Facial Symmetry and Physical Attractiveness

In people’s perspective, attractiveness possess a wide variety of positive personal qualities compared to unattractive people. Result from the study on physical attractiveness stereotypes show the attractive people had the most positive ratings. For example, they are judged as less disturbed, rated as happier and more successful, and more likely to be hired after a job interview. Thus, the concept of attractiveness having a correlation between an individual’s physical appearance and his/her achievements, abilities, psychological well-being and/or other status characteristics to create a perception is

In another study, Langlois and Roggaman (1990) took photos of faces and morphed them together to produce composite images made up of 4, 8, 16 or 32 images. Participants rated faces as increasingly attractive the more faces that went into each image; this applied to both male and female faces. The more faces in an image, the more symmetrical they become, it seems that moving a facial image closer to the average increases its perceived attractiveness. It is likely that symmetry equates to fitness and “good genes”, these people are less likely to have been affected by harmful mutation. People with attractive faces are preferred because of the benefits of passing on these attractive characteristics to offspring. Little & Hancock propose that humans have evolved to be attracted to symmetrical faces because they indicate “averageness”, which equates to genetic health. Grammar and Thornhill (1994) found that females are attracted to males with masculine characteristics, for example: large jaw and prominent cheekbones. These features arise as a result of testosterone, which is also a handicap because it suppresses the immune system. Therefore, showing only “healthy” individuals can afford to produce these traits- advertising a strong immune system. Cartwright (2000) supported this, finding men prefer photographs of women with symmetrical faces and vice versa.

70% of ladies admitted that they would ignore or avoid a potential love interest because of the way they looked (Buchanan). We live in a world where superficial beauty is an important advantage especially when choosing a partner in life. People try their hardest to look attractive and gone are the days when inner beauty are more accounted for. What if you have the opportunity to choose between an understanding, kind but not good-looking guy and an inconsiderate, selfish but stunningly appealing man? The 2017 Disney movie Beauty and the Beast is an epic hero myth which shows us that real love and beauty are not only about physical appearance but looking beyond what you can see and seeing one’s character within.

When you first meet someone, within seconds you can tell if you are attracted to someone or not. Physical attractiveness is how attractive you think someone is based on their looks and appearance. In an investigation conducted by Texas A&M University students, they tested with two different studies what makes someone physically attractive to another. Physical attractiveness is very important and can impact an exclusive

This article argues that the physical appearance not only matters, it is important to our everyday life. It states that we uses some of the physical characteristics, especially facial appearance, to identify certain types of people. It is a survival skill in the case of recognizing criminals ,children, and peers. This is a scholarly research on facial appearance. I can use this to a one of the major point to support my thesis.

The studies I participated in were from FaceResearch.org. The description of this website was, ‘Participate in short, frequently updated experiments about the traits people find attractive in faces and voices, find out how you compare to others, and learn more about the psychology of attractiveness.’ I was very interested in this section in class, so I decided to do a few studies from this website. The first was one titled Facial Attractiveness, and I clicked on it because it had the most participants (over 77,000). In this experiment, participants were supposed to indicate which face was more attractive (and how much we prefer it) of the two shown. The participants could click on the following options: much more attractive, more attractive, somewhat more attractive, or slightly more attractive. There were abut forty sets of faces. They would show two female faces, one more feminized and one more masculinized. Then, they would show two males faces. In the end, the results were as follows: ‘On average, people preferred the more feminine women 80% of the time and the more feminine men 54% of the time. You preferred feminine women 100% of the time and feminine men 0% of the time.’ I also participated in the study What makes a face attractive? It was similar to the other study in which I was given two faces and had to choose which one was more attractive. The results were as follows: ‘On average, people had a 58% preference strength for the more feminine images. You had a 46%

Past research has demonstrated that there exists a connection between smiling and physical attractiveness. A smiling person was perceived as more intelligent and could create in the perceiver a warmer feeling than a nonsmiling person. This study evaluates whether smiling vs. not smiling and rater’s gender have an effect on attractiveness ratings of a male and a female dating profile. Furthermore, it predicts that there will be a main effect of smiling on the ratings of both, male and female dating profiles. Moreover, it also predicts that there will be an interaction of rater’s gender and smiling for the female profile. However, the results did not support this statement, there was not a main effect of rater’s gender on any of the dating profiles. Both profiles male and female, were better rated when the person was smiling. Indicating that people prefer smiling over the non-smiling faces. On the other hand, no interaction was observed between rater’s genders and smiling for male and female profile.

