Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Beauty or Beast? Why Perceptions of Attractiveness Vary

A new study published in the Journal of Current Biology suggest that ones perception of other people's attractiveness is mainly the result of ones experiences. In the study conducted with twin, the researchers found that a person's environment plays a bigger role than gene in shaping who they find attractive.
The study consisted of 547 sets of identical twins and 214 sets of fraternal twins. The participants looked at 98 male faces and 102 female faces and participants rated them based on who was most attractive. The researchers compared the results between identical twins and fraternal twins to see if genetics played a major role in the attractiveness of the person or if it could be because of the environment the person was exposed to. The researchers concluded that genetics only attributed to the attractiveness of the person 22% of the time while the environment the person is exposed to attributed to the attractiveness of the person 78% of the time.
I believe this was kind of a fun experiment to prove that beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder. That the experiences people have and the knowledge one may have attracts some more than others and it is not always about the looks.

Original Article

1 comment:

  1. This sounds like a very interesting study, that probably many people found enjoyable to read, as it helps us understand why some people find certain people attractive while others do not. As you said, beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder.

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