Research indicates that heterosexual men tend to be attracted to young and beautiful women with bodily symmetry. Rather than decreasing it, modernity has only increased the emphasis men place on women’s looks. Evolutionary psychologists attribute such attraction to an evaluation of the fertility potential in a prospective mate.
Facial features
Research has attempted to determine which facial features communicate attractiveness. Facial symmetry has been shown to be considered attractive in women, and men have been found to prefer full lips, a high forehead, broad face, small chin, small nose, a short and narrow jaw, high cheekbones clear, smooth skin, and wide-set eyes. The shape of the face in terms of “how everything hangs together” is an important determinant of beauty.
A University of Toronto study found correlations between facial measurements and attractiveness; researchers varied the distance between eyes, and between eyes and mouth, in different drawings of the same female face, and had the drawings evaluated; they found there were ideal proportions perceived as attractive. These proportions (46% and 36%) were close to the average of all female profiles. Women with thick, dark limbal rings in their eyes have also been found to be more attractive. The explanation given is that because the ring tends to fade with age and medical problems, a prominent limbal ring gives an honest indicator of youth.
In another cross-cultural study, more neotenized (i.e., youthful looking) female faces were found to be most attractive to men while less neotenized female faces were found to be less attractive to men, regardless of the females’ actual age. One of these desired traits was a small jaw. In a study of Italian women who have won beauty competitions, it was found that their faces had more “babyish” (pedomorphic) traits than those of the “normal” women used as a reference.
Michael R. Cunningham of the Department of Psychology at the University of Louisville found, using a panel of Asian, Hispanic and White judges, that the Asian, Hispanic and White female faces found most attractive were those that had “neonate large eyes, greater distance between eyes, and small noses” and his study led him to conclude that “large eyes” were the most “effective” of the “neonate cues”. This idea of Western beauty is shown through some Asian cultures as women strive to physically change the eyelid structure to reflect the typical Western eyelid. East Asian blepharoplasty, also known as the double eyelid surgery, shows the lengths Asian women will go to reach this western ideal of physical attractiveness. Cunningham also said that “shiny” hair may be indicative of “neonate vitality”.
Using a panel of blacks and whites as judges, Cunningham found more neotenous faces were perceived as having both higher “femininity” and “sociability”. In contrast, Cunningham found that faces that were “low in neoteny” were judged as “intimidating”. Cunningham noted a “difference” in the preferences of Asian and white judges with Asian judges preferring women with “less mature faces” and smaller mouths than the White judges.
Cunningham hypothesized that this difference in preference may stem from “ethnocentrism” since “Asian faces possess those qualities”, so Cunningham re-analyzed the data with “11 Asian targets excluded” and concluded that “ethnocentrism was not a primary determinant of Asian preferences.” Rather than finding evidence for purely “neonate” faces being most appealing, Cunningham found faces with “sexually-mature” features at the “periphery” of the face combined with “neonate” features in the “center of the face” most appealing in men and women.
Upon analyzing the results of his study, Cunningham concluded that preference for “neonate features may display the least cross-cultural variability” in terms of “attractiveness ratings” and, in another study, Cunningham concluded that there exists a large agreement on the characteristics of an attractive face. In computer face averaging tests, women with averaged faces have been shown to be considered more attractive. This is possibly due to average features being more familiar and, therefore, more comfortable.
Commenting on the prevalence of whiteness in supposed beauty ideals in his book White Lies: Race and the Myth of Whiteness, Maurice Berger notes that the schematic rendering in the idealized face of a notable study conducted with American subjects had “straight hair,” “light skin,” “almond-shaped eyes,” “thin, arched eyebrows,” “a long, thin nose, closely set and tiny nostrils” and “a large mouth and thin lips”, though the author of the study noted the consistency between his results and those conducted on other races. As Dr. Liu Jieyu says in the article White Collar Beauties, “The criterion of beauty is both arbitrary and gendered. The implicit consensus is that women who have fair skin and a slim figure with symmetrical facial features are pretty.” All of these requirements are socially constructed and force people to change themselves to fit these criterion.
One psychologist speculated there were two opposing principles of female beauty: prettiness and rarity. So on average, symmetrical features are one ideal, while unusual, stand-out features are another. A study performed by the University of Toronto found that the most attractive facial dimensions were those found in the average female face. However, that particular University of Toronto study looked only at white women.
Youthfulness
Cross-cultural data shows that the reproductive success of women is tied to their youth and physical attractiveness such as the pre-industrial Sami where the most reproductively successful women were 15 years younger than their man. One study covering 37 cultures showed that, on average, a woman was 2.5 years younger than her male partner, with the age difference in Nigeria and Zambia being at the far extreme of 6.5 to 7.5 years. As men age, they tend to seek a mate who is ever younger.