Being physically attractive adds even more layers to the subjective mix. Is it blonde hair, fair skin blue eyes? Is it brown hair, dark eyes and a wonderfully tan physic the alpha trump card? Or could it be salt and pepper hair, emerald green eyes, and five o’clock shadow? See what I mean? This can

Abstract In the experiment, the experimenters studied the effect attractive faces had on newborn infants. The experimenters’ hypothesis was blank. They tested their hypothesis by measuring the time newborn infants looked at attractive and unattractive faces. From the finding of this experiment, it was found that newborn infants prefer upright attractive faces.

Within today’s multimedia society especially the evaluation of faces is of outstanding importance. An attractive face clearly finds more approval: a beautiful face activates the reward centre in the opposite’s brain and we generally link positive human characteristics with an attractive face (Rhodes, 2006). Systematic research in this area started at the beginning of the 1970’s. Dion, Berscheid and Walster, who were pioneers in this field, determined the relationship between positive characteristics and attractive faces and came up with the proposal ‘"what is beautiful is good" (Dion, Berscheid, Walster; 1972).

The research findings showed that a man’s sexual attraction to a woman was increased by young women associated with red, but it was not increased by older women with red. It also revealed that the older participants found the two age groups of women equal in their sexual attraction, while the younger participants did not find the older women, as sexually attractive as the younger women. The color red did not affect physical attractiveness, intellect, and empathy. In addition, the article greatly contributed to the theories of social psychology. In Exploring Psychology in Modules, the author discusses physical attractiveness. He discusses how among different cultures, men are attracted to women through signs of the body. These signs indicate fertility, which makes the man more attracted to a woman. This understanding may help to show why both age groups of men were equally attracted to the younger women in the pictures, as opposed to the older women, where only the older men found them equally attractive to the younger women (Schwarz & Singer,

Jones, W., Hansson, R., & Phillips, A. (1978). Physical attractiveness and judgments of psychopathology. The Journal of Social Psychology, 105, 79-84.

What is beauty? How do we decide who is attractive and who is not? Society is full of information telling us what is beautiful, but what fact is that information based on? The topic of beauty has been studied, analyzed and controversial for centuries. We all know the feeling you can have when you hear a beautiful song that brings joy to your heart, stand in a field of flowers that excites your eyes, or admire a face that is visually pleasing. As human beings, we are all drawn to beauty, but what is it that makes something beautiful? The controversial issue that surrounds beauty is that some believe that true beauty is defined by someone’s outer appearance, while others believe it is something that is experienced through a person’s

It has become increasing clear that beauty may play a role when it comes to social interactions involved in economic or political opportunities. Now, one may ask how beauty could possibly play a noticeable impact on situations concerning economic or political opportunities. Yet, it does. A laboratory experiment was conducted to fully study the impact of “beauty premium”, the positive association and relationship between attractiveness and wages, on economic success in the labor market. The experiment was conducted by Tatyana Deryugina, a professor of finance and her companions. Although illegal, labor market discrimination has occurred based on physical appearances and Tatyana wanted to test this notion. Deriving from this experiment, they were able to conclude that the beauty premium does indeed exist although only in certain circumstances. Only in tasks such as bargaining does beauty premium significantly show a positive correlation. In other tasks such as analysis or data entry, the notion of beauty premium does not exist. They state, “we find that the beauty premium in bargaining completely vanishes in the second round of bidding when the task is repeated, which suggests that employers learn quickly that performance is uncorrelated with attractiveness” (Deryugina 2015). The point is that physical beauty is what deceives the mind into thinking that the more attractive one is, the more competent they may be in performing and executing skills such as bargaining.

The first section addresses the question of whether it is possible to use measures of beauty to analyze the role of looks in the labour market. Since, it would be futile to examine the effect of beauty on employment if there is no mutual agreement on what defines beauty. Using data from