“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder“, «What is beautiful is not beautiful, what is liked is beautiful»: all these proverbs remind us that physical beauty is subjective, and that many factors come into play to determine how attractive (for us) a person is.
A study published in British Journal of Psychology has made this ancient awareness scientific, analyzing the set of traits (physical and otherwise) that make us like someone – not just as a possible partner.
Not just face. Until now, studies on attraction have focused mainly on the face, identifying general preferences for characteristics such as facial symmetry or sexual dimorphism. In this case the authors instead analyzed various non-verbal signals – such as smell, the sound of the voice or body movement – to understand which criteria were universal and which were more linked to personal compatibility.
The study. The authors involved a total of 132 young people – 61 as “nonverbal agents”, who only provided different sensory stimuli, and 71 as “perceivers”, who were tasked with judging these stimuli in the laboratory. There were four sensory channels analysed: sight (photos and videos of the people to be judged), hearing (the sound of their voice), movement (video of how they positioned themselves in space) and smell (the smell of their body). Each perceiver rated the attractiveness of each stimulus of the 61 agents, giving a score from one to seven.
I like it if you move (and talk)! The results showed that stimuli presented through multiple sensory channels simultaneously (video with synchronized audio) were judged to be more attractive, while body odor was on average judged to be the least interesting stimulus. Face, voice and mute videos received average ratings. In any case, the variation in the score has always been minimal: this shows that no sensory channel alone determines a person’s attractiveness.
Partners, but also friends. The study not only analyzed attraction between people of the opposite sex, but also that between people of the same sex. It has emerged that when judging people of our own sex we are more influenced by personal preferences rather than by objective or commonly appreciated traits. What we discovered makes us understand that attractiveness has different functions and not only influences the search for a partner, but also social relationships such as friendship bonds or cohesion between colleagues.
