Category: Social psychology

Some types of faces are easier on the eye and the brain.

Simple faces are easier for the brain to process and store so we find them more attractive, new research suggests.

The study had men looking at pictures of women and ranking them.

Those ranked higher tended to have faces without distinguishing features.

The reason could be that the brain has a preference for looking at things which are easier to encode.

As the authors write:

“Sparseness was found [to be] positively correlated with attractiveness as rated by men and explained up to 17% of variance in attractiveness.

[…]

Our results show that female faces which are rated the most attractive by men should be the most sparsely coded by the primary visual cortex of these men.”

They continue:

“A century of research in empirical aesthetics has revealed preferences for certain forms and patterns that appear universal, being shared between societies in humans and between species.

[…]

The best documented of these preferences are for symmetrical, averaged and prototypical forms, curved contours and scale-invariant patterns.

[…] these preferred stimuli have in common to be efficiently coded by the perceptual system…”

In other words simple faces are literally easy on the eye and easy on the brain.

The study was published in the journal Royal Society Open Science (Renoult et al., 2016).

Pretty face image from Shutterstock

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

Why strangers who do this together are more likely to date.

There’s little doubt that humour is romantically attractive — but the question is why?

Could it be about displaying your intelligence to a prospective partner?

Actually it’s about much more than that according to Dr Jeffrey Hall, the author of a new study on the subject:

“The idea that humor is a signal of intelligence doesn’t give humor its due credit.

If you meet someone who you can laugh with, it might mean your future relationship is going to be fun and filled with good cheer.”

In fact, Dr Hall suggests there are four reasons humour is romantically attractive:

1. Displaying an agreeable and social personality. Dr Hall said: “Part of what it means to be social is the ability to joke along with people.”
2. Gauging interest. Dr Hall said: “Men are trying to get women to show their cards. For some men it is a conscious strategy.”
3. Following the unwritten script that men are jokers and women are laughers. Dr Hall said: “The script is powerful and it is enduring, and it dictates everything from asking someone out to picking up the tab.”
4. Humour is valuable for its own sake. Dr Hall said: “Shared laughter might be a pathway toward developing a more long-lasting relationship.”

The study found that the more a man tries to be funny and the more a woman laughs, the more likely the woman is to be interested in a date.

An even better indicator of romantic interest is when the couple are seen laughing together.

The conclusions come from a study of 51 pairs of single, heterosexual college students.

They met each other for the first time and talked for 10 minutes.

The psychologists found that both men and women tried to be funny an equal amount.

But it was the man’s humour, along with the woman’s response, that was critical to romantic interest.

Unexpectedly, the researchers found no connection between humour and intelligence.

The study was published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology (Hall, 2015).

Romance image from Shutterstock

Could these 36 questions help you form the most intimate relationship of your life?

These 36 questions to fall in love could make you closer and more intimate with another person than with anyone else in your life — in just 45 minutes.

When New York psychologist Professor Arthur Aron and colleagues used these questions experimentally, they discovered that 30% of people formed their closest ever human relationship.

And, on average, people had become at least as close as their average established relationship, which had taken years to form.

The questions, published in the journal Interpersonal Closeness, were originally designed to create closeness between two people so that psychologists could study how relationships form (Aron et al., 1997).

Apart from anything else, though, most people found it really fun.

The instructions start with the following:

“We believe that the best way for you to get close to your partner is for you to share with them and for them to share with you.

In order to help you get close we’ve arranged for the two of you to engage in a kind of sharing game.

One of you should read aloud the first [question] and then BOTH do what it asks, starting with the person who read the slip aloud.

When you are both done, go on to the second [question] — one of you reading it aloud and both doing what it asks.

Alternate who reads aloud (and thus goes first) with each new [question].” (Aron et al., 1997).

And here are the questions:

36 Questions To Fall In Love – Set 1

1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?

2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?

3. Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?

4. What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?

5. When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?

6. If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?

7. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?

8. Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.

9. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?

10. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?

11. Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.

12. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?

36 Questions To Fall In Love – Set Two

1. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?

2. Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it?

3. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?

4. What do you value most in a friendship?

5. What is your most treasured memory?

6. What is your most terrible memory?

7. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?

8. What does friendship mean to you?

9. What roles do love and affection play in your life?

10. Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items.

11. How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people’s?

12. How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?

36 Questions To Fall In Love – Set Three

1. Make three true “we” statements each. For instance, “We are both in this room feeling …”

2. Complete this sentence: “I wish I had someone with whom I could share …”

3. If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know.

4. Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you’ve just met.

5. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.

6. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?

7. Tell your partner something that you like about them already.

8. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?

9. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?

10. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?

11. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?

12. Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.

Intimate conversation image from Shutterstock

Students whose looks are above average get the best grades.

A new study finds that students who are rated as more attractive get better grades and are more likely to go to college.

The study followed about 9,000 US adolescents from high school in the 1990s, through until they were in their 30s (Gordon et al., 2014).

They found that students who were rated as more attractive were also given higher grades by their teachers.

