Category: Attractiveness

The trick works well when other people already see you as competent.

A small mishap or blunder can make you more likable, research finds.

In the psychology study, people spilled a cup of coffee over themselves, after which people rated them as more attractive.

The blunder made people appear more human and approachable.

The trick works well when other people already see you as competent.

The authors explain that talented people are sometimes disliked by others:

“…group members who are considered the most able are not necessarily the best liked.

It has also been demonstrated that people who initiate the most ideas and are acknowledged as the best “idea” men [or women] by other members of their group are usually not the best liked group members.

[…]

A great deal of ability, in and of itself, might make the stimulus person seem “too good,” unapproachable, distant, non-human.”

Called the ‘pratfall effect’ by psychologists, it relies on the blunderer already being seen as confident.

In contrast, the incompetent blunderer is seen as less attractive after a pratfall.

So, just knocking things over, spilling drinks and slipping on bananas all day won’t do the trick!

The study’s authors write:

“Taken as a whole, these data support the contention that a blunder on the part of a superior person removes the onus of being “too good”; it increases his approachability and makes him seem less austere, more human-while a blunder on the part of a mediocre person makes him seem that much more mediocre.”

The study was published in the journal Psychonomic Science (Aronson et al., 1966).

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).

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).

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).

The type of compliment that women prefer.

Using metaphorical compliments makes men more attractive to women than using literal ones, new research finds.

Women in the Chinese study found men more attractive if they used phrases like “Your eyes are morning dew”.

On the other hand, saying things like “Your lips are so sexy”, was not the way to go.

It is very clear which type of compliment is most romantic, but the use of metaphor has another subtle purpose.

Metaphors require more intelligence and creativity to generate so they are indirect signals of a person’s creativity and intelligence.

The study’s authors explain:

“We tend to form very rapid impressions about a person’s attractiveness in social contexts and thus for women, cues from language usage during initial encounters may provide a rapid first assessment of a potential mate’s intellectual and creative abilities.”

Alongside complimenting women’s appearance, the study also tested complimenting their potential girlfriend’s house.

They either said metaphorical things like “Your roof is a lover’s shoulder” or literal things like “Your door is very strong”.

Naturally these house-based compliments didn’t go down as well as those directed at the woman’s appearance.

Still, though, the metaphorical compliment created more attraction than the literal one.

The authors write:

“…women, in contrast with men, prefer creativity and intelligence rather than physical attractiveness and for the compliments used in our current study women did indeed perceive those which were figurative as indicating higher intelligence in a man than literal expression compliments.”

The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports (Gao et al., 2017).

People look more attractive when gazing in this way.

Looking directly at someone makes you more attractive to them, research finds.

People were particularly attracted to opposite-sex faces that were looking at them and smiling.

Dr Claire Conway, the study’s first author, said:

“When asked to think of examples of attractive facial characteristics, most people think of physical traits such as healthy looking skin, symmetrical features or a strong jaw.

Here we show that gaze direction can also be important for attraction.”

People in the study looked at a series of pictures in which faces were sometimes looking at the viewer and sometimes away.

Different facial expressions were also tested.

Dr Conway explained the results:

“Faces that were looking directly at the viewer were judged more attractive than faces with averted gaze.

This effect was particularly pronounced if the face was smiling and the opposite sex to the viewer.

This shows that people prefer faces that appear to like’ them and that attraction is not simply about physical beauty.

It is possible that our brains are wired this way to allow us to invest our time in attracting members of the opposite sex who seem the most receptive to our interest in them.”

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B (Conway et al., 2008).