25% of eHarmony’s male customers over the age of 50 request to only be matched with women younger than 40. A 2010 OkCupid study of 200,000 users found that female desirability to its male users peaks at age 21, and falls below the average for all women at 31. After age 26 men have a larger potential dating pool than women on the site; by 48 their pool is almost twice as large. The median 31 years-old male user searches for women aged 22 to 35, while the median 42 years-old male searches for women 27 to 45. The age skew is even greater with messages to other users; the median 30 years-old male messages teenage girls as often as women his own age, while mostly ignoring women a few years older than him. Excluding the most and least beautiful 10% of women, however, women’s attractiveness does not change between 18 and 40.
Pheromones (detected by female hormone markers) reflects female fertility and the reproductive value mean. As females age, the estrogen-to-androgen production ratio changes and results in female faces to appear more and more masculine (thus appearing less “attractive”). In a small (n=148) study performed in the United States using male college students at one university, the mean age expressed as ideal for a wife was found to be 16.87 years old, while 17.76 was the mean ideal age for a brief sexual encounter; however, the study sets up a framework where “taboos against sex with young girls” are purposely diminished, and biased their sample by removing any participant over the age of 30, with a mean participant age of 19.83. In a study of penile tumescence, men were found most aroused by pictures of young adult females
Breasts
Research has shown that most men enjoy the sight of female breasts. Some studies indicate that men prefer large, firm breasts, while a contradictory study of British undergraduates found men preferring small breasts on women. Smaller breasts were widely associated with youthfulness. Cross-culturally, another study found “high variability” regarding the ideal breast size. Some researchers in the United Kingdom have speculated that a preference for larger breasts may have developed in Western societies because women with larger breasts tend to have higher levels of the hormones estradiol and progesterone, which both promote fertility. A study showed that men prefer symmetrical breasts. Breast symmetry may be particularly sensitive to developmental disturbances and the symmetry differences for breasts are large compared to other body parts. Women who have more symmetrical breasts tend to have more children.
Buttocks
Biological anthropologist, Helen B. Fisher of the Center for Human Evolution Studies in the Department of Anthropology of Rutgers University, said that, “perhaps, the fleshy, rounded buttocks… attracted males during rear-entry intercourse.” Bobbi S. Low et al. of the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan, said the female “buttocks evolved in the context of females competing for the attention and parental commitment of powerful resource-controlling males” as an “honest display of fat reserves” that could not be confused with another type of tissue, although T. M. Caro, professor in the Center for Population Biology and the Department of Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology, at University of California, Davis, rejected that as being a necessary conclusion, stating that female fatty deposits on the hips improve “individual fitness of the female”, regardless of sexual selection.
Body mass
Body Mass Index (BMI) is an important determinant to the perception of beauty. Even though the Western ideal is for a thin woman, some cultures prefer plumper women,which has been argued to support that attraction for a particular BMI merely is a cultural artifact. The attraction for a proportionate body also influences an appeal for erect posture. One cross-cultural survey comparing body-mass preferences among 300 of the most thoroughly studied cultures in the world showed that 81% of cultures preferred a female body size that in English would be described as “plump”.
Availability of food influences which female body size is attractive which may have evolutionary reasons. Societies with food scarcities prefer larger female body size than societies having plenty of food. In Western society males who are hungry prefer a larger female body size than they do when not hungry.
In the United States, women overestimate men’s preferences for thinness in a mate. In one study, American women were asked to choose what their ideal build was and what they thought the build most attractive to men was. Women chose slimmer than average figures for both choices. When American men were independently asked to choose the female build most attractive to them, the men chose figures of average build. This indicates that women may be misled as to how thin men prefer women to be. Some speculate that thinness as a beauty standard is one way in which women judge each other and that thinness is viewed as prestigious for within-gender evaluations of other women. A reporter surmised that thinness is prized among women as a “sign of independence, strength and achievement.” Some implicated the fashion industry for the promulgation of the notion of thinness as attractive.
Waisthip ratio
Ethnic groups vary with regard to their ideal waist-to-hip ratio for women, ranging from 0.6 in China, to 0.8 or 0.9 in parts of South America and Africa and divergent preferences based on ethnicity, rather than nationality, have also been noted. A cross-cultural analysis that found isolated peoples preferring high WHR (0.9) over a low WHR (0.7) suggested that many such “cross-cultural” tests “may have only reflected the pervasiveness of Western media”; however many evolutionary psychologists believe preference for low WHR is a signal for fertility and biologically based.
