Why the face is sometimes more important than the body, and why the body is sometimes more important than the face. Also, how being the object of another's affection boosts your own feelings of desire, and how your IQ influences the kind of partners you prefer.
New research out this month shows that we find people attractive if they find US attractive.
The articles covered in the show:
Confer, J. C., Perilloux, C., & Buss, D. M. (In press). More than just a pretty face: men's priority shifts toward bodily attractiveness in short-term versus long-term mating contexts. Evolution and Human Behavior.Read summary
Stanik, C. E., & Ellsworth, P. C. (2010). Who cares about marrying a rich man? Intelligence and variation in women’s mate preferences. Human Nature, 21(2), 203-217. Read summary
Greitemeyer, T. (2010). Effects of reciprocity on attraction: The role of a partner's physical attractiveness. Personal Relationships, 17(2), 317-330. Read summary
Monday, June 14, 2010
Is justice really blind? Also, what damage to the brain teaches us about the perception of attractiveness, and why men fall in love more eas...
Is justice really blind? Also, what damage to the brain teaches us about the perception of attractiveness, and why men fall in love more easily than women.
"Blinded in the line of duty. His partners don't respect him. His wife lacks faith. Nobody believes in Jim Dunbar except himself." And now, perhaps, Ahola and colleagues.
The articles covered in the show:
Ahola, A. S., Hellström, Å., & Christianson, S. Å. (2010). Is justice really blind? Effects of crime descriptions, defendant gender and appearance, and legal practitioner gender on sentences and defendant evaluations in a mock trial. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 17(2), 304-324. Read summary
Carbon, C. C., Gruter, T., Grüter, M., Weber, J. E., & Lueschow, A. (2010). Dissociation of facial attractiveness and distinctiveness processing in congenital prosopagnosia. Visual Cognition, 18(5), 641-654. Read summary
Galperin, A., & Haselton, M. G. (2010). Predictors of how often and when people fall in love. Evolutionary Psychology, 8(1), 5-28. Read paper
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Do mate preferences change over time? We also look at how women's perceptions of men are related to the age at which she reached puberty...
Do mate preferences change over time? We also look at how women's perceptions of men are related to the age at which she reached puberty, and continue last month's look at the interesting phenomenon of mate choice copying.
Kościński, K. (2010). Do they know what they like? Intra-individual variation of female facial preferences. Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, 8(1), 23-55. Read summary
Belles, S., Kunde, W., & Neumann, R. (In press). Timing of sexual maturation and women's evaluation of men. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Read summary
Place, S. S., Todd, P. M., Penke, L., & Asendorpf, J. B. (In press). Humans show mate copying after observing real mate choices. Evolution and Human Behavior. Read summary
Sunday, April 11, 2010
How stress can disrupt what we find attractive. We also look at why friends are similar in attractiveness, and whether it pays to save yours...
How stress can disrupt what we find attractive. We also look at why friends are similar in attractiveness, and whether it pays to save yourself the bother of choosing a partner and instead let someone else do the choosing for you.
Lass-Hennemann, J., Deuter, C. E., Kuehl, L. K., Schulz, A., Blumenthal, T. D., & Schachinger, H. (In press). Effects of stress on human mating preferences: stressed individuals prefer dissimilar mates. Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences.Read summary
Bleske-Rechek, A. L., & Lighthall, M. (In press). Attractiveness and rivalry in women's friendships with women. Human Nature.Read summary
Yorzinski, J. L., & Platt, M. L. (2010). Same-sex gaze attraction influences mate-choice copying in humans. PLoS One, 5(2), e9115. Read full paper for free
Monday, March 08, 2010
I speak to Tyler Stillman of Florida State University about whether we can identify violent criminals just by looking at their faces. We als...
I speak to Tyler Stillman of Florida State University about whether we can identify violent criminals just by looking at their faces. We also find out whether electoral candidates who appear more powerful or trustworthy can expect more votes, and how a woman's menstrual cycle can affect her preferences for hairy men.
Schwarzenegger's masculine looks probably did him no harm when it came to running for governor of California.
The articles covered in the show:
Rantala, M. J., Pölkki, M., & Rantala, L. M. (2010). Preference for human male body hair changes across the menstrual cycle and menopause. Behavioral Ecology, 21(2), 419-423. Read summary
Stillman, T. F., Maner, J. K., & Baumeister, R. F. (In press). A thin slice of violence: distinguishing violent from nonviolent sex offenders at a glance. Evolution and Human Behavior.Read summary
Rule, N. O., Arnbady, N., Adams, R. B., Ozono, H., Nakashima, S., Yoshikawa, S., et al. (2010). Polling the Face: Prediction and Consensus Across Cultures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(1), 1-15. Read summary
I talked this month about Francis Galton, pioneer physiognomist and creator of composite portraiture. That's when you combine two or more facial photos into a single image. His photography skills are pretty amazing when you consider that he was working 125 years ago and was able to come up with some convincing results.
