“Do You Consider Your Own Face Attractive?”

April 21, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

We are informed, in part, to stimuli we receive from others, and no matter how strong-minded we are, it plays a role in wiring our brains. Reactions can help form actions, so to speak. A researcher who has done work in the science of facial attractiveness just did an Ask Me Anything on Reddit. A few exchanges follow.

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Question:

Do you consider your own face attractive?

Answer:

No.

Question:

Is that a gut reaction, or a scientific conclusion? 

Answer:

Well, that was just a quick reply at first…but I would say no based on external feedback and scientific analysis combined. Also, I was also a very good looking kid – and then after puberty, I turned into something totally different…so that was jarring & the change in how I was treated was hard to miss.

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Question:

Do you think someone can be attractive if they don’t fit exactly within what the science says is best? Have you ever thought someone was beautiful who didn’t fit into what you have researched?

Answer:

Yeah, there are a lot of other factors that can influence things from personality to body. And, subjective perceptions of attractiveness are 30-40% of the equation. The same is true in the opposite direction. People w/ perfect facial features who are depressed (in static photos) will be perceived as less attractive.

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Question:

What’s your most surprising discovery?

Answer:

The most surprising discovery to me (not in my lab but people I know) is that a man’s body odor (smelled by women) can reveal how symmetrical their faces and bodies are. And, this is often correlated to attractiveness. This was done by making men wear no deodorant and plain t-shirts for 2 weeks while college aged females came in to smell their BO & rate it… fun study. Some follow up studies debunked this slightly & added a few twits, but the gist is the same AFAIK…it’s been a while since I followed this line of research.

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Question:

I’ve been fascinated by the research into how women choose genetically alike males as mates when they are pregnant or on hormonal birth control (ie body thinks they’re pregnant) but genetically different men as mates when ovulating/not pregnant. And if women mate with a genetically similar partner they are more likely to cheat. It’s that whole good provider vs. good gene dynamic and it’s interesting because it complicates that simplistic theory that males just want to spread genetic material and women just want a provider mate. There’s biological machinations everywhere!

Answer:

Yay – you brought up what I actually worked on directly! I can elaborate on what you brought up or clear it up a little. When women are ovulating, they like the masculine male faced men. When they are on birth control, the preference is wiped out (and having a period on birth control is not a result of ovulation, which men don’t understand). Also, when they are not ovulating, they like the less masculine faces more. People have theorized that the “mate strategy” of a women is to marry a “neutral faced” provider and then have sex with the masculine pool boy or repairman when she’s ovulating. Masculine faced guys have better immune systems, but they are more aggressive and less faithful – so they are not great long term partners. The significance of this (since the 60s with so many women on birth control) may have altered our entire species in a direction that it previously was not headed in. Making the above comments that I did is seen as controversial, but it’s just a theory put out there by evolutionary psychologists.

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Question:

Is there a particular face shape that is deemed “most attractive”?

Answer:

Are you thinking about “round vs oval vs square”? Those terms are generally not descriptive enough – but I think the best way to answer this is that people with short mid-faces are the most attractive. To determine this for yourself, measure the distance between your pupils. Then, measure the distance between the top of your nose (the midpoint of your eyes), and the middle of your lips. Then divide these two numbers (with the eye number on top and the vertical number on the bottom). The lower the number is, the more compact your midface is and the more attractive you would tend to be. If it is 0.8-1.2 that is good. Outside of that range, it’s not so good…almost universally. Every other “face shape” question has a qualification.