A look into attractiveness
- Mind Mesh
- Feb 16
- 2 min read
MindMesh
Valentines, the day where public display of affection are the norm and you wonder how come they found someone but you haven’t?
Well it boils down to the psychology of attraction!
The Golden rule of attraction
The idea is that the more similar a person looks to us the more attracted we are to them. This is believed to be because when we view someone similar to us we envision people who provide rewarding and positive interactions. When an experiment was conducted to study attraction participants chose people who had at least 8 out of 10 similar features to themselves but those weren’t the only determining factors participants were also more attracted to people who shared the same views of reality.
Facial symmetry
Facial symmetry is a key association with attractiveness. But why? This was an evolutionary influence, with facial symmetry it allowed for the healthy genes to be passed on and for genes that could result in a higher outcome to have a mutation occur to be avoided. This allowed for our species to prevent an evolution that could cause us complications. This part of attraction falls more under the category of biological psychology as it heavily relies on Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Dating in your own league ( the matching hypothesis)
Now everyone has their ideal date to be the most attractive. Around the time when you become an adolescent you subconsciously give yourself an internal ranking of attractiveness that is influenced by your environment. For example a less attractive person could already have a partner while you still don’t, the reason in their environment they are the ideal date compared to the other candidates so they would be viewed as the ideal 10 and their partner would be in close range like 8 or 9. In an experiment participants ranked each other anonymously on attractiveness, afterwards they were given a number without them knowing and were instructed to approach who they find attractive and in all cases participants found participants with similar rankings attractive without knowing their own. The social psychology applied was the situational factors even though participants did not know their personal ranking when observing other participants of the same gender and what active rating they had participants subconsciously classified themselves at an attractive level from 1 to 10.
To conclude whether in your environment you’re a 2 or a 10,whether your partner looks like you or not or whether you have impeccable facial symmetry, by the words of the fairy god mother it’s what’s on the inside that matters and the quality of the chocolate!
References
Comments