‘arms race’ in which men convince women to pursue the former’s preferred sexual strategy.
This ability may derive from a ‘used-car dealer’ ability to charm and manipulate, and DT-associated traits such as assertiveness.
Men with a DT personality are undoubtedly well-placed to successfully implement such a strategy.”

The conclusions come from a study in which 128 young women were shown personality profiles of various men.

One was designed to be high in dark triad personality factors.

The results showed that women saw the ‘bad boy’ as more attractive, when appearance was held constant.

Here is the authors’ quick description of the dark triad personality traits:

“Narcissism is defined by a sense of entitlement, dominance and a grandiose self-view.
Machiavellians are interpersonally duplicitous, insincere and extraverted.
Psychopathy consists of callousness, a lack of empathy, and antisocial, erratic behaviour.”

The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Carter et al., 2014).

Speaking Like This Makes You Sound More Intelligent And Attractive

Trying to sound attractive is easier for women than men.

Speaking slowly makes people sound more intelligent.

A lower tone also makes both sexes sound more attractive.

Women asked to talk in a more attractive way for the study automatically lowered the pitch of their voice and made it sound more breathy — which men find attractive.

While women had no trouble changing their voice to make it sound more sexy, men found it harder.

To sound more attractive, both sexes also speak slower, the authors write:

“…both sexes in our sample slowed their speech in comparison to their normal speech when trying to sound attractive/sexy…
Perhaps the slowing of one’s voice in a mating scenario is an attempt to convey approachability, as decreased speaking rate was found to increase the benevolence ratings of a speaker.”

Women, though, when they listened to men trying to sound attractive, were not convinced.

When women tried to sound sexier, it was more convincing.

Dr Susan Hughes, the study’s first author, said:

“This ability may be due to culture and cuts across cultures and time.
There is a stereotype of what is a sexual voice in our culture — a low, breathy voice.”

The study had people trying to intentionally change their voices to embody different traits.

They tried to sound more sexy, confident, intelligent and dominant.

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.”

Both sexes, though, had no problem sounding more intelligent and more dominant.

The researchers explained the changes people made:

“…both sexes slowed their speech and women lowered their pitch and had greater vocal hoarseness.
Both sexes raised their pitch and spoke louder to sound dominant and women had less vocal hoarseness.”

Women, though, found it hard to sound more confident.

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.

The study was published in Journal of Nonverbal Behavior (Hughes et al., 2014).

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Science Says Smiling Makes Men Irresistible… Sometimes

How smiling changes a man’s apparent masculinity.

Smiling makes men more attractive to women looking for long-term relationships, research finds.

But smiling does not make men look more attractive to women looking for a short-term relationship, as they appear less masculine.

The results come from two experiments in which hundreds of women evaluated pictures of men — some of whom were smiling.

The study’s authors explain:

“Smiling enhanced the male attractiveness for long-term relationships but not for short-term relationships.
The facilitative effect of smiling on the long-term partners was observed for East Asian as well as for European participants.
In addition, smiling faces were rated to be less masculine and more trustworthy and mature than neutral faces.”

An evolutionary dating hack

So, smiling makes a man’s face look less masculine, but also more trustworthy.

The study’s authors analyse this in terms of evolutionary psychology.

This is the theory that many of our traits have evolved over the millennia to help the race reproduce.

In other words, at some level, some of the things we do when selecting partners (and other things) are so because our genes have programmed us that way.

Evolutionary psychology suggests two types of mating strategies have evolved.

In the long-term strategy, women are ‘programmed’ to look for someone who will help raise the children.

For that you need someone trustworthy — in other words a man who smiles (among other things, of course!).

The short-term strategy cares less about trustworthiness and more about the genes.

More attractive and masculine men have better genes in this context, so the lack of a smile makes them look like a better bet for a short-term relationship.

As the authors explain it:

“…social and cooperative characteristics would be primarily important for long-term partners but not very much for short-term partners because long-term cooperation is necessary for parenting in the former but not in the latter.
Women put more emphasis on social factors such as trustworthiness for the long-term relationship, where paternal investment is expected, in order to minimize the risk of losing commitment from their partner during pregnancy and parenting.”

The study was published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology (Okubo et al., 2018).