Facial Attractiveness and Human Nature

Discuss About The Evolutionary Psychology And Intelligence.

People mostly think that they are better off if they are good looking. Attractive people are given more preference in all the ages of life and also are treated better. There are so many factors which play into personal attractiveness. It can be the way people dress up, way of acting, carrying oneself and things that are hard to change such as status and money, race and body size etc. Face is noticed on the first place when someone is noticed. Psychology says that brain is the detector of beauty (Rhodes, 2006).

Brain work in such a way that it judges the face via appeal before the other parts of body even realize it. In a study, there were face presented with attractive and non-attractive faces for just 13 milliseconds, the attractive faces were judged aptly. Undoubtedly, beauty to some extent is in the eye of the beholder but within some individuals or cultures, there came an agreement as to what makes a face good looking. The evidence that came out of this study were totally contradictory. It said that attractiveness comes from the experiences of life that a person went through or acquired (Zhang, Tang, He, & Chen, 2018).

The question arises all the time that is beauty skin deep and reflects good qualities. There have been stereotypes like beautiful is good. These type of stereotypes does hold that beauty is skin deep.  In the field of psychology, evolutionary psychology holds that faces are like windows with particular fundamentals and characteristics which are indicated in a person’s quality (Barber, 1995). These qualities can be from being a romantic partner or qualities of genes or the character.

When the facial attractiveness is considered, the significant factors that are considered are structural qualities of face which are highly sex typical. When an experiment was done on this point it was fond out that in the eyes of the female participants, the man who is attractive will be the one who has noticeable cheekbones and edges in their eyebrows and also those who have longer face. In the eyes of male participants, smooth skin, taller forehead or big eyes are mostly likes in women (Sulikowski, 2016).

Hormones are the ones which sculpt the faces of humans. During the development of humans, the oestrogen and testosterone hormones are the ones which reflect the features of men and women. The features like these in men and women makes the people of different gender looks more attractive. While some studies are there which supports these ideas, there are studies which shows conflict as well. The conflicting study found that 1) In countries like Japan and UK, people prefer rather feminised opposite sex faces and 2) In Jamaica, people prefer masculine opposite sex faces (Confer, Easton, Fleischman, Goetz, & Lewis, 2010).

Factors Affecting Facial Attractiveness

An attempt was made to jiggle the bond of extreme cultural relativism where psychologists created something flawed which is known to be extreme universalism. While there exists body, which denotes that there is universality to beauty, there is evidence which denotes just the opposite of this theory and that is being ignored by evolutionary psychologists. For example: Wodaabe’s of Nigeria celebrates festivals where men dress up like western girls and dance in order to show their energy and vigour (Buss & Schmitt, 2011). In these festivals, the participants are chosen by females. They choose men with whitest teeth, nice nose and big eyes. Such type of selections has led to physical changes in Wodaabe males in recent generations. In cases like these where physical changes occur, then one can expect the changes in cognition as well. If this has happened in this type of society then it could have happened in other societies as well all over the world.

The founders of evolutionary psychology Tooby and Cosmides, criticizes the preferences which diverges from the policy of being unreflective of human nature. In other words, this results at the end of the bell curve or in scientific terms it can be said as freaks. Freaks are very significant part of human nature. There have been studies where it is found out that men do not like normal looking women. These people are actually the part of counter culture.

The difference between Normal and abnormal is termed as Natural State Model by Elliot Sober in which he says that there is a way for the development which a genotype can take for developing a phenotype which counts as Natural. This model does not show any basis of genetics though. Moreover, evolutionary considerations depict the phenotypic difference. The fine differences between the taste of facial attractiveness and within cultures are not abnormal.

All such studies about facial attractiveness are flawed in terms of the methodology. For deciding whether the face is attractive or not, the researchers are called for the rating of attractiveness of face. When the rating is considered, men rates women faces and vice versa. The results are averaged out in the end and the figure which reflects the outcome is argued for reflecting the attractiveness of face. Although, this averaging in simple terms assumes that there exists a rule and these assumptions biases the study form the outset. When the results are averaged out, the polish over significant differences in between attribution of attractiveness (Kanazawa, 2010).  For example: The fan of the show suicide girls would find Barbie looking alike girl attractive.  Averaging will always avoid the importance if the outcome and would place them at the end of bell curve. There is something wrong with this procedure. These types of things allow inconsistency and a bit of confusion between the studies that were done about facial attractiveness. The variation needs to be respected and the focus should be removed from the “Normal”.

Cultural Relativism and Evolution

There is a myth that women who are beautiful are troublesome for men as they make them go to war. It is a well-known fact that men are the ones who are worst decision makers when it comes to female beauty (WARGO, 2011). There were two researchers who found out that just by looking at the photograph of women who are attractive causes the increase in reducing the delay in men. This means that they would rather choose a reward which is immediate instead of choosing a reward which is big but delayed. Addicts are also found with such a high degree and others with reduced self-control. At the same time, women’s decisions are not at all changed and men could not influence their decisions. The reason unseating effect of a beautiful face mostly involves the amygdala. When amygdala is activated, it detects the value of social stimuli and it is linked with greater discounting all types of rewards from future (Hallberg, Fogelberg, & Johansson, 2013). Then the brain area display stronger activated faces. This is normally known as U shaped relation. Amygdala is very activated by faces which are unattractive.

