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Posts Tagged attractivness

June 1, 2011

Slutty Men And Friendly Women Are Best At Judging Their Own Hotness

How Hot Are You? Promiscuous Men and Warm Women Know Best – FoxNews.com

 

People who fit gender stereotypes in their dating habits are better at judging their own hotness than those who march to the beat of a different drummer, a new study of speed-daters has found.

Men who hew closest to stereotypically male patterns of dating — a desire to play the field and have more no-strings-attached sex — are better at judging how attractive they are to potential dates than are men who prefer a quieter dating lifestyle. Similarly, women who conform to the traditional female dating personality of warmth and trust are better at judging their own appeal than the less-stereotypical ladies, researchers report in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science.

The researchers speculate that the reason for their finding is that daters who conform to gender stereotypes get more practice at the mating game. Promiscuous men are more likely to put themselves out there than shy guys, thus interacting with more women and developing a better understanding of what the other sex wants. Meanwhile, warm, trusting women may attract more flirtation than their aloof counterparts, increasing their experience with men’s likes and dislikes.

The dating game

Knowing your own hotness is important in dating and mating, wrote study researcher Mitja Back of the University of Mainz in Germany. A schlub living in his mom’s basement may be wasting his time pursuing Angelina Jolie, while a smart, accomplished go-getter may sell himself short in the romantic realm by hooking up with a woman not his social equal. From an evolutionary perspective, the best way to pass your genes on is to reproduce with the highest-quality mate you can find without wasting your time chasing after people out of your league.

To find out how good people are at striking that balance, Back and her colleagues asked 192 female and 190 male participants in real-life speed-dating events to fill out questionnaires about their personalities. She also had each person predict how many interested dates they’d have on the hook before the night was out. [Read: 10 Things Women Should Know About Men's Brains]

After the participants rotated through their three-minute speed dates, they filled out forms indicating whether they’d like to see their dates again. The researchers calculated people’s attractiveness, or “mate value,” by tallying the number of “yes” forms each participant got. They then compared the actual number of yeses with the number of yeses each dater expected.

Hot stuff

On the whole, none of the participants were stellar at predicting their attractiveness to others. However, personality and gender had an influence on how well people gauged themselves. Men who had what researchers called “unrestricted sociosexuality” (in other words, a tendency toward promiscuity), were better at guessing how many women would like them. For every 10 percent increase in their estimates, 2.2 percent more women actually wanted to see them again. For more-restrained men and for women who were either restrained or promiscuous, the expected number of dates showed no correlation with how many people actually wanted to go out for drinks.

Women who rated low on “agreeableness,” a trait comprising warmth, trust and cooperativeness, and both agreeable and disagreeable men were hopeless at guessing how many dates they’d score. Women who were highly agreeable did much better: For every 10 percent increase in their predictions, 4 percent more men wanted to see them again.

Because personality is partially heritable, the researchers wrote, the findings could open the way for future research on how personality traits are passed on and if there is an evolutionary component to the link between gender and personality. The next step, Back wrote, is to find out how well people evaluate each other’s choosiness — and to learn whether they know what it is about themselves that’s so appealing.

 

 

June 1, 2011

Intelligence And Physical Attractiveness Both Impact Income

Intelligence And Physical Attractiveness Both Impact Income

ScienceDaily (May 16, 2009) — People looking for a good job at a good salary could find their intelligence may not be the only trait that puts them at the top of the pay scale, according to researchers. A new study finds attractiveness, along with confidence, may help job-seekers stand out to employers.

Intelligence And Physical Attractiveness Both Impact Income

“Little is known about why there are income disparities between the good-looking and the not-so-good-looking,” said the study’s lead author, Timothy Judge, PhD, of the University of Florida. “We’ve found that, even accounting for intelligence, a person’s feeling of self-worth is enhanced by how attractive they are and this, in turn, results in higher pay.”

