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Physical attraction
Physical attraction varies across cultures, but some traits are universally appealing. Youthfulness, skin clarity, body symmetry, and facial features are attractive across ethnic and racial backgrounds. Interestingly, facial attraction is more important than body attraction. Averageness is also considered attractive. Attractiveness can be influenced by unrelated factors like background color in photos and physiological arousal.
Created by Brooke Miller.
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- If average is beautiful then why do men's and women's magazine covers always have people people that are in no way average asthetically?(11 votes)
- When it comes to body type, you are correct - the magazine covers feature people that are vastly different from the average (super skinny or fit or whatever else). But in this video they are talking specifically about average facial features, and one thing to remember is that average in this sense doesn't necessarily mean most common. Most people do not have the "average" nose - some people's noses are larger or smaller, pointier or more rounded. But the average basically takes away extreme. So the average face (not the most common) has features that are not too big, not too small, not too wide or narrow, basically each feature is, as Goldilocks would put it, "just right". These "just right" features are what the video argues are attractive, and what many magazine cover faces are closer to.(25 votes)
- I look more attractive to myself right after a workout. Is this because my heart is beating fast??(16 votes)
- Yeah, I have to say I was surprised to recieve a Khan Academy email reading 'what makes you attractive' as the subject line. I know this is all scientific and an extremely interesting lesson on physical attractiveness. I find it extremely intruiging, truly. However, since we're dealing with students and teachers and due to the society we live in, it isn't appropriate to have as the headline (although it's extremely catchy). So many students suffer from insecurity (why do you think the beauty industry is the gargantuan size it is?). So while they may see this email and think it's a scientific lesson, some if not many, will suffer becuase they have low self esteem. It's unfortunate but true. I have felt this way and I know my younger sister feels this way- deep down inside. I'm glad she doesn't recieve these emails and that we are working on self-love and appreciation.
I've come to discover as a young person that true attractiveness (get ready for a cliche comment) comes from the heart of a person (no way-mind blown right? ;) . Their mind, their morals, their personality, their goodness or lack thereof are all the things that ultimately attract people or repel them from you, no matter how your physical appearance.
I know this video is only about physical attractiveness and is not about finding your mate :P but if we don't highlight the lesson of true beauty with physical attractiveness, students who are the main target audience of this site will fall victim to the already superficial idea of beauty pounded in their head.
Now, the solution is to not shy away from the idea of physical beauty (it is a very real thing, I mean we all have eyes come on) but to further promote true attractiveness and real beaty. Sure, mention what physical beauty BUT further emphasize to a greater extent the far more important issue- the beauty and attractiveness of the heart.
Anyway enough of this preachy rant. Just saying, I truly appreciate Khan Academy and all you do. You helped me with AP Statistics and I am very grateful.(9 votes) - How do we know that the man is associating his increased heart rate, etc., with being attracted to the woman in the photo, instead of it being, "I almost died. I need to carry on my genes!"?(8 votes)
- I am pretty sure that-' i need to carry on my genes'- is one of the reasons he is attracted to her, as is the reason we are attracted to anyone. What is stated in the video is that the feeling of attraction ( related to gene continuation) feels alike the feeling of 'being on the edge' and therefore when his heart rate is up he subconsciously (coincidentally) undergoes feelings of attraction to the woman. Hope this helps, feel free to correct me :)(2 votes)
- don't apply this to yourself, your all beautiful in one way or another.(8 votes)
- Maybe this is true for most people, but I personally didn't find any of them attractive(7 votes)
- I was sort of thinking the same thing, but I think it's hard to imagine the faces attached to real bodies. If they would have attached a body to the faces and given it a background, it might have appeared more realistic.(2 votes)
- Facial averageness seems to be an obvious statistically unsurprising result. Consider the classic bell curve, if we're aggregating the opinion of society as a whole, then we're likely to find that 'average' is favorable by derivative. Because it is, by nature, the average.... A more interesting correlation would be to include more variables and allow multivariate analysis to cluster opinion based upon both the person giving the opinion and the opinion being given.(5 votes)
- The last part on the bridge sounds a lot like the James–Lange theory of emotion(4 votes)
- I love the average theory. It tells me why Korean kpop idols look all the same :p(3 votes)
- Seems this video would be more useful if it include the temporary nature of attraction, both culturally and personally. Our own culture has gone from finding plump and fair-skinned women attractive to skinny tan-skinned, from caked on make-up to the natural look, from no hips to big, round hips. I definitely think that the "low waist to hips ratio" comment is out of date these days. Even back in "Pretty Woman", Julia Roberts had a body-double in the opening scene to give her character more curves!(2 votes)
Video transcript
- [Voiceover] When trying to
figure out what attracts us to other people, an obvious thing to think about is physical attraction. But what is it? What do we mean when we say that someone is physically attractive? And relatedly, are the same
things attractive to all people? Well, it turns out that there are cultural and historical differences in terms of what is found to be attractive. There are some things
that are considered to be universally attractive. Things like youthfulness and skin clarity, and skin smoothness,
and also body symmetry are considered to be attractive across ethnic and racial backgrounds. But there are also a number of traits that are considered to
