Week 9 Being Beautiful

In my previous post, we have uncovered that attractiveness has a substantial influence on the commencement of Fisher’s 3 stages of love. Today we are investigating the extent attractiveness plays in social environments.  How beneficial is it for us to look beautiful? According to (Aharon  et al, 2001), research shoes that people tend to spend more time looking at attractive faces than unattractive faces. But other than for an aesthetic appeal is there a reason why certain features  are considered attractive?

Many of the  researchers I have studied concur with the notion that  that attractive faces carry important information about mate quality (Johnston, 2006; Jie & Chang, 2009; Ahron et al, 2001; Olson & Marshuetz, 2005).  Evolutionary psychologist Rhodes (2006) uncovered that facial attractiveness is generally believed to indicate the genetic fitness and reproductive capacities of encountered individuals. The perception that attributes of  good health and appropriate mating partners can be evidenced by the activation of our brain’s reward system (Winston, O’Doherty, Kilner, Perrett, & Dolan, 2007). As these perceptions are driven mainly by the process of mate selection, it comes by no surprise that although males and females both rate beautiful male and female faces as attractive, their reward circuitry and related brain regions are more strongly activated by faces of the opposite gender (Aharon et al.,2001).

In adulthood, the positive biases toward attractive individuals manifest themselves in more than just areas of  mate selection and parenthood to include multiple areas of  contemporary social life (Langlois et al., 2000). Attractive people are perceived as being more competent, charismatic, or better at leading. As they are assumed to possess better social skills probably because they are not encumbered by rejection, they tend to receive better salaries and greater mating success (Rhodes, Simmons, & Peters, 2005). However, the mating successes of adults  are dependent on the varying significance of attraction to men and women. As men do not reach a period in which their reproductive organs begin to deteriorate, they are still able to procreate despite not possessing the traits of pinnacle health. However, they make up for this with a wealth of resources. When selecting mates, Li, Bailey, Kenrick, & Linsenmeier( 2002) found that men place greater importance on attractiveness than do women. And in contrast women favour status and resources more so than men (Li et al,  2002). Again, this trend seems to reflect upon natural survival instincts  of providing a female mate with avenues in which her offspring would get ahead in society or reflect an abundance of opportunities (Regan, 2008). The only fallacy I find with the research I have conducted is that the statistics does not consider women who “marry down”. It also does not take into account women who do not wish to have children.

fMRI Scans of experiments conducted by  Cloutier, Heatherton, Whalen  & Kelly  that depict  Winston et al, 2007) reward system.

Facial attractiveness and the assumed positive merits are  believed to come to mind spontaneously upon encountering attractive individuals (Olson & Marshuetz, 2005). Perhaps this is nature’s way of  guiding people towards a safer passage to survival?  The information that we extract from facial attractiveness  has a profound influence on how we construe newly encountered individuals (Jackson, Hunter, & Hodge, 1995).  As previously mentioned in week 8’s post, this is essential to the development of the bonding period in relationships.  It seems that even infants are not immune to the appeal of beauty. Langlois et  al (1991) discovered that when presented with a pair of stimuli composed of an attractive and an unattractive face, infants will spend more time looking at the most attractive of the two (Langlois, Ritter, Roggman, & Vaughn, 1991). I believe this has to do with a child’s perception of his or her “nurturer” as choosing an appropriate candidate ( not too old and not too sick) would best help an infant survive.  The documentary “the human face” claims that as we age our habitual expressions become etched on our faces and  this gives out signals as to what type of a person we are. Perhaps this calls for a revision of the saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover”?.

In essence, the traits of beauty and attractiveness are indicators of good health essential to mateship and mate selection.  Would a person jump straight into a relationship with someone who shows symptoms of the final stages of a disease?  It is hard to quantify why we fall in love and with whom. However, traits of health are essential to the procurement of healthy genes and is probably the reason why people are so fascinated with beauty.

References

Aharon, I., Etcoff, N., Ariely, D., Chabris, C. F., O’Connor, E.,Breiter, H. C. (2001). Beautiful faces have variable reward value: fMRI and behavioural evidence. Neuron,32, 537–551

Cloutier, J. Heatherton, T. F. Whalen, P. J.  Kelley, W. M. (2008).  Are Attractive People Rewarding? Sex Differences in the Neural Substrates of Facial Attractiveness. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20(6), 941–951

Erskine, J. Stewart, D. (Producers). (26^th August 2001). The human Face. Burlington: BBC.

Jackson, L. A., Hunter, J. E., & Hodge, C. N. (1995). Physical attractiveness and intellectual competence: A meta-analytic review. Social Psychology Quarterly, 58, 108–122.

Johnston, V. S. (2006). Mate choice decisions: The role of facial beauty. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10, 9-13.

Jie, S. Chang, H.L.(2009). Can beauty be ignored? Effects of facial attractiveness on covert attention. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 16 (2), 276-281

Langlois, J. H., Kalakanis, L., Rubenstein, A. J., Larson, A.,Hallam, M., & Smoot, M. (2000). Maxims or myths of beauty? A meta-analytic and theoretical review. Psychological

Bulletin, 126, 390–423.

Langlois, J. H., Ritter, J. M., Roggman, L. A., & Vaughn, L. S.(1991). Facial diversity and infant preferences for attractive faces. Developmental Psychology, 27, 79–84.

Li, N. P., Bailey, J. M., Kenrick, D. T., & Linsenmeier, J. A. (2002). The necessities and luxuries of mate preferences: Testing the tradeoffs. Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology, 82, 947–955.

Olson, I. R., & Marshuetz, C. (2005). Facial attractiveness is appraised in a glance. Emotion, 5, 498–502.

Regan. P. C (2008). Mating game: a primer on love, sex, and marriage. 2^nd Edition. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.

Rhodes, G., Simmons, L. W., & Peters, M. (2005). Attractiveness and sexual behaviour: Does attractiveness enhance mating success? Evolution and Human Behaviour, 26, 186–201.

Rhodes, G., & Zebrowitz, L. A. (2002). Facial attractiveness: Evolutionary, cognitive, and social perspectives. Westport, CT: Ablex Publishing.

Senior, C., Lau, A., & Butler, M. J. R. (2007). The effects of the menstrual cycle on social decision making. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 63, 186–191.

Winston, J. S., O’Doherty, J., Kilner, J. M., Perrett, D. I., & Dolan, R. J. (2007). Brain systems for assessing facial attractiveness. Neuropsychologia, 45, 195–206.

The Human Face Part 1

The Human Face Part2

Note : You may stop stop watching at 2.33 minutes as the documentry loses relavence.

Erskine, J. Stewart, D. (Producers). (26^th August 2001). The human Face. Burlington: BBC.

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~ by hsche13 on September 14, 2009.