The most trustworthy and attractive face shape and eye colour.
Although we associate beauty with truth, there are disadvantages of being beautiful, as it is threatening and sparks people’s defences.
Although we associate beauty with truth, there are disadvantages of being beautiful, as it is threatening and sparks people’s defences.
Beautiful people are all around us: on billboards, on TV and at the movies — some of them even inhabit our everyday lives.
Great beauty in another person inspires all kinds of emotions: admiration, desire, hope, despair and sometimes envy.
So what is the psychological effect of beauty and how do other people react to it?
In fact, there are disadvantages of being beautiful, or so the psychological research suggests.
Here are both sides of the coin, first five disadvantages of being beautiful and then five advantages of being attractive and pretty.
Here’s the what research says about the disadvantages of being beautiful.
The beauty bias (more on that below) is probably not as strong as some have suggested and not as powerful as we might imagine (Eagly et al., 1991).
For example, when it comes to income, in most lines of work it’s better to be smarter than more attractive (Judge et al., 2009).
The same goes for persuasion, self-esteem and even attraction: other personal qualities can easily trump beauty.
So, psychologists have begun to uncover the dark side of being beautiful.
Given what we already know about the beautiful it may be difficult to have much sympathy, but here are five disadvantages of being beautiful:
Although beauty can help in the search for a job, it’s not always true.
When employers are making a decision about someone of the same sex, they can let their jealousy get the better of them.
One study has suggested that people who are highly attractive are at a disadvantage in the hiring process when the decision-makers are the same sex (Agthe et al., 2011).
It seems we perceive beautiful people who are the same sex as a threat.
Similarly there’s evidence that female beauty can be a problem in jobs with strong gender stereotypes.
For example, a beautiful woman may be at a disadvantage when applying for a job which is associated with masculinity, like a prison guard or a mechanical engineer (Johnson et al, 2010).
The same doesn’t seem to be true for attractive men — so it’s just one of the disadvantages of being an attractive woman.
They can happily apply for jobs as nurses, lingerie salespersons or HR managers without their beauty counting against them.
The halo effect tells us that when we judge more attractive members of the opposite sex, we generally assume they’re more talented than those who are less attractive.
This happens even though what they do or say is no cleverer than less attractive people.
But this changes when it’s members of the same sex.
In a study by Anderson and Nida (1978) highly attractive people of the same sex were judged as less talented than average-looking people.
If beautiful people are successful, is it because of their talent, or is it just their looks?
After all, people are lucky to be attractive and we know all the advantages of that.
Research finds that when judging their own sex, people are more likely to think beautiful people’s success is down to their beauty, not their talent (Forsterling et al., 2007).
So you’re lucky to be pretty, but probably just rely on that rather than talent.
Although attractive, pretty and beautiful people are generally more popular socially, there’s some evidence that very attractive people can experience social rejection from members of their own sex (Krebs and Adinolfi, 1978).
People in relationships also protect themselves from beauty by ignoring it.
Research shows that when we’re thinking about love we automatically ignore attractive members of the opposite sex, probably to protect our feelings about our long-term partner (Maner et al., 2008).
In many situations we automatically defer to beauty, assuming that along with beauty come all sorts of other positive characteristics.
We have a tendency to think beautiful people are funnier, more friendly, more intelligent, more exciting, in possession of better social skills, are sexually warmer, are more interesting, poised and even more independent.
These sorts of judgements have been tested over-and-over again in the laboratory and elsewhere.
This is a great example of the so-called ‘halo effect‘: when global evaluations about a person bleed over into our judgements about their specific traits.
So, in this case being pretty is hardly a disadvantage.
There’s a whole stack of research on mate selection and attractiveness.
You won’t find the headline result at all surprising: on pure looks alone we prefer partners who are more beautiful.
Of course that assumes that everything else is equal, which it normally isn’t.
Good-looking people make better persuaders (Chaiken, 1979).
This may be because attractive people tend to be better communicators and possess more confidence or just because we believe in beauty.
Whatever the reason, beauty can persuade us to change our minds.
At work attractive people can receive all kinds of benefits.
First of all they may get higher starting salaries, perhaps because their qualifications are perceived as more solid and their potential as greater (this is the halo effect workings its magic).
Then, later on, they have an advantage in promotions.
Not surprisingly, given all the above advantages, good-looking people also have higher self-esteem.
What with all those dates and the extra money, is it any wonder they think better of themselves than their less fortunate peers?
Most of the research on the disadvantages of being beautiful has been done on heterosexuals but it’s possible similar biases operate for gay people.
For both gay and straight, the extent of the biases related to the disadvantages of being beautiful probably depends on how attractive you are (or at least how attractive you perceive yourself to be).
People who are themselves attractive probably don’t feel as defensive around other attractive people, so the biases are likely to be weaker for them.
Although we all know about the advantages of being pretty, it’s easy to forget the disadvantages of being beautiful.
This psychological research is a reminder that beauty can be threatening.
It can threaten our relationships, our work and our image of ourselves.
We admire it and defer to it, but sometimes we have to defend ourselves against it.
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Trying to sound attractive is easier for women than men.
Trying to sound attractive is easier for women than men.
Speaking slowly makes people sound more intelligent, research finds.
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).
