Do those blessed with symmetrical features and a striking figure live in a cloud of appreciation — or does it sometimes pay to be plain? Combing through decades of findings, social psychologists Lisa Slattery Walker and Tonya Frevert at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte have reviewed all the evidence to date — and their conclusions are not what you might expect.
At the most superficial level, beauty might be thought to carry a kind of halo around it; we see that someone has one good attribute, and by association, our subconscious assumes that they have been blessed in other departments too. According to the available evidence, the bubble is a reality.
In education, for instance, Walker and Frevert found a wealth of research showing that better looking students, at school and university, tend to be judged by teachers as being more competent and intelligent — and that was reflected in the grades they gave them. In the workplace, your face really can be your fortune. When everything else is considered, more attractive people tend to earn more money and climb higher on the corporate ladder than people who are considered less pleasing on the eye.
Even in the courts, a pleasing appearance can work its magic. People recognize objects more quickly when those objects match their mental representations. Therefore, if people truly believe that an attractively enhanced picture is their own, they should recognize that picture more quickly, which is exactly what the researchers found. Most people believe that they are above average, a statistical impossibility. The above average effects , as they are called, are common.
For example, 93 percent of drivers rate themselves as better than the median driver. Of college professors , 94 percent say that they do above-average work. People are unrealistically optimistic about their own health risks compared with those of other people. For example, people think that they are less susceptible to the flu than others. Stock pickers think the stocks they buy are more likely to end up winners than those of the average investor.
If you think that self-enhancement biases exist in other people and they do not apply to you, you are not alone. Most people state that they are more likely than others to provide accurate self-assessments. Why do we have positively enhanced self-views? The adaptive nature of self-enhancement might be the answer. Conveying the information that one has desirable characteristics is beneficial in a social environment.
People may try to deceive others about their characteristics, but deception has two main disadvantages. Average faces. Reformed facial shapes. Characteristics of beautiful faces.
Beautiful figure. Virtual attractiveness. Virtual Miss Germany. They fed some males high-quality food and others low-quality food. Certain males grew faster on high-quality food. And those fast-growing males ended up with uneven bars on their sides. Asymmetry may show that a male has put his energy into rapid growth, Morris says. For example, a fish living near lots of predators would be more likely to survive if it grew faster. It would also be better off if it could grow even when food is scarce.
So females that live in one of these types of environments should prefer asymmetrical males, Morris explains. Those males would carry the best genes for their environment, and would later pass them on to their young. Research on birds also shows that female birds prefer good-looking guys. For example, among satin bowerbirds, females prefer males whose feathers reflect more ultraviolet UV light.
Researchers at Auburn University in Alabama caught male bowerbirds and took blood samples. Males with blood parasites had feathers reflecting less UV light than healthy males. They were using that information to find healthy males to father their young.
Adeline Loyau is a behavioral ecologist who has seen similar things in peacocks. These are the vivid circles at the ends of their tail feathers. She knew peahens prefer males with more eyespots. They also prefer males that show off their tails more. Her work has now shown that healthier peacocks have more eyespots in their tails. These birds also splay their flashy tails more frequently to the females. Loyau then gave some males an injection that made their immune systems leap into action.
It was as if they were sick. These peacocks displayed their tails less than the healthy guys did. But that was only true if they had fewer eyespots. Females are better off avoiding sick mates, she explains. A female bird, she adds, also looks for good genes in the guy who will father her young.
For example, it may help us find healthy mates. Langlois and her team in Texas studied this question using a technique called EEG. EEGs measure electrical activity in the brain using a net of small electrodes placed on the outside of the head.
The scientists recruited college students for their brain study. Each student looked at a series of faces while wearing the electrode net. Human faces fell into one of three groups: highly attractive, unattractive or digitally morphed images that combined many features into an average face.
Some chimpanzee faces were put in the mix too. The EEG recorded brain activity as each student viewed the pictures. The researchers then searched the EEGs for patterns of electrical activity. Those patterns offered signs of what the brain was doing.
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