Judge’s team analyzed data from the Harvard Study of Health and Life Quality, a national, longitudinal study. 

The study looked at 191 men and women between the ages of 25 and 75 who were interviewed three times six months apart starting in 1995. They answered questions about their household income, education and financial stresses and evaluated how happy or disappointed they were with their achievements up to that point. They completed several intelligence and cognitive tests and had their pictures taken. Several different people on the research team rated each person’s attractiveness relative to their age and gender. The raters were men and women of varying ages. The authors then calculated an average attractiveness score for each participant based on those ratings.

The researchers found that physical attractiveness had a significant impact on how much people got paid, how educated they were, and how they evaluated themselves. Basically, people who were rated good-looking made more money, were better educated and were more confident. But the effects of a person’s intelligence on income were stronger than those of a person’s attractiveness.

“We can be somewhat heartened by the fact that the effects of general intelligence on income were stronger than those of facial attractiveness,” said Judge. “It turns out that the brainy are not necessarily at a disadvantage to the beautiful, and if one possesses intelligence and good looks, then all the better.”

The research did show that good-looking people tend to think more highly of their worth and capabilities which, in turn, led to more money and less financial stress. But, the study’s authors note, these findings also should be a warning to employers who may subconsciously favor the more attractive. “It is still worthwhile for employers to make an effort to reduce the effects of bias toward attractive people in the workplace,” said Judge. One good means of doing this, according to Judge, is to rely on objective measures such as personality and ability tests.

However, Judge wrote, education and intelligence still had a greater payoff than good looks when it came to their effect on people’s level of income. He concluded that it could be more effective for people to build on important job skills and education before seeking the latest beauty treatments.

 

 

June 1, 2011

Using botox increases your perceived attractivness in more than one way

Beauty may not be in the eye of the beholder

 

Good news for the pharmaceutical industry, it appears that Botox injections affect more than just judgements regarding an individual’s attractiveness.

According to recent US research, injections with Botulinum toxin A lead others to form more positive first impressions regarding an individual’s attractiveness, dating success and athleticism.

Researchers, who presented the work at the recent annual meeting of the American Academy of Olalaryngology – Head and Neck surgery held last month, wanted to investigate whether first impression judgements might be affected by Botox injections.

They took photos of subjects about to undergo the procedure and compiled a collection of before and after photos.

Photo judgement

These photos were displayed in books for judgement by evaluators, however only one photo of each subject (before or after) was included into each collection.

Evaluators were then asked to judge the photos on a number of criteria including attractiveness, dating success, athleticism, social skills, financial success and relationship success.

 

Beauty may not be in the eye of the beholder

 

Photos of individual’s who had undergone the injections scored better with evaluators on scales of attractiveness, dating success and somewhat more intriguingly, athletic success.

Botox not a life changer

However, the authors did not find any positive correlation between the injections and increased scores regarding social skills, financial or relationship success.

The popularity of such non-surgical cosmetic treatments is growing significantly.

Allergan, the pharmaceutical giant behind Botox injections which dominates the market, recorded a sales increase of 29 per cent in 2007 and predicted further sales increases for 2008.

 

 

May 31, 2011

Golden ratios’ for female facial beauty

New ‘golden ratios’ for female facial beauty

ScienceDaily (Dec. 17, 2009) — Beauty is not only in the eye of the beholder but also in the relationship of the eyes and mouth of the beholden. The distance between a woman’s eyes and the distance between her eyes and her mouth are key factors in determining how attractive she is to others, according to new psychology research from the University of California, San Diego and the University of Toronto.

New ‘golden ratios’ for female facial beauty

 

Pamela Pallett and Stephen Link of UC San Diego and Kang Lee of the University of Toronto tested the existence of an ideal facial feature arrangement. They successfully identified the optimal relation between the eyes, the mouth and the edge of the face for individual beauty.

In four separate experiments, the researchers asked university students to make paired comparisons of attractiveness between female faces with identical facial features but different eye-mouth distances and different distances between the eyes.

