Science of Beauty. What makes a person more attractive looking

Dr. Lisa Debruine in her face research lab in University of Aberdeen has broken down the face into its different component, namely eyes, nose, mouth and skin. She took photograph of an average Caucasian man and woman by sampling from 60 males and females. The average woman has smaller jaw, thinner eyebrows and the man has more square jaw, thicker eyebrow and more square hair line. She devised a way to make a woman’s face more feminine or masculine by making eyes smaller or larger, jaw thinner or squarer, eyebrows thinner (and raising it a bit) or flatter.

She then placed the unchanged photo, the masculinised photo and feminised photo to men. 81 percent preferred the more feminised women photos. Similarly majority of women preferred the masculinised male.

Now the question is why a face gets more masculine or feminine? During childhood both males and females look similar. As adolescence arrives, sex hormones begin to be generated in both sexes. These are testosterone in men and oestrogen and progesterone in women. These hormones cause male features and female features to develop in case of men and women respectively. The more male hormone the more pronounced male features and more female hormones the more pronounced female features. The higher amount of sex hormones means a very healthy reproductive ability. This also generally indicates good health. Therefore mating with these individuals has more chances of producing healthy children.

So we find an individual attractive because his features indicate that mating with him or her will be profitable for having good children and useful in passing on our own genes to the future generation and thereby perpetuating them.

So we get a big clue on what is a sexually attractive face.

But as I delved into more exploration I found more reasons which make a face attractive.

Symmetry

R Thornhill and SW Gangstead (1994) in their research found that symmetry in face (that is how much each side of the face mirror the other side) adds very definitively in attractiveness. Further research vindicated their findings using sophisticated computer methods of morphing photos. It was found that even in twins the one with more symmetry in facial components added to the “beauty’. This preference for more symmetrical faces is seen not only in humans but in other species as well.

Other studies have indicated that symmetric facial and physical characteristics strongly indicate greater health and fitness of the person. It therefore seems the correlation between the biological quests for a fitter mate is the key in this case also.

Averageness

Well what we are talking about is not the general meaning of average, that is, it is not very good or bad. Studies have shown that that more closely a face resembles majority of other faces within a certain group of population, more attractive the face is rated within that population. This means an English man with features found in most English men will be rated better among the English people than faces with features which are not commonly found in the English population. This does not mean he will be rated higher in attractiveness rating, say among the Indians or the Chinese. Studies suggest this also may be due to the law of adaptability and evolutionary theory. Non average face suggests the person is likely to have genes that are detrimental to growth within a certain region and therefore less preferred for mating. Thus in countries like Japan and China less pointed facial features are preferred than in western countries. The method used by researchers is to produce a more “average” face is by amalgamating a large number of faces to produce a single face and then compare to individual faces.

Similarity with Parents

Some studies have shown people unknowingly prefer faces which bears resemblance with their opposite sex parent. A man will prefer a woman’s face which bears more resemblance to her mother and woman will prefer a man’s face with resemblance with her father. The preference is more strong if the relationship with the opposite sex parent is positive. However this preference does not necessarily mean that people will have partners with parent like faces.

Skin

Skin condition and health of the skin is important in beauty rating. We speak of ‘glowing skin’ and scientific studies have shown that a good skin tone which suggests good health and therefore mating preferences for people with such skin property.

Mystery of Golden Ratio

Golden ratio, represented by the Greek letter phi (φ), happens when ratio of two numbers is same as the sum of two numbers to the larger number, i.e., (a+b)/a =a/b, where ‘a’ is the larger number and is roughly is equal to 1.618.

There is some historical background related to golden ratio and beauty. Painters and architects used this ratio for many famous paintings and buildings. Examples are Notre dame Cathedral and Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous painting Last Supper.

This ratio has been found to be particularly significant for aesthetics of human body and face. If the ratio of your height to your navel and from navel to the head is 1.618 your body looks very well balanced. Facial masks using this ratio for different facial proportions has been devised in computer and used to improvise faces with striking results. However this theory has not yet been supported very strongly by scientific researches and subject to further scrutiny. You can use following link for a detailed study https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1OOc8HC3TY .

Body Fitness and dimensions

Body weights and dimensions also adds or distracts from beauty it is not as much significant as the face.