Height
Most men tend to be taller than their female partner. It has been found that, in Western societies, most men prefer shorter women, although a difference in height between a man and a woman was not as important of a factor for men when choosing a woman, as it is for a woman choosing a man. Men tend to view taller women as less attractive, and people view heterosexual couples where the woman is taller to be less ideal. Women who are 0.7 to 1.7 standard deviations below the mean female height have been reported to be the most reproductively successful, since fewer tall women get married compared to shorter women. However, in other ethnic groups, such as the Hadza, study has found that height is irrelevant in choosing a mate.
Leg-to-body ratio
A study using Polish participants by Sorokowski found 5% longer legs than an individual used as a reference was considered most attractive. The study concluded this preference might stem from the influence of leggy runway models. The Sorokowski study was criticized for using a picture of the same person with digitally altered leg lengths which Dr. Marco Bertamini felt were unrealistic. Another study using British and American participants, found “mid-ranging” leg-to-body ratios to be most ideal.
A study by Swami et al. of British male and female undergraduates showed a preference for men with legs as long as the rest of their body and women with 40% longer legs than the rest of their body. The researcher concluded that this preference might be influenced by American culture where long legged women are portrayed as more attractive. The Swami et al. study was criticized for using a picture of the same person with digitally altered leg lengths which Marco Bertamini felt were unrealistic. Bertamini also criticized the Swami study for only changing the leg length while keeping the arm length constant. Bertamini’s own study which used stick figures mirrored Swami’s study, however, by finding a preference for leggier women.
According to some studies, most men prefer women with small feet, such as in ancient China where foot binding was practiced.
Hair
Men have been found to prefer long-haired women. An evolutionary psychology explanation for this is that malnutrition and deficiencies in minerals and vitamins causes loss of hair or hair changes. Hair therefore indicates health and nutrition during the last 23 years. Lustrous hair is also often a cross-cultural preference. One study reported non-Asian men to prefer blondes and Asian men to prefer black-haired women.
Movement patterns
The way an individual moves can indicate health and even age and influence attractiveness. In a study that reflected the views of 700 individuals, through a series of 5 studies, 3 of which involved animated representations of people walking. The physical attractiveness perceived increased by about 50 percent when women walked with a hip sway.
Skin tone and skin radiance
A preference for lighter-skinned women has remained prevalent over time, even in cultures without European contact, though exceptions have been found. Anthropologist Peter Frost stated that since higher-ranking men were allowed to marry the perceived more attractive women, who tended to have fair skin, the upper classes of a society generally tended to develop a lighter complexion than the lower classes by sexual selection. In contrast, one study on men of the Bikosso tribe in Cameroon found no preference for attractiveness of females based on lighter skin color, bringing into question the universality of earlier studies that had exclusively focused on skin color preferences among non-African populations.
Today, skin bleaching is not uncommon in parts of the world such as Africa, and a preference for lighter-skinned women generally holds true for African Americans, Latin Americans, and Asians. One exception to this has been in contemporary Western culture, where tanned skin used to be associated with the sun-exposed manual labor of the lower-class, but has generally been considered more attractive and healthier since the mid-20th century.
More recent work has extended skin color research beyond preferences for lightness, arguing that redder (higher a* in the CIELab colour space) and yellower (higher b*) skin has healthier appearance. These preferences have been attributed to higher levels of red oxygenated blood in the skin, which is associated with aerobic fitness and lack of cardiac and respiratory illnesses, and to higher levels of yellow-red antioxidant carotenoids in the skin, indicative of more fruit and vegetables in the diet and, possibly more efficient immune and reproductive systems. Research has additionally shown that skin radiance or glowing skin indicates health, thus skin radiance influences perception of beauty and physical attractiveness.
Eyes
A study where photographs of several women were manipulated (so that their faces would be shown with either the natural eye color of the model or with the other color) showed that, in average, brown-eyed men have no preference regarding eye color, but blue-eyed men prefer women of the same eye color.
A study that investigated whether or not an eyelid crease makes Chinese-descent women more attractive using photo-manipulated photographs of young Chinese-descent women’s eyes found that the “medium upper eyelid crease” was considered most attractive by all three groups of both sexes: white people, Chinese and Taiwanese nationals together as a group and Taiwanese and Chinese Americans together as a group. Similarly, all three groups of both genders found the absence of an eye crease to be least attractive on Chinese women.