be universally attractive for just men or for just women. For women, things like full breasts and a low waist-hip ratio
are always considered to be attractive. For men, having a muscular
chest and a v-shaped torso, so having really broad
shoulders and a narrow waist, is also considered to be attractive. One really interesting
thing that we've learned from attractiveness
research though is that facial attraction is more
important than body attraction. And when we look at male and female faces, we can also see a number of
universally attractive traits. For women, things like a high forehead, small chin and nose, high cheekbones, and full lips are
considered to be attractive. For men, prominent
facial features are found to be the most attractive. So things like having a strong
chin and jaw and cheekbones, but also having a long lower face. And it turns out that women
are typically attracted to men with these strong
masculine characteristics. And men are typically attracted to women with strong female characteristics. Another way to say this would be that both males and females
tend to be attracted to high levels of sexual dimorphism, or the degree of difference between male and female and anatomical traits. Another thing that is thought to be universally
attractive is averageness. And for me, this kind of goes against the assumption that I
had that unique traits would be considered to
be the most attractive. But it turns out that that's incorrect, and I think that is
beautifully illustrated in these figures that were
created by Judy Langlois. And one thing that she
studies is attractiveness as it relates to averageness. And the way that she
does this is by studying what she refers to as "face morphs." So what you're seeing
here in this top figure are pictures of Caucasian female faces that have been digitized
and then averaged. So in this figure two separate
Caucasian female faces have been overlayed and their
features morphed together. This one includes 4 Faces, 8 Faces, 16 Faces and 32 Faces. And I want you to take a moment yourself to look at these five images and to pick out which one you consider to be most attractive. It turns out that most respondents
pick the 32 Face Average as being the most attractive in the set. And this seems to imply that
the closer someone's face is to the average face, the more attractive we
would perceive them to be. And at this point, you might be thinking, "No, I don't think that that's true "because what the average face looks like "is completely dependent on
which faces you average." And in response to that,
I have this bottom figure. And what you're seeing here
is the result of the same face morphing technology that
we saw in the top figure. In this case, 32 faces have been averaged to create one single image. But the 32 faces that
were averaged in this face are completely different than the 32 faces that went into this face. So each of these fives
faces include the faces of 32 individual women with no overlap. And one thing that you
might notice right away is that they are all incredibly similar. And if you stare at them for a little bit, if you really concentrate on them, the differences between
them will start popping out. But overall, these faces are incredibly similar to each other. And so when we say that
the closer a woman's face is to the average or prototypical face, the more attractive they are, there does actually seem to
be a fairly stable prototype that we're comparing these faces to. But even while things
like facial averageness and facial symmetry are considered to be universally attractive, what we consider to be attractive can also be influenced by the weirdest things. In one study on attractiveness, researchers took a photo of a woman and either gave that
photo a white background or a red background. Researchers would then show an individual simply one of these photos, and then ask them to rate how attractive they thought they were. And once again, take a moment to think about this yourself. Cover up one of the photos
with your hands and rate it, and then cover up the
other one and rate it. And obviously, you already
know that there might be a difference here
because I'm presenting it to you in this video. But just sort of take a
moment to look at it yourself and see if your judgements
of this woman are the same. Because oddly enough, the
woman on the red background was deemed to be more attractive
and more sexually desirable than the woman on the white background, despite the fact that it was the same woman on both photographs. We also know that
attractiveness can be mediated by unrelated physiological arousal. And what do I mean by that? Well, imagine a study in
which a researcher shows an individual a picture and asks them to rate
the woman in the picture. And maybe they rate them, I don't know, a seven out of ten. And then they approach another person and ask them the same question. But this person, instead of having just walked down the street, has actually just walked across a long and very narrow bridge. And remember this new individual
is being shown the exact same photograph that the
other individual was shown. How attractive do you think
he will think this woman is? Do you think it's going to be the same as the person walking down the street? Do you think it's going
to be less attractive or do you think it's going
to be more attractive? Well, it turns out that the individuals who just walked across the narrow bridge rated that individual to be significantly more attractive than the people who are just walking down the street. And why do you think that is? Well, it turns out that walking across a narrow bridge over a high height increases sympathetic arousal. And you may have felt this yourself if you've ever stood on a high height and looked over the edge. And your heart starts to beat fast, and your hands start to sweat, which, as it turns out,
is exactly the same thing as what happens when
you're in the presence of someone who you're really attracted to. So our guy, he steps off the bridge, his heart is beating fast, and then he's shown this picture
of this attractive woman. And on some unconscious level, he winds up misattributing
that fast heartbeat to the attractive woman. Because, as it turns out,
we can be really terrible at identifying the source
of physiological arousal. And so, because his heart is beating fast while looking at this picture of a woman, our individual's brain has
taken that physiological and visual feedback, and
matched them together. Which leaves our individual
to come to the conclusion that this woman is incredibly attractive. And that's why if you want someone to feel attracted to you, it might be a good idea to take them on a date to an amusement park.