But students only needed to be somewhat above average to see the advantage. The super-good-looking had no advantage over those who were above average.

This may be because being more attractive had a negative side–it was associated with more partying, dating and general social distractions.

Interestingly, being average in appearance produced no benefits in GPA scores against those with below average looks.

Why do looks affect grades?

This study can’t directly tell us why being attractive is good for your grades, but some have suggested that it is because teachers give higher grades to attractive students.

Studies on children at elementary school, for example, have found that teachers give higher academic ratings to those who are more attractive.

But the real story is probably more complicated than that. Academic outcomes are tied up with social outcomes. Students that do well socially also tend to do well academically:

“…visible characteristics like attractiveness, as opposed to averageness, gave students greater entrée and assuredness in initial interactions and greater forgiveness for foibles and missteps in later interactions, something particularly valuable in the large impersonal world of high school. In this context, average-looking youth had relatively few chances for standing out or opportunities to gain status in a competitive playing field.” (Gordon et al., 2014).

Lookism

High school is likely just the first step in discovering how important looks are.

There are some disadvantages to being very beautiful, such as the perception that it’s all about the looks and not talent, and women can face discrimination in some stereotypically masculine professions.

However, beautiful people get paid more, are more desired by others and have higher self-esteem.

It’s all part of discovering that, unfortunately, as teenagers are often heard to moan: life’s not fair.

→ Read on: 10 Pleasures and Pains of Being Beautiful

Image credit: Walt Stoneburner

I’m usually slightly nervous reporting the Ig Nobel awards, the annual spoof of the Nobel prizes.

The Ig Nobels are designed to highlight the kind of research that makes people ask: “Don’t these so-called scientists have better things to spend their time on?”

This year’s psychology prize has gone to Brad Bushman, of Ohio State University, and others, who experimentally confirmed a sort of reverse beer goggles effect: that we feel we are more attractive after a few drinks (Begue et al., 2012).

My hesitancy is not just that the research seems trivial–that’s the point of the awards–but also that it reinforces the idea that psychology is just common sense.

But, take a closer look at the study, and you’ll see that it’s not all common sense.

One of the findings is that, even people who were tricked into thinking they’d had a drink when they hadn’t, also judged themselves as more attractive.

So this is demonstrating the expectancy effect: that sometimes drugs have the effect we expect, even when there’s little or no active drug present (compare with: 80% of Prozac Power is Placebo).

Beer goggles

Look a little further and you’ll find more instances of apparently ‘common sense’ studies revealing unexpected or fascinating results.

What about the closely related ‘beer goggles’ effect? This is more than just that drunk people take more sexual risks; it’s that after a few drinks we actually rate other people as more attractive.

That one is pretty obvious isn’t it?

Indeed, some studies do suggest we find others more attractive after a few beers (Jones et al., 2003).

But then, in 2012 many media outlets reported that the ‘beer goggles’ effect had been debunked.

The study, conducted by Vincent Egan at the University of Leicester, did indeed get the opposite finding (Egan & Cordan, 2011). On average, across all the participants, people who’d been drinking found members of the opposite sex less attractive. Beer seemed to be making people appear uglier.

But the devil, as you so often find, is in the details.

In fact, the study divided people by age. And, for mature faces (in this study it meant 20-year-olds, so not that mature), the beer goggles effect held. It was only when looking at pictures of 10-year-olds that alcohol intake reduced attractiveness ratings.

The study, you see, was much more concerned about under-aged sex and whether alcohol might reduce men’s ability to judge the age of a female.

Incidentally, the study found that even large amounts of alcohol consumption did not affect men’s perception of age. So, it’s no excuse.

Facial symmetry

While the beer goggles effect probably still stands, despite reports of its demise, what we’re less sure of is how it works.

It certainly makes us less inhibited, and more likely to take risks; but what about this increase in others’ attractivity?

A clue comes from the study of facial symmetry. People are remarkably good at detecting quite small variations in the placement of facial features–it’s a talent we need to tell each other apart.

Facial symmetry is also important because many, many studies have found that it underlies what people consider attractive. More symmetry, it turns out, is often more beautiful, perhaps because it signals better genes.

And, now, a series of studies on alcohol and facial symmetry have found that the beer goggles effect may come about, at least partly, because alcohol inhibits our ability to detect facial symmetry (Halsey et al., 2012).

One study has even shown that women who drink a lot may damage their ability to detect facial symmetry in the long-term (Oinonen & Sterniczuk, 2012). In other words: they’re wearing permanent beer goggles.

First laugh, then think

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why psychology, and science in general, is so interesting. You start with an intuitive theory, which you confirm. So far, so common sense.

But, along the way, you demonstrate things that are not common sense (the placebo effect), and are hardly trivial (that alcohol doesn’t affect age perceptions and that it can be neurotoxic), and you delve into the deeper recesses of cognitive psychology (alcohol harms the perception of facial symmetry).

The promise of the Ig Nobel awards is certainly delivered: it’s research that, “first makes people laugh, and then makes them think“.

Image credit: G Morel