Category: Social psychology

People were shown happiness, fear, anger, disgust and surprise, as well as a neutral expression.

The most attractive facial expression for a photo is any one you like.

People judge facial attractiveness from your features, so your expression makes little difference to a photo.

Smiling is often thought to be the most attractive facial expression, which is partly why most people smile in photos.

However, this study finds otherwise.

For the research, 128 people looked at a series of pictures of both men and women shown with different facial expressions.

They were shown happiness, fear, anger, disgust and surprise, as well as a neutral expression.

The men and women were given the same ratings for attractiveness, no matter what facial expression they displayed.

Bear in mind that this study only tested people in pictures.

If you were meeting someone face-to-face, then it will clearly matter if you smile or scowl.

But even when scowling it is obvious whether someone is good looking (or not).

The study’s authors conclude:

“Since the hard tissues of the face are unchangeable, people may still be able to perceive facial structure whatever expression the face is displaying, and still make attractiveness judgements based on structural cues.”

The study was published in the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior (Morrison et al., 2013).

Eating carrots, wearing red, how to walk sexy and more…

Click the links for more on each study.

1. Eat carrots

Yellow and red skin pigments are perceived as 50% more attractive in Caucasian people, new research finds.

Although these pigments in the skin are supposed to be signals of good health, they can be faked.

Taking beta-carotene supplement, for example, will have the same effect.

Beta-carotene is the pigment that gives carrots — and other fruits and vegetables — a strong red/yellow colour.

2. Wear the colour red

Wearing the colour red makes both men and women more attractive to the opposite sex, studies find.

When men wear it, red sends signals of status and dominance to others.

When women wear it, the extra pull on men may have deeper, biological roots.

3. Walk sexy

Attractiveness is about more than just body shape and facial features — it is also about the way people move.

Women who sway their hips while walking increase their perceived attractiveness by 50%, research finds.

Men who walk with swagger in their shoulders more than doubled the perception of their attractiveness.

Swagger involves dipping the shoulders slightly with each step to create a rolling motion.

4. Help other people

Being altruistic — helping others without thought of reward — is particularly attractive to women, research finds.

But both men and women find those who are altruistic more attractive.

The results come from three studies including over 1,000 people.

People were asked about the behaviours they looked for in a mate.

Some of the suggested behaviours included donating blood and volunteering in a local hospital.

Women were more keen on these altruistic traits in a potential partner.

5. Nod your head

Nodding the head increases attractiveness to others by up to 40% research finds.

Head nodders were rated as both more likeable and more approachable.

It was primarily people’s personality that appeared more attractive when they nodded.

Essentially, nodding makes people more likely to approach you in social interactions.

6. Arch the back (women)

A slight arching of a woman’s back — extending her buttocks outward — makes her more alluring, research finds.

It might help to explain the mystery of why high-heeled shoes are so popular.

They cause women to arch their backs slightly to help them balance.

The study found that only relatively small changes in how much a woman’s back was arched made her look more appealing.

7. Grow a beard (men)

Women judge fully bearded men to be a better bet for long-term relationships, new research finds.

This might be because it makes men look more ‘formidable’.

Certainly, beards make men look older and more aggressive.

Beards are also often judged to make men look like they have higher social status.

However, for short-term relationships, women judge stubble to be most attractive, the new research found.

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It benefits women but surprisingly had a slightly negative effect on men’s attractiveness.

Being nice makes women more attractive to men, research finds.

Men who think that women are more ‘responsive’ find them more feminine.

Femininity is linked to greater sexual arousal and so to increased attraction for most men.

However, for men, being nice did not make them more attractive to women.

If anything, being nice had a slightly negative effect on the attractiveness of a man to a woman.

Professor Gurit Birnbaum, the study’s first author, explained that:

“Some women, for example, may interpret responsiveness negatively and feel uncomfortable about a new acquaintance who seems to want to be close.

Such feelings may impair sexual attraction to this responsive stranger.

Other women may perceive a responsive stranger as warm and caring and therefore as a desirable long-term partner.”

The study tested different types of responses to the disclosure of a personal problem.

A nice, responsive answer might be: “You must have gone through a very difficult time”

A less nice answer would be: “Doesn’t sound so bad to me”

Professor Birnbaum said:

“We still do not know why women are less sexually attracted to responsive strangers; it may not necessarily have to do with ‘being nice.’

Women may perceive a responsive stranger as less desirable for different reasons.