Francis Galton's composites of violent criminals. The images on the top are the real criminals, and the ones on the bottom are composites.
The image above shows images of Gordon Brown (a), that have been composited using Galton's method (b) and the modern method (c). In Galton's method, the images are rotated and scaled so that the eyes lie on top of each other before being combined. In the modern, computerised method, the locations of over 150 points are averaged before the images are combined. This gives a much clearer image. Galton's more primitive method could explain why he failed to find a 'criminal type', or it could just be because criminals don't look that different to everybody else.
Physiognomy is currently undergoing a resurgence, although most researchers study whether attractiveness, or personality traits such as trustworthiness, can be detected from faces. Perhaps because physiognomy is so closely associated with Galton, who founded eugenics and held typically 19th century views on race, attempts to extend study into areas such as criminality are often met with some resistance.
Monday, February 08, 2010
Is there a universal ' golden ratio ' that explains facial attractiveness? We also discover how the behaviours people use to keep th...
Is there a universal 'golden ratio' that explains facial attractiveness? We also discover how the behaviours people use to keep their partner from leaving them change over time, and whether waitresses who wear makeup can expect larger tips.
Angelina Jolie doesn't quite fit the golden ratio beauty mask, but who cares? She is chuffing gorgeous.
The articles covered in the show:
Pallett, P. M., Link, S., & Lee, K. (2010). New "golden" ratios for facial beauty. Vision Research, 50(2), 149-154. Read summary
Kaighobadi, F., Shackelford, T. K., & Buss, D. M. (2010). Spousal mate retention in the newlywed year and three years later. Personality and Individual Differences, 48(4), 414-418. Read summary
To show you the kind of manipulation Pallett applied to her images in her study of optimal ratios for facial attractiveness, I knocked up a couple of examples using everybody's favourite romcom 'actor', Matthew McConnawhatever.
Matthew McConaughey with his eye-mouth to face-height ratio altered. The image in the middle is the real one, with Matthew's .38 ratio close to the average of .36.
Matthew McConaughey with his eye-eye to face-width ratio altered. This time his real ratio is .47, almost dead on the average of .46.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
We’re back after a short Christmas break to find out whether people who are good at sports are better looking than us average Joes. We also ...
We’re back after a short Christmas break to find out whether people who are good at sports are better looking than us average Joes. We also discover how preferences for facial masculinity are related to a person’s sexuality and their sensitivity to disgust.
What's under the helmet? Williams and colleagues show that better quarterbacks tend to be better looking.
The articles covered in the show:
Glassenberg, A. N., Feinberg, D. R., Jones, B. C., Little, A. C., & DeBruine, L. M. (In Press). Sex-dimorphic face shape preference in heterosexual and homosexual men and women. Archives of Sexual Behavior.Read summary
DeBruine, L. M., Jones, B. C., Tybur, J. M., Lieberman, D., & Griskevicius, V. (2010). Women's preferences for masculinity in male faces are predicted by pathogen disgust, but not by moral or sexual disgust. Evolution and Human Behavior, 31(1), 69-74. Read summary
Williams, K. M., Park, J. H., & Wieling, M. B. (2010). The face reveals athletic flair: better National Football League quarterbacks are better looking. Personality and Individual Differences, 48(2), 112-116. Read summary
Friday, October 30, 2009
Why it can sometimes be good to have bad self esteem. We also find out how secret relationships can affect your health, and discover how wai...
Why it can sometimes be good to have bad self esteem. We also find out how secret relationships can affect your health, and discover how waitresses can maximise their tips.
Do women spend more time on their appearance when ovulating because they feel worse about themselves? New research by Sarah Hill and Kristina Durante suggests so. Freestocks.org
The articles covered in the show:
Hill, S. E., & Durante, K. M. (In press). Do women feel worse to look their best? Testing the relationship between self-esteem and fertility status across the menstrual cycle. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.Read summary
Lynn, M. (2009). Determinants and consequences of female attractiveness and sexiness: realistic tests with restaurant waitresses. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 38(5), 737-745. Read summary
Lehmiller, J. L. (2009). Secret romantic relationships: consequences for personal and relational well-being. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35, 1452-1466. Read summary
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Why Ricky Gervais is ideal father material. We also find out why rebounding might be good for you, and not just on the basketball court, and...
