Social psychology - Page 26 of 28

The Scientific Way To Choose A Profile Picture For Dating, LinkedIn And Facebook

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)

Make-Up Changes Your Social Status Differently For Men And Women

Dominance and prestige are two ways of achieving high status.

Dominance and prestige are two ways of achieving high status.

Women think other women with make-up on are more ‘dominant’, new research finds.

The idea of dominance is linked to threat and jealousy, the researchers also found.

Women thought other women wearing make-up were more likely to be attractive to men and promiscuous.

Men, though, think women with make-up on are more ‘prestigious’.

Dr Viktoria Mileva, the study’s first author, said:

“While both sexes agree that women with make-up look more attractive when it comes to “high status,” it really depends on who is looking.
Men think women with make-up are more ‘prestigious’, while women think women with make-up are more dominant.
Research suggests that ‘high status’ can be obtained through two main routes.
Either you are dominant, which means you are happy using forcefulness or manipulation to make people follow you.
Alternatively, you can gain high status by prestige; by having positive merits and qualities that make other want to follow you.”

Dr Mileva continued:

“We did some follow-up studies as to why women might feel that women with make-up are perceived as more dominant, and it looks like it might be related to jealousy and threat potential — women rating women with make-up said they would be more jealous of them, thought they were more promiscuous, and would be more attractive to men than their non-make-up wearing counterparts.
For example, at a job interview, knowing whether the hiring committee will consist of men or women might influence a female candidate’s decision about wearing make-up.
Whether the interviewers will view her as attractive, dominant, and/or prestigious can affect her and the interviewers’ actions and perhaps the outcome of the interview itself.
Thus, understanding the potential implications of cosmetics use are important not only for the wearer, but also for the perceiver.”

The study was published in the journal Perception (Mileva et al., 2016).

Deodorant Changes Attractiveness Of Men And Women In Different Ways

How men who appear low in masculinity can be more attractive to women.

How men who appear low in masculinity can be more attractive to women.

Wearing deodorant makes men who are seen as low in masculinity more attractive to women, new research finds.

The boost to attractiveness was not seen for men whose faces are already perceived as being high in masculinity.

The research underlines the fact that women are more sensitive to odours than men.

Dr Caroline Allen, who led the study, said:

“We’re all aware that fragrances are often marketed as being feminine or masculine – take Old Spice for instance, who have recently parodied this with their hyper-masculine adverts, claiming that their product will allow you to smell like a super masculine guy.”

The conclusions come from a study of hundreds of women and men who rated pictures and odour samples.

Dr Allen explained the results:

“Our study found that when women apply a deodorant it does increase their rated body odour femininity, as would be expected.
Though it seems as though something else is at play when it comes to male body odour and male deodorants.

Only those men who were rated low in masculinity to start with showed a significant increase after applying their deodorants, and the men who were highly masculine initially showed no increase after deodorant application.
This means that men are able to use deodorant to artificially raise their game so to speak, levelling the playing field by making themselves comparable, at least as far as odour is concerned, to more masculine men.
Our evolutionary preferences have likely shaped this difference in fragrance design: research findings show that we actually don’t like high levels of masculinity which are often associated with aggressiveness and hostility, but we show no upper limit on our femininity preferences.”

The study was published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior (Allen et al., 2016).

Smell image from Shutterstock

The Facial Expressions That Appear Most Attractive To Others

People rated someone’s attractiveness after they demonstrated emotions including happiness and fear.

People rated someone’s attractiveness after they demonstrated emotions including happiness and fear.

Almost everyone has experienced a near instant attraction to another person, whether just social or something more.

According to new research, neuroscientists now think this could be down to an instant ability to read facial emotions.

People who find each other’s emotions easy to read are naturally drawn to each other.

Reading emotions successfully gives people the feeling of understanding and connectedness.

The study’s author write:

“Humans interacting with other humans must be able to understand their interaction partner’s affect and motivations, often without words.
We asked participants to watch different persons experiencing different emotions.
We found the better a participant thought they could understand another person’s emotion the more they felt attracted toward that person.”

For the research, people were shown pictures of six women whose attractiveness they rated.

They then watched videos of the women demonstrating different facial emotions such as happiness and fear.

Participants then rated the women’s attractiveness again.