Women may perceive this person as inappropriately nice and manipulative (i.e., trying to obtain sexual favors) or eager to please, perhaps even as desperate, and therefore less sexually appealing.

Alternatively, women may perceive a responsive man as vulnerable and less dominant.

Regardless of the reasons, perhaps men should slow down if their goal is to instill sexual desire.”

The study was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (Birnbaum et al., 2014).

The behaviour is particularly attractive to women, although men also rate it highly.

Being altruistic — helping others without thought of reward — is particularly attractive to women, research finds.

But both men and women find those who are altruistic more attractive.

The results come from three studies including over 1,000 people.

People were asked about the behaviours they looked for in a mate.

Some of the suggested behaviours included donating blood and volunteering in a local hospital.

Women were more keen on these altruistic traits in a potential partner.

Dr Tim Phillips, the study’s first author, explained that humans were not the only species to display altruism:

 “Evolutionary theory predicts competition between individuals and yet we see many examples in nature of individuals disadvantaging themselves to help others.

In humans, particularly, we see individuals prepared to put themselves at considerable risk to help individuals they do not know for no obvious reward.”

In a subsequent study, researchers asked people in couples how much they appreciated altruistic behaviour.

Those that preferred altruistic traits had partners who displayed these more.

Dr Phillips said:

“For many years the standard explanation for altruistic behaviour towards non-relatives has been based on reciprocity and reputation — a version of ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’.

I believe we need to look elsewhere to understand the roots of human altruism.

The expansion of the human brain would have greatly increased the cost of raising children so it would have been important for our ancestors to choose mates both willing and able to be good, long-term parents.

Displays of altruism could well have provided accurate clues to this and genes linked to altruism would have been favoured as a result.”

Dr Tom Reader, who co-authored the study, said:

“Sexual preferences have enormous potential to shape the evolution of animal behaviour.

Humans are clearly not an exception: sex may have a crucial role in explaining what are our most biologically interesting and unusual habits.”

The study was published in the British Journal of Psychology (Phillips et al., 2008).

Face shape is linked to sex drive in men and women and also how likely a man is to cheat on his partner.

People with shorter and wider faces have a higher sex drive, new research finds.

Men with wider, shorter faces are also more likely to report intending to cheat on their partner.

For the research, almost 500 people were asked about their sexual orientation, their relationships and whether they would consider being unfaithful to their partner.

It is the latest in a line of studies that have linked face shape to various psychological characteristics.

Men with square, wide faces are seen as more attractive as short-term partners, as well as more dominant, the research has shown.

The study’s authors write:

“…they are also perceived by naïve observers as being more socially dominant, untrustworthy, and aggressive compared to men with lower width-to-height ratios.”

The square, wide face has also been linked to financial success, prejudice, unethical behaviour and even psychopathic tendencies.

So, it is a fairly confusing cocktail of positive and negative characteristics (depending on your preferences, of course).

The theory is that it comes down to the hormones men are exposed to during development:

“Researchers have argued that the observed links between the FWHR and men’s dominant and aggressive attitudes and behavior may be a product of androgen exposure during critical periods of development.

In support of this, sex differences in facial structure arise with the onset of puberty, ostensibly reflecting increased testosterone in males relative to females.”

Hormonal exposure during development also seems to affects women’s sex drive.

Like men, women with shorter, wider faces had a higher sex drive, this study found, although they expressed no greater intention to cheat on their partner.

The study was published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior (Arnocky et al., 2017).

Study finds the best angle to take a selfie for both men and women.

Women look more attractive to men when their picture is taken from above, new research finds.

A high camera angle makes women look thinner and younger, psychologists have found.

Men, though, appear more dominant if the picture is taken from below.

The angle the picture is taken from changes the perception of the viewer, the researchers found.

The study’s authors explained that…

“…being viewed from above (a downward angle) amplifies signs of youth and attractiveness, such as having a large eyes and forehead, and thus appears to be consistent with women’s motives.

Indeed, women appear more attractive when their heads are tilted down and they are thus viewed from a downward angle.”

For men, though, they explain:

“Being viewed from below (an upward angle) amplifies
signs of dominance, such as height and a large jaw, and thus appears to be consistent with men’s motives.

Indeed, targets appear more dominant when their heads are tilted back and they are thus viewed from an upward angle.”

Interestingly, the researchers found that men and women take pictures from different angles depending on their motive.

While women tend to take selfies from above when trying to appear more attractive, when the picture is aimed at other women, they take the picture straight on.

Men also switched from a low-angle selfie for attracting women, to a straight-on selfie if the audience was thought to be other men.

