Attractiveness

The Most Attractive Male Face Shape To Females

These are the traits that make a male face most attractive to a female.

Women find masculine faces more attractive, research finds.

This trait can be added to the other aspects of the face that are generally considered attractive, whether for a man or a woman.

These are:

Symmetry: people whose faces are more symmetrical are generally considered more attractive.
Averageness: faces that resemble others in the population tend to appear more attractive.
Apparent health: people who look healthy, because of their skin and overall appearance are considered to have more attractive faces.
Plain or simple faces: simple faces are easier for the brain to process and store so people find them more attractive, research suggests.

Attractive facial features

For the study of masculinity and attractiveness, heterosexual women were shown a series of faces that had been made to look more masculine.

Here is an example of a face made to look more masculine that was used in the study:

The face on the left (a) is masculinsed, whereas the face on the right (b) has a more feminine look.

Women consistently chose the masculinised face as more attractive.

Women were particularly interested in the more masculine face in the context of a short-term relationship.

The researchers were trying to see if women’s hormone levels have any effect on the type of male faces they find attractive.

Other studies have found that women prefer more masculine faces when they are fertile.

In other words: do changing hormone levels make women go for more manly men?

Professor Benedict Jones, who led the study, explained that this was not what they found:

“We found no evidence that changes in hormone levels influence the type of men women find attractive.
This study is noteworthy for its scale and scope — previous studies typically examined small samples of women using limited measures,.
With much larger sample sizes and direct measures of hormonal status, we weren’t able to replicate effects of hormones on women’s preferences for masculine faces.”

There was no evidence that fertility-related hormones like estradiol and progesterone were linked to changes in attractiveness judgements.

Previous studies suggested that the birth control pill, because it affects fertility hormones, reduces women’s attraction to masculine faces.

Again, there was no evidence of this in the current study.

All that emerged was that women thought more masculine looking men were more attractive.

Professor Jones said:

“There has been increasing concern that the birth control pill might disrupt romantic relationships by altering women’s mate preferences, but our findings do not provide evidence of this.”

The study was published in the journal Psychological Science (Jones et al., 2018).

The Most Attractive Male Body Shape To Females

All 160 females in the study agreed on the most attractive body shape or type for a man.

A strong upper body is the most attractive body shape or type on men to females, research finds.

Asked to judge photos of topless men, women consistently rated the stronger looking, more muscular men as the most attractive type.

Fully 70 percent of a man’s bodily attractiveness is down to how strong he looks, the researchers found.

Contributing factors were being tall and lean, but they were easily outweighed by being stronger.

Attractive male body shape research

The survey of 160 women’s preferences for male body shapes and types asked them to rate sixty shirtless men whose heads were obscured, like this:

Every man’s strength was determined using weightlifting and grip strength tests.

The women could accurately tell how strong the men were by looking at them, the results revealed.

There was no evidence that men’s body types could be too pumped up — the stronger they were, the better they looked to women.

There was no evidence that some had different tastes — all 160 women preferred the stronger-looking men.

Taller men are automatically rated as physically stronger, the study’s authors explain:

“…when rating physical strength, raters are known to treat taller men as physically stronger (independently of their actual weight-lifting strength), and yet even controlling for these ratings taller men are treated as more attractive.
This suggests that women are treating lean and tall men as more attractive for reasons other than just fighting ability.”

The study’s authors invoke an evolutionary explanation for the findings:

“…evolutionary psychologists have shown that women’s mate choice mechanisms track many cues of men’s genetic quality and ability to invest resources in the woman and her offspring.
One variable that predicted both a man’s genetic quality and his ability to invest is the man’s formidability (i.e. fighting ability or resource holding power/potential).
[…]
One crucial component of a man’s ability to fight is his upper body strength.”

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B (Sell et al., 2017).

What Is The Most Attractive Hair Colour On A Woman?

This colour and length of hair is most attractive on a woman.

Longer and lighter hair is the most attractive hair colour on Caucasian women, a study has found.

Both lighter brown hair and lighter blonde hair are seen as more attractive than darker or black hair.

Lighter hair increases men’s ratings for youth, health and attractiveness in a woman.

On the negative side, though, lighter hair was linked to worse parenting skills by men.

The researchers also noted some interesting variations:

There is evidence that lighter hair is only more attractive for women under the age of 40.
Men rated women with medium-length blonde hair as more attractive than those with long blonde hair.
Long black hair beat long blonde hair.

The explanation is likely that blonder hair signals youth, since people’s hair tends to get darker until mid-life.

Study on most attractive hair colour

The study involved 110 men who rated women with hair of different colours and lengths.

The study only included Caucasian women with black, brown or blonde hair of short, medium or long length.

The results are explained by the study’s authors:

“…we found that lighter hair (blond and brown) compared to darker hair (black) is generally associated with perceptions of youth, health and attractiveness, and generally leads to more positive perceptions of relationship and parenting potential.”

The study’s authors employ an evolutionary explanation for their findings:

“Hair that is healthy and strong signifies overall physical
health, which in turn can signify one’s capability of conceiving and carrying a child.
Because hair tends to be thicker, healthier, and grow more quickly in younger women (ages 16-24) than older women, one would expect that younger women would wear their hair longer than older women to provide a more perceptible and powerful signal to reproductive potential.”

The preference for blonde hair may be related to location, as men seem to prefer it more in areas where it is more common.

The study was published in The Journal of Social Psychology (Matz & Hinsz, 2017).

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 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.”