Why Ricky Gervais is ideal father material. We also find out why rebounding might be good for you, and not just on the basketball court, and we discover how kindness can be attractive and unattractive at the same time.
Would Ricky and fellow comedians make good fathers?
The articles covered in the show:
Moore, F., Law Smith, M., Cassidy, C., & Perrett, D. (2009). Female reproductive strategy predicts preferences for sexual dimorphism in male faces. Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, 7(3), 211-224. Read summary
Spielmann, S. S., MacDonald, G., & Wilson, A. E. (2009). On the rebound: focusing on someone new helps anxiously attached andividuals let go of ex-partners. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35(10), 1382-1394. Read summary
Lukaszewski, A. W., & Roney, J. R. (In Press). Kind toward whom? Mate preferences for personality traits are target specific. Evolution and Human Behavior.Read summary
Saturday, September 05, 2009
Being watched by someone who’s attractive can make you more trustworthy. We also find out how the type of relationship you’re looking for mi...
Being watched by someone who’s attractive can make you more trustworthy. We also find out how the type of relationship you’re looking for might be related to your ability to read faces, and discover whether it’s the face or the body that contributes most to a person’s physical attractiveness.
If you'd like to see the Sociosexual Orientation Inventory used by Sacco, you can find it here.
Face or body? Tom Currie and Tony Little have published new research showing whether the body or the face is more important to attractiveness. wbeem/Flickr
The articles covered in the show:
Smith, F. G., DeBruine, L. M., Jones, B. C., Krupp, D. B., Welling, L. L. M., & Conway, C. A. (In Press). Attractiveness qualifies the effect of observation on trusting behavior in an economic game. Evolution and Human Behavior.Read summary
Sacco, D. F., Hugenberg, K., & Sefcek, J. A. (2009). Sociosexuality and face perception: unrestricted sexual orientation facilitates sensitivity to female facial cues. Personality and Individual Differences, 47, 777-782. Read summary
Currie, T. E., & Little, A. C. (In Press). The relative importance of the face and body in judgments of human physical attractiveness. Evolution and Human Behavior.Read summary
Friday, July 24, 2009
With the exam results season well and truly upon us, we discover what your appearance might mean for your final grades. We also find out why...
With the exam results season well and truly upon us, we discover what your appearance might mean for your final grades. We also find out why it could make sense to ditch that diet: it seems men prefer average shaped women after all. And do you appreciate a GSOH? We learn how having a good sense of humour can affect your attractiveness – or should that be, how your attractiveness can affect your sense of humour?
New research shows that pretty people don't need to revise as much for their exams.
The articles covered in the show:
Li, N. P., Griskevicius, V., Durante, K. M., Jonason, P. K., Pasisz, D. J., & Aumer, K. (2009). An evolutionary perspective on humor: sexual selection or interest indication? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35(7), 923-936. Read summary
French, M. T., Robins, P. K., Homer, J. F., & Tapsell, L. M. (2009). Effects of physical attractiveness, personality, and grooming on academic performance in high school. Labour Economics, 16(4), 373-382. Read summary
Donohoe, M. L., von Hippel, W., & Brooks, R. C. (2009). Beyond waist-hip ratio: experimental multivariate evidence that average women's torsos are most attractive. Behavioral Ecology, 20, 716-721. Read summary
Friday, July 03, 2009
Beauty Wars - how competition between women for the best partner can affect men’s preferences. Also this month, we find out how makeup use c...
Beauty Wars - how competition between women for the best partner can affect men’s preferences. Also this month, we find out how makeup use changes over the menstrual cycle and whether more curvaceous women are worse at spotting a bad boy.
That time of the month? New research suggests that women spend more time on their appearance when ovulating.
The articles covered in the show:
Röder, S., Brewer, G., & Fink, B. (2009). Menstrual cycle shifts in women’s self-perception and motivation: a daily report method. Personality and Individual Differences, 47(6), 616-619. Read summary
Fisher, M., & Cox, A. (2009). The influence of female attractiveness on competitor derogation. Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, 7(2), 141-155. Read summary
Smith, F. G., Jones, B. C., Welling, L. L. W., Little, A. C., Vukovic, J., Main, J. C., et al. (2009). Waist-hip ratio predicts women's preferences for masculine male faces, but not perceptions of men's trustworthiness. Personality and Individual Differences, 47(5), 476-480. Read summary
This is the archive for the Psychology of Attractiveness Podcast, a science show covering the most interesting and cutting edge research on the psychology of attraction and relationships. The podcast was active between 2009 and 2019. All episodes remain available.
The podcast was produced by Dr Robert Burriss, a psychologist who has held research posts at universities in the UK, USA, and Switzerland.