Overweight and underweight bodies are generally disliked. To define right body weight a ratio called Body Mass Index or BMI is used.

BMI = body mass in kg/body height² in meter.

If your BMI is between 18.5 and 25 your weight is normal (for an adult according to WHO).

Some countries use different BMI charts which give slightly different weights for males and females and for different age groups.

A study by Viren Swami, Dorothy Einon and Adrian Furrnham (2006) has showed that Americans prefer men with legs as long as the rest of the body and women with 40% longer legs than their body. However this is not totally supported by other studies and may be different for Asians and other race groups. Some other studies indicate that men prefer women with waist to hip ratio around 0.7.

I have tried to give a snapshot of pure physical parameters of what constitutes beauty. Of course as everyone knows there are other non physical characteristics like a smile and other behavioural traits that attract us which I will discuss in a later article.

SCIENCE OF BEAUTY. WHY BEAUTY IS IMPORTANT?

I was about to go out for my evening walk and I stood in front of the mirror to see how I looked. I parted my hair carefully and changed my T-shirt so that I thought I looked more acceptable. I thought I did not look my best and that depressed me a little bit.

Although it is not that every time I go out am very careful how I look, most of the time I am. Even more so when I am going to be photographed or going to a party. Most of the people most the time behave like me. People get very cross if their photographs are posted publicly which they do not like without their permission. I got the flak from people from doing that mistake once or twice in my life. People care about their looks to a very considerable degree.

But what is the reason behind being so watchful about how we look? What is the science? I did a bit of exploration on doctoral theses in the web and found these reasons.

In 1972 in a path breaking thesis called “What is Beautiful is Good” Dion, Berscheid and Walters found that physical attractiveness is a big factor in perception of the people about how they are actually in almost every way. They found that physically attractive persons are perceived to have secure prestigious occupation, happier marriage, a better spouse, a better parent having a fulfilling social and occupational life. Other scientific studies showed that that physical attractiveness was a factor in treating children and students and perception of the person’s mental and physical well being. Even political figures with greater attractiveness had advantage in popularity and satisfaction rating (remember Mrs. Indira Gandhi?). Legal verdicts are also favorably influenced by the physical attractiveness of the person. Studies have also found that better looking persons have advantage about securing jobs and getting higher salaries. And of course they were preferred for romantic interactions. We prefer socially interacting with good looking people. This preference is seen in children as well.

Another recent thesis (June 2015)by Nabanita Datta Gupta, Nancy Etcoff and Mads Meier Jaeger that physical attractiveness has positive effect on happiness of a person and unattractiveness added to the depression and unhappiness which is a big factor in choosing to look great.

The question is why are we so biased for people with better looks? For that I had to look into another paper by Olga Chelnokova (2015), a Ph D candidate in Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Norway. She in her PhD thesis explained that we are psychologically rewarded for looking at a pretty face and nice body. The brain responds in the same way while looking at an attractive person when we intake opioids like heroin. It increases our pleasure sensation as a greater flow of a chemical called dopamine occurs in our brain. Dopamine (called a neurotransmitter) also flows when we eat chocolate and have or anticipate sexual pleasure. It is called a reward system. As we go for more reward it becomes addictive as well.

So we now know a good looking person has some advantages in life (and some disadvantages which we will discuss in a later article). But the question is what makes a person good looking?  What are the parameters that define that a person is good looking or not? Is it subjective or there is a general law about what makes a good look?

The actual secret lies in the theory of evolution. We prefer to have mates which will give us better and healthier off springs. This ensures our progenies will live long and perpetuate our lineage (and thus ourselves) in the world.  A male with more masculine syndromes (with greater dose of male hormones like testosterone) and a female with more “femininity” (with greater dose of female hormones like estrogen) are preferred naturally as mates. They are considered stronger and more beautiful in the eyes of the opposite sex because they seem to be better mates to produce a healthy child.

And remember our faces play a greater role in placing us in “beauty rating” than rest of our physique.  I was watching a video in You Tube where about twenty women were questioned

whether they preferred a muscular man or a man with pretty face. Without exception they answered they preferred a pretty face than muscles but they wanted a generally fit body. That means to be considered a good looking person you need to have good face and a body which is not over or underweight.

And what is a pretty face? What is overweight or underweight? All this we will examine in the next episode.