People were shown a random sample of black, white and mixed-race faces.
People were shown a random sample of black, white and mixed-race faces.
Mixed-race faces are consistently seen as the most attractive when compared with black and white faces, research finds.
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.”
Dr Michael Lewis explained the motivation for the study:
“Previous, small scale, studies have suggested that people of mixed race are perceived as being more attractive than non-mixed-race people.
This study was an attempt to put this to the wider test.
A random sample of black, white, and mixed-race faces was collected and rated for their perceived attractiveness.
There was a small but highly significant effect, with mixed-race faces, on average, being perceived as more attractive.”
There is an evolutionary theory for why mixed race faces are seen as more attractive.
Charles Darwin came up with the idea that hybrids are more vigorous (heterosis).
Cross-breeding in many species leads to offspring or are genetically fitter.
It could be that humans also pick up on this hybrid strength.
Dr Lewis writes:
“The results appear to confirm that people whose genetic backgrounds are more diverse are, on average, perceived as more attractive than those whose backgrounds are less diverse.
This can be taken as evidence for heterosis among human population groups.
There is evidence, albeit anecdotal, that the impact of heterosis goes beyond just attractiveness.
This comes from the observation that, although mixed-race people make up a small proportion of the population, they are over-represented at the top level of a number of meritocratic professions like acting with Halle Berry, Formula 1 racing with Lewis Hamilton; and, of course, politics with Barack Obama.”
Previous research has shown the same effect for mixed Asian and European backgrounds.
Dr Lewis said:
“…people of a mixed Asian and European background were rated as more attractive than Asians, Europeans, or even faces generated as morphs between these two groups.”
The study was published in the journal Perception (Lewis, 2010).
Smiling is associated with positive values, but does it make you look younger?
Women were shown faces morphed to have more or less of three dangerous character traits.
The posture that makes both sexes look more attractive.
The study reveals the most attractive type of face mask.
Women smelled the body odour of some men who’d eaten this and found it more attractive.
Women smelled the body odour of some men who’d eaten this and found it more attractive.
First, you better check that it’s not April the 1st.
OK, done. It’s not. Onwards…
Eating garlic — and I mean a lot of garlic — makes men’s body odour smell more attractive, a study finds.
The surprising finding adds to garlic’s established health benefits.
It took the ingestion of four cloves of garlic to do the trick.
Two cloves was simply not enough.
Women smelled the body odour of some men who’d eaten no garlic, some who’d eaten two cloves and some who’d eaten four.
They rated each man’s odour sample for attractiveness, pleasantness, intensity and masculinity.
There is, of course, a fatal flaw to this experiment.
Women did not smell the men’s breath!
This may well have changed the ratings somewhat…
If you are planning to try out the power of garlic, though, look no further than a 2010 volume of the Journal of Food Science (Hansanugrum & Barringer, 2010).
This study found that drinking milk can help prevent garlic breath.
That should help a bit.
So, why does the body odour of garlic smell more attractive to women?
Professor Craig Roberts, who led the study, said it could be related to its health benefits:
“Our results indicate that garlic consumption may have positive effects on the pleasure derived from perceived body odour perhaps due to its health effects.
From an evolutionary perspective, formation of preferences for diet-associated body odours was possibly shaped by means of sexual selection.
Previous research indicates that many animal species use diet-associated cues to select mates in good physical condition.
As the health benefits of garlic consumption include antioxidant, immunostimulant, cardiovascular, bactericidal and anti-cancer effects, it is plausible that human odour preferences have been shaped by sexual selection.
The study was published in the journal Appetite (Fialova et al., 2015).
This confirms what smart women always suspected about men.
This confirms what smart women always suspected about men.
Men prefer smarter women, but only in theory, a study finds.
When a real living, breathing smarter women is close by, men shy away, preferring women of lower intelligence.
Dr Lora Park, who led the study, said:
“There is a disconnect between what people appear to like in the abstract when someone is unknown and when that same person is with them in some immediate social context.”
The research tested the difference between abstract and actual intelligence.
Dr Park explained the results of the study:
“We found that men preferred women who are smarter than them in psychologically distant situations.
Men rely on their ideal preferences when a woman is hypothetical or imagined.
But in live interaction, men distanced themselves and were less attracted to a woman who outperformed them in intelligence.”
Perhaps we should avoid laying all the blame on men, though.
The study just happened to look at men’s attraction towards women, it didn’t examine women’s attraction towards men.
Dr Park said:
“That’s a question for future research.
But presumably, anyone who is outperformed by someone close to them might feel threatened themselves.
We just happened to look at men in a romantic dating context.”
In the research 650 young adults were given a range of different scenarios in six separate studies.
Some men were only shown profiles of women, others expected to meet women while some actually met women in real life.
Dr Park said:
“In each case, how much you like someone or how much you are attracted to them is affected by how intelligent that person is relative to you and how close that person is relative to you.”
But it’s vital that the quality — in this case intelligence — is important to you, said Dr Park:
“The domain matters.
If you don’t care about the domain, you might not be threatened.
Yet, if you care a lot about the domain, then you might prefer that quality in somebody who is distant, then feel threatened when that person gets close to you.”
So, in this case it seems intelligence really does matter.
The study was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (Park et al., 2015).
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