Beauty is always unfair. Everybody cannot have nice genes. Neither everyone is born symmetrical. Similarly, every one cannot be attractive looking. Yet there are many factors that adds up to attractiveness which are under human people’s control. Make up is a strong thing when it comes to women (Diphoorn, 2016). Make up wearing women are approached more and faster by men at any public place as compared to the other women, studies have shown. The judgements on make-up are found to be high as compared to the other features of women which are mentioned earlier.

Women take beauty sleep every time and it is something which can be done to make a beauty quotient. There was a study done by group of Swedish and Dutch researchers in which an experiment on done with the beauty sleep. The participants who took their beauty sleep were photographed. They looked healthy and attractive. While in the experiment of participants who were sleep deprived looked unfit and unattractive (Laeng, Vermeer, & Sulutvedt, 2013).

Then comes emotions that people show with the help of their faces. The emotions which display positivity are attractive. It is said that smile is contagious. Well, it is right. People like smiling humans. For example: Women who wear make-up and at the same time smiles at men will be approached more rather than women with just make up but no smile. Even when a person who slightly smiles will be given more attention than a person who has no facial expressions at all. People with attractive faces who smile produces more activity in orbitofrontal cortex as compared to attractive faces with no expressions (Thiruchselvam, Harper, & Homer, 2016).

The Importance of Valuing Differences

Hence, the message from the psychological science is that one should be beautiful or at least be near to beautiful. One should make efforts to be beautiful by either sleeping or smiling or whatever it takes it to be. If done then one’s face can act as a reward. With these social benefits, attractive humans invite people for learning as to what they are made of in other characteristics than just genes fitness. Based on the study of British Columbia university, people who are attractive are judged more quickly and aptly or at least closer to what the person is all about as compared to the less attractive. The reason behind this act is that it pushes other people to go beyond the initial impression. It is said that “people do judge the book by its cover” but the philosophers said that a book which is beautiful is a good closer read for others (Maner, Kenrick, Becker, & Neuberg, 2004).

Whether men or women, activation is created by attractive faces in brain areas which are involved in processing of the rewards. These areas involve nucleus accumbens that also is activated for rewarding stimuli such as money, medical prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex. All these are involved in shaping up the behaviour of future by considering the learnings of rewards outcomes. In men, orbitofrontal cortex is activated and monitor value of reward of the present behaviours when it comes to women (Calder, 2000).

There are some points which can be taken out by studying of the phase “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder” in terms of evolutionary psychology. First is that of an anecdotal evidence. This means that people most likely know a few people whose sex preferences differ than theirs. For example: There are 3 male friends out of which two always dislikes what the other friend likes in terms of attractive women. Same can be the case with women also.  Women also cannot come to the common ground in terms of men’s attractiveness (Giessner, Quaquebeke, Gils, & Kollee, 2015). All such people should not necessarily be from different culture or backgrounds. This might seem abnormal to a few people but studies have shown that this is absolutely right.

In the conclusion, this can be said that attractiveness plays a major role in human communication which is non-verbal. This has been examined on a broader sense and also in different subfields of psychology. Many researchers have given evidences in assertion of the evolutionary psychology of physical attractiveness and its role in the daily lives of humans. At the same time, in case of hugely avoided significance of contribution of non-verbal modalities and links between them have been seen. Beauty is what is judged everywhere. It is very common when women are being appreciated if they are good looking but body or face shamed when they don’t look attractive. People judge the book by its cover while this should not be happening. Still the studies have shown that beauty can lead to further knowing of people who are not even attended nicely when they look unattractive (Honekopp, 2006). This would be because they will be approached most likely and then the other person can get to know that person in a better way. One cannot say how apt this is but in today’s world, this is getting negative reviews as people have started thinking to what actually is right and they teach their brain the same way.

References

Barber, N. (1995). The evolutionary psychology of physical attractiveness: Sexual selection and human morphology Author links open overlay panel. Ethology and Sociobiology , 16 (5), 395-424.

Buss, D. M., & Schmitt, D. (2011). Evolutionary Psychology and Feminism. Sex Roles , 64 (9), 768-787.

Calder, J. (2000). Beauty Lies in the Eye of the Beholder. Retrieved May 2, 2018, from irrodl.org: https://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/6/340

Confer, J. C., Easton, J. A., Fleischman, D. S., Goetz, C. D., & Lewis, D. M. (2010). Evolutionary Psychology. American Psychological Association , 65 (2), 110-126.

Diphoorn, T. (2016). Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? Retrieved May 2, 2018, from file:///Users/Anoopknair/Downloads/Blommensteijn,%20Stephanie%20en%20Hameleers,%20Iris.pdf

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Hallberg, A., Fogelberg, C. L., & Johansson, E. (2013). BEAUTY IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER. Eurasian Journal of Social Sciences , 1 (1), 39-49.

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Kanazawa, S. (2010). Evolutionary Psychology and Intelligence Research. American Psychologist , 65 (4), 279-289.

Laeng, B., Vermeer, O., & Sulutvedt, U. (2013). Is Beauty in the Face of the Beholder? Retrieved May 2, 2018, from https://journals.plos.org/: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0068395

Maner, J. K., Kenrick, D. T., Becker, V. D., & Neuberg, S. L. (2004). Sexually Selective Cognition: Beauty Captures the Mind of the Beholder. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 85 (6), 1107-1120.

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Thiruchselvam, R., Harper, J., & Homer, A. L. (2016). Beauty is in the belief of the beholder: cognitive influences on the neural response to facial attractiveness. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience , 11 (12), 1999-2008.

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Zhang, W., Tang, X., He, X., & Chen, G. (2018). Evolutionary Effect on the Embodied Beauty of Landscape Architectures. Evolutionary Psychology .