They discovered two “golden ratios,” one for length and one for width. Female faces were judged more attractive when the vertical distance between their eyes and the mouth was approximately 36 percent of the face’s length, and the horizontal distance between their eyes was approximately 46 percent of the face’s width.

Interestingly, these proportions correspond with those of an average face.

“People have tried and failed to find these ratios since antiquity. The ancient Greeks found what they believed was a ‘golden ratio’ — also known as ‘phi’ or the ‘divine proportion’ — and used it in their architecture and art. Some even suggest that Leonardo Da Vinci used the golden ratio when painting his ‘Mona Lisa.’ But there was never any proof that the golden ratio was special. As it turns out, it isn’t. Instead of phi, we showed that average distances between the eyes, mouth and face contour form the true golden ratios,” said Pallett, a post-doctoral fellow in psychology at UC San Diego and also an alumna of the department.

“We already know that different facial features make a female face attractive — large eyes, for example, or full lips,” said Lee, a professor at University of Toronto and the director of the Institute of Child Study at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. “Our study conclusively proves that the structure of faces — the relation between our face contour and the eyes, mouth and nose — also contributes to our perception of facial attractiveness. Our finding also explains why sometimes an attractive person looks unattractive or vice versa after a haircut, because hairdos change the ratios.”

The researchers suggest that the perception of facial attractiveness is a result of a cognitive averaging process by which people take in all the faces they see and average them to get an ideal width ratio and an ideal length ratio. They also posit that “averageness” (like symmetry) is a proxy for health, and that we may be predisposed by biology and evolution to find average faces attractive.

The authors note that only Caucasian female faces were studied. Further studies are needed to know whether there is a different set of golden ratios for male faces and for faces from other races or for children’s faces.

The research is published by the journal Vision Research and was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the American Psychological Association.

 

 

May 31, 2011

For women – if she has a boyfriend, it affects how she sees other guys, for men – they see other women the same, regardless if they have a partner or are single

Sexual Partner Status Affects A Woman’s, But Not A Man’s, Interest In The Opposite Sex

ScienceDaily (June 3, 2009) — A study by Indiana University neuroscientist Heather Rupp found that a woman’s partner status influenced her interest in the opposite sex. In the study, women both with and without sexual partners showed little difference in their subjective ratings of photos of men when considering such measures as masculinity and attractiveness. However, the women who did not have sexual partners spent more time evaluating photos of men, demonstrating a greater interest in the photos.

Sexual Partner Status Affects A Woman’s, But Not A Man’s, Interest In The Opposite Sex

 

No such difference was found between men who had sexual partners and those who did not. “These findings may reflect sex differences in reproductive strategies that may act early in the cognitive processing of potential partners and contribute to sex differences in sexual attraction and behavior,” said Rupp, assistant scientist at The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction. 

For the study, 59 men and 56 women rated 510 photos of opposite-sex faces for realism, masculinity/femininity, attractiveness, or affect. Participants were instructed to give their “gut” reaction and to rate the pictures as quickly as possible. The men and women ranged in age from 17 to 26, were heterosexual, from a variety of ethnic backgrounds and were not using hormonal contraception. Of the women, 21 reported they had a current sexual partner; 25 of the men reported having a sexual partner. This is the first study to report whether having a current sexual partner influences interest in the opposite sex. Other studies have demonstrated that hormones, relationship goals and social context influence such interest.

“That there were no detectable effects of sexual partner status on women’s subjective ratings of male faces, but there were on response times, which emphasizes the subtlety of this effect and introduces the possibility that sexual partner status impacts women’s cognitive processing of novel male faces but not necessarily their conscious subjective appraisal,” the authors wrote in the journal article. The researchers also note that influence of partner status in women could reflect that women, on average, are relatively committed in their romantic relationships, “which possibly suppresses their attention to and appraisal of alternative partners.”