Rules of attraction
There’s nothing like symmetry – plus one or two other attributes – to get you a mate.
Attraction can take a thousand forms: a glance, a smile, a gesture, a scent, proximity, intelligence, dominance, submissiveness, being a good dancer, a sense of humour, a tone of voice or a nice pair of eyes.
Attractive people are said to have more dates than unattractive people. In mock interviews, attractive people are more likely to be hired than unattractive people. In the US, attractive people are given lesser punishment for crimes and pay less for bail. Good looks can be a key to social mobility and wealth and, of course, attractiveness shapes our choice of mate.
Scientists have done plenty of experiments on attractiveness. They find that most people agree on who is attractive, even people of different cultures.
In 1995, Swiss scientist Claus Wedekind devised a clever experiment involving smelly T-shirts. He arranged for several men to wear the same T-shirts for two days, then asked a number of women to sniff them and report on their attractiveness or otherwise. There were very clear preferences. This experiment has been repeated in many countries, including New Zealand, with the same results.
People have an extraordinary ability to rank faces. Three British psychologists showed photos of hundreds of men’s and women’s faces to dozens of viewers, who were asked to rank them according to their attractiveness. The psychologists were surprised to find the most important ranking feature was symmetry. The psychologists tweaked many of the photos to make them asymmetrical. Even the tiniest alteration reduced their attractiveness. Photos were also tweaked to alter skin colour and texture, to feminise some men and make some women look more manly. These all had an influence, but symmetry had an overriding effect.
Another three psychologists photographed dozens of bare-chested American male students, then asked 160 Australian and US women whom they fancied. The appearance of physical strength in the upper body accounted for 70% of the ranking. Most of the women chose formidable-looking fighting men. Tallness and leanness were also favoured, which, collectively with formidability, accounted for 80% of choices.
Men also tend to be attracted to women with narrow waists and hourglass shapes. An analysis of 2500 years of Western artworks, 286 ancient Egyptian, African, Greek and Roman sculptures and decades of Playboy centrefold models showed a 0.7 ratio of waist to hip is a near-universal measure of beauty and attractiveness.
UEvolution equips us with subconscious mate-choice mechanisms that evaluate our reproductive prospects.
S psychologist Steven Gangestad quizzed 238 female college students and found many admitted to having overnight flings, usually with “caddish”, cocky, confident, ambitious lovers. These flings usually happened during their mid-monthly ovulatory cycle. At other times, these women were attracted to kinder, more promising longer-term relationships and better father material.
These, and many other experiments and surveys, reveal some benefit to the perceiver and can be explained with evolutionary theory. Forget about the glance, the smile, the gesture, or beauty in the eye of the beholder. Other hidden forces are at work.
Evolution equips us with subconscious matechoice mechanisms that evaluate the reproductive prospects of mating with different individuals. The sweaty T-shirts experiments reveal that people prefer others with a different set of immune genes (the major histocompatibility complex). Our preferences promote outbreeding and reduce the chances of incest.
Symmetry is of overriding importance throughout the animal kingdom. A frog with a crooked voice box and a peacock with a crooked tail aren’t fancied as mates. So, too, with people. Most women look for perfection in a man’s genetic quality – a clue to his ability to invest resources in the woman and her offspring.
Men are attracted to females with narrow waists because the women have a long reproductive career in front of them, and have higher levels of mega-3 docosahexaenoic acid in their stored fat – a vital brainbuilding nutrient during pregnancy and lactation. Women, traditionally, would have had an eye for a man who was a good provider.
These preferences were probably cemented into our genes and DNA 100,000 years ago when our hunter-gatherer forebears roamed the African savannah. Whether we realise it or not, subconscious ancestral preferences drive our tastes in attractiveness to this day. ▮