Science rewrites the rules of attraction
By Raj Persaud
Psychologists have long demonstrated that we tend to perceive physically attractive
people as not just easy on the eye but more intelligent and competent as well. That
this perception might not be strictly rational could be concluded from the finding
that the beautiful are seen as better than the rest of us in such apparently
unrelated tasks as piloting an aircraft.
This tendency to see the attractive as bearing a host of other desirable qualities also explains why an attractive defendant is likely to be given a more lenient sentence or even be let off by a jury. The effect
is profound - both genders see physically attractive men and women as more
intelligent and good.
Even very young children perceive better-looking teachers as more intelligent. As
it is unlikely that children are prejudiced by personal biases arising from their own feelings of
attraction or of falling in love, it would appear that something profound is at
work.
The evolutionary psychologists Satoshi Kanazawa from the London School of Economics
and Jody Kovar of the University of Pennsylvania in the US have published research
that argues that the beautiful really are more intelligent.
Their paper, actually entitled: "Why beautiful people are more intelligent", rests
on genetic and evolutionary principles. Women prefer more intelligent men, as has
been repeatedly confirmed by research. Most men place physical attractiveness as
their highest valued feature in women. So it follows that if there are genes
for attractiveness and intelligence, over time these will tend to cluster in the
products of liaisons between the good-looking and the intelligent.
A less palatable conclusion is that in a competitive market the less intelligent
and less physically attractive are left to mate with each other.
Before the appalled turn the page in disgust at such a politically incorrect
theory, it might be useful to consider the science here. Kanazawa and Kovar point
out that physical attractiveness is not as superficial as is commonly held, and is
definitely not merely in the eye of the beholder. Infants as young as two months
gaze longer at a face that adults judge to be more attractive.
Twelve-month-olds also play significantly longer with facially attractive dolls.
Because two to 12 months is not enough time for infants to have learnt the cultural
values of beauty through socialisation, this suggests standards might be innate.
Cross-culturally, there is considerable agreement in the judgment of beauty among a
host of racial and national groups, including those as widely separated as the Ache
of Paraguay and the Chinese. In none of this research does the degree of exposure
to western media have any influence on people's perception of beauty. This
consensus appears to exist because it is possible to derive a mathematical formula
that predicts how attractive a face or body is according to key proportions. The
essential point is that attractiveness seems to be rooted in symmetry.
Attractive faces are more symmetrical than unattractive ones. The symmetry of your
body and face also appears to be associated with how genetically fit you are and
how many developmental setbacks you suffered in the womb and while growing up.
Resistance to parasites and other pathogens has been shown to be related to how
symmetrical bodies are.
Beauty is now seen by evolutionary biologists as a kind of "health certification"
guaranteeing that if you mate with such a person you are mingling your genes with
higher-quality genetic material.
How symmetrical a face is can now be measured from a scanned photograph, with a
computer program measuring the sizes of, and distances between, various facial
parts.
Such programs assign a single score for physical attractiveness, which correlates
highly with scores of prettiness assigned by human judges. Beauty therefore appears
to be an objective and quantitative attribute of individuals a bit like height and
weight.
Daniel Hamermesh and Jeff Biddle, economists at the University of Texas and
Michigan State University, published a study in the American Economic Review in the
1990s entitled "Beauty and the Labour Market", which found that relative to average-
looking women, below-average-looking women are married to men with significantly less education.
Kanazawa and Kovar cite five previous studies that have found an association
between physical attractiveness and intelligence, including a recent comprehensive
meta-analysis (a pooling of all the data from a variety of studies). The authors of
the meta-analysis are so convinced that physical attractiveness is a strong sign of
superior intelligence that they dismiss the maxim "beauty is skin deep" as a myth.
But as the concept of intelligence is deeply controversial, evolutionary theorists
have looked for a real world measure of success that should correlate with IQ.
Irene Frieze led a team of researchers at the University of Pittsburgh who, in
their study of MBA graduates, found that more physically attractive men have
significantly higher starting salaries and their advantage increases over time.
For women, attractiveness has no effect on starting salaries but better-looking
women earn significantly more later in their careers. In their sample, men earn
$2,600 more on average for each unit of attractiveness (on a five-point scale), and
women earn $2,150 more.
Kanazawa and Kovar caution against the mistake of using attractiveness as a measure
of intelligence and vice versa. They point out their finding is only of an
association that, while statistically significant, is an imperfect one.
Certainly you should never choose the pilot of your aircraft merely on their looks.
* * *
Dr Raj Persaud is Gresham Professor for Public understanding of Psychiatry and
author of "The Motivated Mind" (Bantam, £12.99)