Other determinants
There has been research suggesting that women at the “fertile stage” of the menstrual cycle appear more attractive to single unattached men, but it is not clear exactly how this process works. Another study comparing British and American subjects concluded that there is a correlation between intelligence and physical attraction. The study concluded that intelligence is a big factor in physical attractiveness, particularly in males.
Possible gender differences for preferences
For both men and women, there appear to be universal criteria of attractiveness both within and across cultures and ethnic groups. When considering long term relationships, some studies have concluded that men place a higher emphasis on physical attractiveness in a partner than women do. On the other hand, some studies have found little difference between men and women in terms of the weight they place on physical characteristics when they are choosing partners for short-term relationships, in particular with regard to their implicit, as opposed to explicitly articulated, preferences. Other recent studies continue to find sex differences for long-term relationships.
Some evolutionary psychologists, including David Buss, have argued that this long-term relationship difference may be consequence of ancestral humans who selected partners based on secondary sexual characteristics, as well as general indicators of fitness which allowed for greater reproductive success as a result of higher fertility in those partners, although a male’s ability to provide resources for offspring was likely signaled less by physical features.
It is argued that the most prominent indicator of fertility in women is youth, while the traits in a man which enhance reproductive success are proxies for his ability to accrue resources and protect.
Studies have shown that women pay greater attention to physical traits than they do directly to earning capability or potential to commit, including muscularity, fitness and masculinity of features; the latter preference was observed to vary during a woman’s period, with women preferring more masculine features during the late-follicular (fertile) phase of the menstrual cycle. Additionally, women process physical attractiveness differently, paying attention to both individual features and the aesthetic effect of the whole face. A 2003 study in the area concluded that heterosexual women are about equally aroused when viewing men or women. Heterosexual men were only aroused by women. This study verified arousal in the test subjects by connecting them to brain imaging devices. Notably, the same study reported arousal for women upon viewing animals mating.
It has been shown that women prefer men with a more masculine facial dimorphism during the fertile period of the menstrual cycle and men with a more feminine facial dimorphism during other parts of the cycle. This distinction supports the sexy son hypothesis, which posits that it is evolutionarily advantageous for women to select potential fathers who are more genetically attractive, rather than the best caregivers.
Bonnie Adrian’s book, Framing the Bride, discusses the emphasis Taiwanese brides place on physical attractiveness for their wedding photographs. Globalization and western ideals of beauty have spread and have become more prevalent in Asian societies where brides go through hours of hair and makeup to “transform everyday women with their individual characteristics into generic look-alike beauties in three hours’ time.” These brides go through hours of makeup to transform themselves into socially-constructed beauty.
According to strategic pluralism theory, men may have correspondingly evolved to pursue reproductive strategies that are contingent on their own physical attractiveness. More physically attractive men accrue reproductive benefits from spending more time seeking multiple mating partners and relatively less time investing in offspring. In contrast, the reproductive effort of physically less attractive men, who therefore will not have the same mating opportunities, is better allocated either to investing heavily in accruing resources, or investing in their mates and offspring and spending relatively less time seeking additional mates.
Facial similarity and racial bias
Several studies have suggested that people are generally attracted to people who look like them and they generally evaluate faces that exhibit features of their own ethnic or racial group as being more attractive. Although both men and women use children’s “facial resemblance” to themselves in “attractiveness judgments,” a greater percentage of women in one study (37% n=30) found hypothetical children whose faces were “self-morphs” of themselves as most attractive when compared to men (30% n=23).However, one report in The Guardian suggested there was a “Caucasian beauty standard” spreading worldwide because of the proliferation of the Western entertainment industry.
The more similar a judged person is toward the judging person, the more the former is liked. However, this effect can be reversed. This might depend on how attractiveness is conceptualized: similar members (compared to dissimilar ones) of the opposite sex are judged as more likable in a prosocial sense. Again, findings are more ambiguous when looking for the desiring, pleasure related component of attractiveness. This might be influenced by the measure one uses (subjective ratings can differ from the way one actually reacts) and by situational factors: while men usually prefer women whose face resembles their own, this effect can reverse under stress, when dissimilar females are preferred
Social effects
Perceptions of physical attractiveness contribute to generalized assumptions based on those attractions. Individuals assume that when someone is beautiful, then they have many other positive attributes that make the attractive person more likeable. This is also called the ‘beautiful-is-good’ effect. Across cultures, what is beautiful is assumed to be good; attractive people are assumed to be more extroverted, popular, and happy. This could lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy, as, from a young age, attractive people receive more attention that helps them develop these characteristics.
