Attractiveness

The Faces That Are Seen As Most Attractive

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).

Face Masks Make People Look More Attractive, Research Finds (M)

The study reveals the most attractive type of face mask.

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Weirdly Eating This Makes Men Smell 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).

Smart Women Are Only More Attractive To Men Sometimes — Here’s When

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).