The most trustworthy and attractive face shape and eye colour.
The naïve realism bias is a considerable source of conflict between people.
The cheek which shows more emotion and is more attractive.
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).
Studies regularly find that even experts do little better than chance at detecting lies.
This subtle social behaviour might be a warning sign.
Smiling is associated with positive values, but does it make you look younger?
The benefits of helping others are substantial.
The benefits of helping others are substantial.
People who help others are likely to live longer, research finds.
The conclusions come from a study of grandparents and their grandchildren.
Researchers followed more than 500 people aged 70 to 103-years-old.
Those that gave occasional childcare to their grandchildren — or helped out their own children — tended to live longer.
Another analysis showed that the beneficial effects extended to childless older couples who provided emotional support to others.
Professor Ralph Hertwig, a senior author of the study, cautioned that:
“…helping shouldn’t be misunderstood as a panacea for a longer life.
A moderate level of caregiving involvement does seem to have positive effects on health.
But previous studies have shown that more intense involvement causes stress, which has negative effects on physical and mental health.”
Ms Sonja Hilbrand, the study’s first author, said:
“It seems plausible that the development of parents’ and grandparents’ prosocial behavior toward their kin left its imprint on the human body in terms of a neural and hormonal system that subsequently laid the foundation for the evolution of cooperation and altruistic behavior towards non-kin.”
The study was published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior (Hilbrand et al., 2016).
This workplace behaviour does more damage to people’s mental and physical well-being than bullying.
People prefer it when your name matches your face.
People prefer it when your name matches your face.
People have a preference for names and faces that go together, research finds.
Names that have a round sound, that require rounding of the mouth, like “Lou”, go better with round faces.
Angular sounding names, like “Peter”, though, go better with more angular faces.
The psychologists tested this by having people look at pairs of names and faces.
Sometimes the names matched the face (round name, round face) and sometimes not (round name, angular face).
They found that people prefer it when name and face matches.
The researchers then took it one stage further.
Perhaps people would be more likely to vote for political candidates whose names matched their faces?
Mr David Barton, the study’s first author, explained the results:
“Those with congruent names earned a greater proportion of votes than those with incongruent names.
The fact that candidates with extremely well-fitting names won their seats by a larger margin — 10 points — than is obtained in most American presidential races suggests the provocative idea that the relation between perceptual and bodily experience could be a potent source of bias in some circumstances.”
The finding is an extension of what psychologists call the “bouba/kiki effect”
To demonstrate this, people are shown the following images and asked which one might be called “bouba” and which one “kiki”.
Over 95 percent of people call the image on the left “kiki” and the image on the right “bouba”.
Spiky name goes with spiky object and smooth name goes with smooth object.
It’s not just English speakers that do this either, one study found Tamil speakers in India did the same.
Professor Jamin Halberstadt, who co-authored the study, said:
“Overall, our results tell a consistent story.
People’s names, like shape names, are not entirely arbitrary labels.
Face shapes produce expectations about the names that should denote them, and violations of those expectations carry affective implications, which in turn feed into more complex social judgments, including voting decisions.”
The study was published in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review (Barton & Halberstadt, 2017).
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