Researchers at the University of British Columbia have found that we pay closer attention to people we find attractive, and we more accurately identify their personality traits—for example, whether they're shy or outgoing, organized or easygoing—during a short encounter.
He said people are motivated to pay closer attention to beautiful people for many reasons, including curiosity, romantic interest or a desire for friendship or social status. "Not only do we judge books by their covers, we read the ones with beautiful covers much closer than others."
Overall, attractive faces increased participants' tendency to perceive eye contact, consistent with a self-referential positivity bias.
After more than 30 years of study, these researchers concluded that humans are hardwired to favor more attractive people in the business. Attractive individuals also tend to be more talented, kinder, more trustworthy, and more intelligent than others according to bias.
Being “good-looking really does pay off,” as “decades of research have shown that attractive individuals are more likely to get ahead in their careers.” There is also a related feature; attractive people know that they possess good looks, and capture the attention of people.
Experiments have shown that we consider attractive people "as more sociable, dominant, sexually warm, mentally healthy, intelligent, and socially skilled" than unattractive people. By the time cute kids become attractive adults, they've benefited from this bias for years, giving them higher levels of confidence.
Physical attractiveness does create a powerful first impression on the mind, so powerful in fact that we may go much beyond looks and simply start generating assumptions about a person's success, status, parenting, and intelligence, even if they prove not to be true.
According to science, people who are perceived as attractive are more likely to get hired for jobs and seem trustworthy. They are also thought to be healthier and lead a happier life.
One reason that we like attractive people is because they are rewarding. We like being around attractive people because they are enjoyable to look at and because being with them makes us feel good about ourselves. Attractiveness can imply high status, and we naturally like being around people who have it.
Level 5: The Gaze
The Gaze is the last level that can occur unconsciously although it's usually conscious. This is when someone looks at you and just keeps looking at you past the normal “look away” moment. This is a solid 2-3 seconds of eye contact without them breaking it.
Intense eye contact that indicates attraction is called gazing. When someone gazes at you, they maintain longer than usual eye contact. This usually means several seconds of them looking at you. They want you to notice that they are looking!
The appropriate duration of eye contact varies from situation to situation, and culture to culture. Longer eye contact (e.g., 3–7 seconds) can signal interest or attraction, but it can imply aggression if someone's gaze is held for too long (e.g., 10 seconds or more).
“When you see an attractive person, the left ventral tegmental area of the brain becomes active and will pump out dopamine,” says Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist who studies attraction at the Kinsey Institute.
We tend to think of our looks as separate from who we are. But it turns out that physical traits like height or attractiveness may shape our personalities, behaviours, even politics.
So, if you want to know if you are truly attractive, take a close look at both your physical appearance and your personality traits. Chances are that if you are confident and kind and use positive body language, like maintaining good eye contact and posture, others will find attractive qualities in you.
Good-looking people are generally happier than their plain looking or unattractive counterparts, largely because of the higher salaries, other economic benefits and more successful spouses that come with beauty, according to new research from economists at The University of Texas at Austin.
Researchers have consistently found a correlation between confidence and success. Confident people are perceived as being more attractive, they're better at sales and do well in the front of the room.
This is sometimes called the halo effect. Attractive people are generally assumed to be more intelligent, more trustworthy, and have better social skills. We find them more interesting and pay more attention to attractive people, so we tend to get a better sense of who they are as individuals.
Studies indicate that intelligence is consistently ranked by both men and women as most valued characteristics (second only to kindness) in a prospective mate.
Good-looking people are also less likely to be judged as guilty in legal and courtroom settings, not to mention the obvious advantages they possess in the relationship and dating departments. Even in childhood, kids who are cuter are often treated more favorably.
“Throughout the world, attractive people show greater acquisition of resources and greater reproductive success than others,” says one study. In another study, from 2009, 284 subjects rated photographs of people according to how likable, attractive, and trustworthy they perceived the people in the photographs to be.
The common misconception is that attractive people have higher levels of self-esteem, but this is not the case. In fact, time and time again, it has been shown that there is not a direct correlation between attractiveness levels and self-esteem. This is because self-esteem is not skin-deep.
So according to these studies, being good-looking may make a person a more desirable partner, at least at the outset of relationships — but it's certainly no predictor of whether a relationship will be happy or long lasting.