Brain scans showed that interpersonal attraction was linked to a kind of neural synchrony.

The study’s authors explain:

“Individual changes in interpersonal attraction were predicted by activity in the participant’s reward circuit, which in turn signaled how well the participant’s ‘neural vocabulary’ was suited to decode the other’s behavior.”

In other words, being able to read someone’s emotions successfully is a rough guide that they are similar to you.

Similarity and connectedness are two of the most important factors for interpersonal attraction.

As the study’s authors write:

“Being able to comprehend another person’s intentions and emotions is essential for successful social interaction.
To accomplish a common goal, partners must understand and continuously update information about their partner’s current intentions and motivation, anticipate the other’s behavior, and adapt their own behavior accordingly.”

Or, as the slightly cynical headline writers at GQ would have it: “Crying On A First Date Could Get You Laid”

https://www.spring.org.uk/2016/02/why-couples-differ-physical-attractiveness.php

The study was published in the journal PNAS (Anders et al., 2016).

Crying image from Shutterstock

Here’s How Your Height Affects Who Is Attracted To You AND Who You’re Attracted To

It’s more than just taller is better for men…

It’s more than just taller is better for men…

People choose partners who are a similar height to them because it’s in our genes, a new study finds.

For years its been known that people tend to choose partners who are a similar height to themselves.

This is despite the well-known preferences women have for taller men.

It turns out that the same genes which control our height also influence who we are attracted to.

Dr Albert Tenesa, the study’s first author, said:

“Our genes drive our attraction for partners of similar height to ours, i.e. tall people pair with tall people.
We found that 89% of the genetic variation affecting individual preferences for height and one’s own height are shared, indicating that there’s an innate preference for partners of similar height.”

The link between partner’s height is surprisingly accurate, Dr Tenesa said:

“Using one partner’s genes for height, we estimated the height of the chosen partner with 13% accuracy.
The similarity in height between partners is driven by the observed physical appearance of the partner, specifically their height, rather than influenced by the social or genetic structure of the population we live in.”

This is another study that supports the idea that most people are looking for someone similar to themselves, even similar DNA:

“Now you can add similar DNA to similar religion, race, income, education, body type and age, to the attributes which people look for in a partner, whether they know it or not.
New research shows that people are more likely to pick a mate with similar DNA, even after taking into account genetic similarities between people in a geographic location
[…]
Previous studies have shown that one of the strongest factors in choosing a partner is educational level.
This study found that the effect of similar DNA was about one-third that of education on mating choices.”

The study was published in the journal Genome Biology (Tenesa et al., 2016).

Image credit: hafecheese

The Intriguing Reason Pretty Faces Can Transfix Us

The research gave people small dose of morphine, which stimulates the reward system.

The research gave people small dose of morphine, which stimulates the reward system.

Pretty faces activate the brain’s reward system, which is why they are so pleasant to look at, a new study finds.

Ms Olga Chelnokova, who led the study, explained:

“The reward system is involved in generating the experience of pleasure when, for instance, we enjoy tasty food or happen to win a lottery.
It turns out that the same system is also engaged in creating the feelings of pleasure when we look at a pretty face.”

In the study people were given a small dose of morphine, which stimulates the reward system.

They then looked at a series of faces which varied in attractivity.

Ms Chelnokova explained the results:

“Participants rated the most attractive faces as even more attractive, and were willing to do more presses on button that let them look at the picture for a longer time.
They also spent more time looking at the eyes of the people in the pictures.
Importantly, we observed the opposite behaviors when we blocked the reward system with another drug, such that, for instance, our participants gave lower ratings to the most attractive faces.”

In a further study, Ms Chelnokova tracked people’s eye movements while they looked at 3D faces.

Here is an image showing the typical pattern of which areas our eyes routinely scan.

Red areas are looked at the most, followed by yellow, green and blue.

Ms Chelnokova explained the results:

“The importance of the eyes in our evaluation of others has been well documented.
For instance, it is hard to recognize someone if their eyes are hidden, while if someone is lying to us, we can often see it in their eyes.
In general, if we are to understand how another person feels, the eyes can give us most of the required information.”

Along with the nose and cheeks, the eyes are especially important for us.

The studies were part of Ms Chelnokova’s PhD.

Pretty face image from Shutterstock