The Educational Level That Is Most Attractive (S)

The conclusions come from a 41,936 members of an online dating service.

The conclusions come from a 41,936 members of an online dating service.


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What Sexy People Do To Your Intelligence

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).

Women Who Walk This Way Are Most Attractive

Attractiveness is not just down to body size and shape — the way people move may be just as important.

Attractiveness is not just down to body size and shape — the way people move may be just as important.

Women who walk with small steps and a slight wiggle in their hips are seen as more attractive, a new study concludes.

Indeed, a woman’s movement was just as important as her weight and shape to judgments of attractiveness, the researchers found.

The study demonstrates that you cannot judge a person’s attractiveness from a static photo, you need to see them move.

Dr Ed Morrison, the study’s first author, said:

“Most previous research into what makes a body attractive has relied on photographs, but in real life we usually see a potential mate moving.

Motion is also crucial in courtship behaviours like dancing.

Research shows that we are more likely to find a woman attractive if she wiggles her hips and takes small steps.

Because body shape preferences vary across cultures and through history, the study aimed to find out if you take away the face, what sort of clues would people use to gauge attractiveness.

Motion capture allows us to isolate movement from body shape and compare the relative importance of the two.”

For the study, 75 people watched videos of 37 different women walking on a treadmill.

However, sometimes people were shown the original video and sometimes it was converted into points of light, like this:

Dr Morrison explained what emerged:

“The results suggested that movement is as important as static measurements in gauging attractiveness, which was surprising because everyday experience suggests you can see easily how attractive someone is from a photograph.

I’m not sure why a particular walking style is considered attractive but gait might be giving away important clues to a woman’s fitness and age – key components of reproductive health.”

Whether or not these movements can be faked is not known, said Dr Morrison:

“It would be interesting to test if people can actively change their movement to attract or deter mates – using such knowledge is similar in evolutionary psychology terms to a woman wearing red lipstick or eyeliner, both of which directly mimic signals of fertility, youth or health.”

Dr Morrison and his team are now working on what makes a man’s walk look attractive…

The study was published in the journal Visual Cognition (Morrison et al., 2018).

The Most Attractive Body Shape For Women

What makes bodies attractive tend to be shared by men and women across cultural divides.

What makes bodies attractive tend to be shared by men and women across cultural divides.

Having long and shapely arms is more attractive for a woman than having long legs, psychological research finds.

The study had both men and women rating videos of 96 different models.

The results showed that the most attractive women were young, tall and with long arms.

Having a narrow waists, relative to height, was also considered more attractive.

Professor Robert Brooks, who led the study, said:

“Physical attractiveness is an important determining factor for evolutionary, social and economic success.

The dimensions of someone’s body can tell observers if that person is suitable as a potential mate, a long term partner or perhaps the threat they pose as a sexual competitor.”

The study used judges from both Australia and Hong Kong.

Professor Brooks said:

“Our results showed consistent attractiveness ratings by men and women and by Hong Kong Chinese and Australian raters, suggesting considerable cross cultural consistency.

In part this may be due to shared media experiences.

Nonetheless when models are stripped of their most obvious racial and cultural features, the features that make bodies attractive tend to be shared by men and women across cultural divides.”

The study was published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology (Brooks et al., 2010).

This Style Of Shoe Makes Women Look Most Attractive

These shoes may act like an unconscious signal to men.

These shoes may act like an unconscious signal to men.

High heels make women more attractive to men, research finds.

The higher the high heels were, the more helpful men were — indicating they were looking for an excuse to talk to her.

Men were also quicker to approach a woman wearing high heels in a bar.

For the series of studies, a female researcher either wore flats, 5 cm heels or 9 cm heels.

She then asked men and women in the street to fill in a survey.

The heel height made no difference to the rate at which women agreed to fill in the survey.

However, men were most likely to agree to the survey when she wore 9 cm heels.

In a third study a female researcher appeared to drop a glove in the street accidentally.

When she wore flats, 62% of passing men picked it up for her.

When she wore 9 cm high heels, though, 93% of passing men helped her out.

The heels made little difference to passing women, with only around 50% helping her out.

Professor Nicolas Guéguen, the study’s author, writes:

“In four experimental studies conducted in several field settings, we reported that the length of shoe heels worn by
women exerted an effect on men’s behavior.

Four times we observed that men more easily displayed social interaction with a woman wearing high heels.”

It is still not really known why high heels are attractive to men.

The study’s author suggests four reasons, the first three of which he rejects:

  1. It makes a woman’s foot look smaller, which in turn suggests youth. This doesn’t seem that likely.
  2. High heels make a woman taller. This is unlikely as men generally do not prefer taller women and the woman was seated in one study.
  3. High heels change the way women walk. Again, in one study, women were seated, so this doesn’t explain it.

The fourth is probably the best explanation: high heels are culturally fetishised.

In other words, high heels are linked in men’s minds to sex.

Perhaps they act like a signal that a woman is more receptive and, unconsciously, they feel they have a better chance with a woman wearing high heels.

The study was published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior (Guéguen, 2014).

Listen For This Simple Clue That Someone Is Attracted To You

How people signal attraction with their voice.

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, a study finds.

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).