The study’s authors were inspired by dating profiles posted online.

They showed that women tended to take their online dating selfies from above.

Men showed no particular preference for dating pictures.

However, for professional pictures on LinkedIn, men had a tendency to lower the camera angle, thereby making them look more dominant.

The study was published in the journal Psychological Science (Makhanova et al., 2017).

The most genuine and pleasant type of smile might surprise you.

When it comes to a successful smile, less is more, new research finds.

The most effective, successful and pleasant smile doesn’t show too much of the teeth.

It is a medium or low wattage smile.

Certainly, it is not true that the bigger the smile, the better it is, as the study’s authors explain:

“…the optimal window (or sweet spot) of smile extent contradicts the principle that “more is always better” with respect to smile extent.”

The image below shows some of the different types of smiles they tested.

The smiles with more green around them are the ones rated most successful.

You can see that 13, 14 and 10 have the most green around them, so are the most successful.

All three successful smiles are relatively low in extent: they are not big smiles.

Showing too many teeth can even cause the facial expression to send a message you might not intend:

“…forming open-mouth smiles with small angles/extents can produce unintended perceptions of the expression, e.g., contempt or fear instead of happiness.”

Here, for those of you of a technical bent, are the exact scientific characteristics of a successful smile:

“…we found that a successful smile consists of (i) an optimal window of mouth angle and smile extent, (ii) the correct amount of dental show for the given angle-extent combination, and (iii) dynamic symmetry such that the left and right sides of the mouth are temporally synced within 125 ms.”

Now off to your mirrors and practice!

The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE (Helwig et al., 2017).

Image credit: greekadman

What men look at most in the first 10 seconds of looking at a woman.

The lips are the most attractive facial feature on women, according to a survey.

In the first 10 seconds of meeting a women, on average, a man will spend around half that time looking at her lips.

If the woman is wearing lipstick then it attracts men’s attention even more.

Men fixated on pink lipstick for 6.7 seconds on average out of the first 10, and for 7.3 for red lipstick.

When women wore lipstick men only devoted 0.95 seconds, on average, to looking at her eyes and 0.85 seconds looking at her hair.

Naturally, fuller lips were found to attract the male eye for longer.

Researchers at Manchester University carried out the study.

It involved showing 50 men pictures of various different women.

They were shown with and without lipstick

Dr Geoff Beattie, who led the research, said:

“This study proves that lips represent one of the most sensual aspects of a woman’s body and play a critical role in human sexual attraction.

Full and red lips combined deliver the perfect pout to achieve male fixation, but women who simply wear lipstick – regardless of their lip type – secure significantly greater levels of attraction than those who do not.

For centuries, women have painted their lips red to enhance their appeal, with this practice dating back as far as the Ancient Egyptians who commonly used red lipstick and rouge to enhance their attractiveness.

The research suggests that red lips and perceived attractiveness are still inextricably linked, with red lipstick proving to be the most powerful attractor and significantly increasing visual fixation.”

The survey was carried out for a retailer.

Let’s face it, many people seem to have no clue how to pick their own profile picture.

You should let someone else choose your online profile picture, new research suggests.

The advice is sound whether it is for a dating profile, LinkedIn, or just for Facebook.

Other people pick more flattering profile pictures for us than we select for ourselves, it emerges.

Others seem to know better which pictures make us look more attractive, competent or trustworthy — whichever the context requires.

Dr David White, the study’s first author, said:

“Our findings suggest that people make poor choices when selecting flattering images of themselves for online profile pictures, which affects other people’s perception of them.

This effect is likely to have a substantial impact on online interactions, the impressions people form and the decisions they base on them, including whether to employ, date, befriend or even vote for someone.

Previous work has shown that people make inferences about an individual’s character and personality within a split second of seeing a photograph of their face, so our results have clear practical implications; if you want to put your best face forward, it makes sense to ask someone else to choose your picture.”

For the study, 102 students rated their own photos and those of strangers.

People were consistently better at picking profile pictures for others than for themselves.

Some examples are below.

Along the top line are the best and worst photos that people selected for themselves for each context: Facebook, dating and professional.

Along the bottom are the images that other people selected for each of those contexts.

The pictures they picked for others were a better fit for the intended site, Dr White said:

“Our results demonstrate that people know how to select profile pictures that fit specific networking contexts and make positive impressions on strangers: dating images appear more attractive, and professional images appear more competent.”

The study was published in the journal Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications (White et al., 2017).

The images are taken from White et al. (2017)