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.
