Attractive Women Versus Less Attractive Women

Philippines
June 21, 2010 5:45pm CST
For a study, attractive women and less attractive women were asked to hold infants, and the length of eye contact between the women and the infants was compared. The study had shown a direct correlation between beauty and eye contact: the infants stared longer at the attractive women compare to the less attractive women, suggesting that people's perceptions of beauty were instinctive.
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4 responses
• India
22 Jun 10
Hi, I heard about such studies. Though I have no hard evidence to prove it, but I have come with a conclusion merely based on statistics, which suggests that human perception of beauty is instinctive. But there are many things that governs the beauty factor. Most important thing is symmetry. This is a generalized idea and can be applicable to almost anything. Even when describing a persons character or behavior, we emphasize on symmetry. For example if a person demonstrates kindness through charity, it breaks the symmetry and looks as if it a jutted out portion in his otherwise smooth character. We don't identify it as ugly, in fact its far from being ugly. But anything that breaks the rule of symmetry surely strikes our senses. While it feels comfortable to look at something symmetric. This property is intentionally violated in many forms of art. There is another property which is repetition. This is also used to define beauty, especially in temporal arts like music. The same properties can be applied to human body in order to define its beauty. There are many other features but the most important among them is still the symmetry. If a face is not symmetric, it is rarely called beautiful. This subtle sense and understanding of geometry is quite instinctive in human beings. Thanks. God bless you
@youless (112091)
• Guangzhou, China
22 Jun 10
Yes, I read this article before. How interesting it is! Perhaps this is the nature of human beings. As you know, infants won't tell a lie:) I love China
@swetashah (345)
• United States
22 Jun 10
I guess what you said were right. Hey, even women themselves, they would stare longer at attractive women than less attractive women, because they want to compare.
• Philippines
21 Jun 10
I'm curious what the ages of the infants were and what the intent of the study was. Perhaps, the supposedly less attractive women were somehow influenced by their own image that they were giving? but without knowing the level of differences between the two groups of women, it is hard to know what impact, if any this had on the study. What other factors aside from beauty were taken into account? Odor? Smiling? etc. Eric