In one study, beautiful people were found to be generally happier than less beautiful or plain people, perhaps because these outgoing personality traits are linked to happiness, or perhaps because beauty led to increased economic benefits which partially explained the increased happiness. In another study testing first impressions in 56 female and 17 male participants at University of British Columbia, personality traits of physically attractive people were identified more positively and more accurately than those who were less physically attractive. It was explained that people pay closer attention to those they find physically beautiful or attractive, and thus perceiving attractive individuals with greater distinctive accuracy. The study believes this accuracy to be subjective to the eye of the beholder.
However, attractiveness varies by society; in ancient China, a small foot was considered attractive, so foot binding was practiced by confining young girls’ feet in tightly bound shoes to prevent the feet from growing to normal size. In England, women used to wear corsets that severely constricted their breathing and damaged vital internal organs, in order to achieve a visual effect of an exaggeratedly low Waist-to-Hip ratio.
People make judgments of physical attractiveness based on what they see, but also on what they know about the person. Specifically, perceptions of beauty are malleable such that information about the person’s personality traits can influence one’s assessment of another person’s physical beauty. A 2007 study had participants first rate pictures for attractiveness. After doing distracting math problems, participants saw the pictures again, but with information about the person’s personality. When participants learned that a person had positive personality characteristics (e.g., smart, funny, kind), that person was seen as more physically attractive.
Conversely, a person with negative personality characteristics (e.g., materialistic, rude, untrustworthy) was seen as less physically attractive. This was true for both females and males. A person may be perceived as being more attractive if they are seen as part of a group of friends, rather than alone, according to one study. Physical attractiveness can have various effects. A survey conducted by London Guildhall University of 11,000 people showed that those who subjectively describe themselves as physically attractive earn more income than others who would describe themselves as less attractive.
People who described themselves as less attractive earned, on average, 13% less than those who described themselves as more attractive, while the penalty for being overweight was around 5%. According to further research done on the correlation between looks and earnings in men, the punishment for unattractiveness is greater than the benefits of being attractive. However, in women the punishment is found to be equal to the benefits. Another study suggests that more physically attractive people are significantly more likely on average to earn considerably higher wages. Differences in income due to attractiveness was much more pronounced for men rather than women, and held true for all ranges of income
It is important to note that other factors such as self-confidence may explain or influence these findings as they are based on self-reported attractiveness as opposed to any sort of objective criteria; however, as one’s self-confidence and self-esteem are largely learned from how one is regarded by his/her peers while maturing, even these considerations would suggest a significant role for physical appearance. One writer speculated that “the distress created in women by the spread of unattainable ideals of female beauty” might possibly be linked to increasing incidence of depression.
Many have asserted that certain advantages tend to come to those who are perceived as being more attractive, including the ability to get better jobs and promotions; receiving better treatment from authorities and the legal system; having more choices in romantic partners and, therefore, more power in relationships; and marrying into families with more money.
Those who are attractive are treated and judged more positively than those who are considered unattractive, even by those who know them. Also, attractive individuals behave more positively than those who are unattractive. One study found that teachers tend to expect that children who are attractive are more intelligent, and are more likely to progress further in school. They also consider these students to be more popular. Voters choose political candidates who are more attractive over those who are less attractive. Men and women use physical attractiveness as a measure of how “good” another person is.
In 1946, Soloman Asch coined the Implicit Personality Theory, meaning that the presence of one trait tends to imply the existence of other traits. This is also known as the halo effect. Research suggests that those who are physically attractive are thought to have more socially desirable personalities and lead better lives in general. This is also known as the “what-is-beautiful-is-good effect.” Discrimination against or prejudice towards others based on their appearance is sometimes referred to as lookism.
Some researchers conclude that little difference exists between men and women in terms of sexual behavior. Symmetrical men and women have a tendency to begin to have sexual intercourse at an earlier age, to have more sexual partners, to engage in a wider variety of sexual activities, and to have more one-night stands. They are also prone to infidelity and are more likely to have open relationships. Additionally, they have the most reproductive success. Therefore, their physical characteristics are most likely to be inherited by future generations.
Concern for improving physical attractiveness has led many persons to consider alternatives such as cosmetic surgery. It has led scientists working with related disciplines such as computer imaging and mathematics to conduct research to suggest ways to surgically alter a face in terms of distances between facial features, to make it closer to an ideal face with “agreed-upon standards of attractiveness”, by using algorithms to suggest an alternative which still resembles the current face. One research study found that cosmetic surgery as a way to “boost earnings” was “not profitable in a monetary sense.” Perhaps people try to look more beautiful because they think it would make them happier. However, research shows that physical attractiveness seems to only have a marginal effect on happiness.