In this episode, we look a little deeper into one of our more elusive video topics, namely why it is that male facial and behavioural dominance and masculinity can be predicted from the length of the second and fourth digits (the first finger and ring finger). Why is this? Is it reasonable to assume behavioural traits from the masculinity of one's face or the length of their fingers?
- Neave, Nick, et al. "Second to fourth digit ratio, testosterone and perceived male dominance."&nbs...
2022-02-20 21:20:00 +0000 UTC
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In this episode, we discuss the evolution of various female bodily characteristics, including waist-to-hip ratio, breast size; the 'hourglass figure' and buttock fat, and discuss why preferences for all are not as universal as one might think. Following on from last week's episode, we then go onto discuss the curious reason why female standards for slimness seem to be associated with female opportunities in the workplace.
- Silverstein, Brett, et al. "Possible causes of the thin sta...
2022-02-10 12:16:49 +0000 UTC
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In this episode, we talk about why men prefer hairless women and what it suggests about the evolution of sexual dimorphism in humans. We then discuss why women prefer hairy men. However, strangely, it seems to vary hugely according to culture and country. We discuss why.
- Dixson, Barnaby JW, Markus J. Rantala, and Robert C. Brooks. "Cross-cultural variation in women’s preferences for men’s body hair." Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology 5.2 (2019): 131-1...
2022-01-29 00:56:47 +0000 UTC
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A recent study by Hies and Lewis (2021) has shown that wearing a mask increases perceived physical attractiveness. This stands in contrast to a 2016 study which showed the opposite. Why has this happened? What effect has the pandemic had on our psychology, and why has it had this effect? Using evidence from social evolutionary psychology, we look at three possible explanations
- Hies, Oliver, and Michael B. Lewis. "Beyond the beauty of occlusion: medical masks increase facial ...
2022-01-19 22:20:44 +0000 UTC
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In this episode, we talk about the evolutionary reasons why the most attractive couples have a 26% higher chance of giving birth to a daughter than the average couple. We discuss whether their attractiveness might be playing a role, or whether it might be caused by other mediating factors such as brain type, body size and language ability. Whether attractiveness does explain the phenomena has strong implications for what we know about the relative importance of physical attractiveness for men...
2022-01-06 01:46:44 +0000 UTC
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Guest host, Simon Groome, talks about the relative effects and severity of ageing in men as compared with women. With reference to Bovet's paper, this leads us to talk about whether female attractiveness can act as a cue for residual reproductive value (RRV) or future childbearing potential. Finally, speculating on why a growing number of young men actively prefer older women. The life history trade-off theory suggests that organisms that invest more heavily in their own personal growth over ...
2021-12-12 00:59:00 +0000 UTC
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Men and women value attractiveness differently with contemporary research showing a asymmetric distribution of the halo effect and the benefits it provides to one's desirability. The Halo effect has been popularized as a positive attribution given to strangers, where we expect better looking individuals to have more positive personality traits, regardless of it being true or not.
Daniel Bar-Tal and Saxe's paper notes an asymmetrical and unidimensional boost to personality char...
2021-11-27 04:52:56 +0000 UTC
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For decades, the consensus on male facial robusticity has been that it evolved due to the dietary needs of our early hominin ancestors (see a picture below of what we believe the Australopithicus Afarensis looked like). The discussed paper by David Carrier disputes this, however. We discuss the reasons for this, and the implications it has for why male beauty standards (in particular; leanness and angularity) exist.
- Carrier, David R., and Michael H. Morgan. "Protective Buttressing...
2021-11-06 06:05:08 +0000 UTC
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In this episode, I interview JCTheCatalyst, known on Tiktok (170K) for his facial aesthetics videos and we discuss some of the lesser known things people can do to improve the way they look, as well as the dynamics of how tiktok and youtube are different in the facial aesthetics niche.
2021-10-31 04:31:31 +0000 UTC
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Is there such thing as being too attractive? Apparently so, as we look at a thesis by Mehng on a unique case of Debrahlee Lorenzana who was fired for distracting workers by being 'too attractive.' However, the details of the case aren't as simple as they seem, and if Debrahlee was both attractive but also narcissistic in her personality, then that would make her seem extremely unlikeable, leading us to a theory where being attractive but having a poor personality, has more of a 'double effect...
2021-10-22 03:23:49 +0000 UTC
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This week, we look at the opposite of Ep.12 which suggests that averageing faces results in more attractive looking composites. Much of the benefits of averaged faces are that they have unusually higher rates of symmetry and perfectly clear skin (as a byproduct of the compositing process). However, as other researchers have found, averageness in your facial appeal only gets you so far, and to be truly unique and striking, your face needs features that deviate away from the average and into th...
2021-10-09 09:33:56 +0000 UTC
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When it comes to assessing facial attractiveness, 'Facial Attractiveness: Evolutionary Based Research ' by AC Little has proposed three tenants: Symmetry, Dimorphism and Averageness; it is the last point that is seldom discussed and even less understood.
An averaged face is one produced as a composite of many other faces. If we were to get many faces, all of a similar ethnic or racial group and overlay their faces together, then the Averageness Hypothesis suggests that the produced face...
2021-09-30 09:49:44 +0000 UTC
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Being unattractive is a disadvantage in many social interactions if you do the wrong thing or act out of line. These unusual behaviours are called 'norm violations' and as it turns out, there is a double devil-effect at play when physically unattractive people behave in an unattractive way. The devil effect is the opposite of the more commonly known halo effect where negative cognitive biases are placed on a person based on their physical characteristics. As such, we expect an unattractive pe...
2021-09-20 11:00:04 +0000 UTC
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It's undeniable that intelligence is attractive, but the question still remains whether it is attractive enough to outweigh physical beauty. In this episode, we take a deep dive into the importance of physical attractiveness and what role it plays against other commonly praised traits such as intelligence and more importantly, how this affects men and women asymmetrically.
- Egebark, J., Ekström, M., Plug, E., & van Praag, M. (2021). Brains or beauty? Causal evidence on the...
2021-09-10 10:01:10 +0000 UTC
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Body proportions matter a surprising amount in the context of dating but much of it is only able to be understood in a realistic field study. In today's episode, we go over a unique speed-dating study with a large sample size to confirm that physical features such as shoulder-width ratio and waist-hip ratio matter in making someone appear more physically attractive and how this relates to appearances of social dominance contrasting with femininity (i.e. sexual dimorphism).
- Sidari,...
2021-08-31 10:33:36 +0000 UTC
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"Attraction cannot be negotiated"
You may have heard of the phrase that attraction cannot be negotiated and in this episode it couldn't be truer. As we explore through the research of White Et al, unattractive participants in the dating market pay a heft 'unattractive tax' where undesirable characteristics (dealbreakers vs dealmakers) are disproportionately weighted against less attractive daters.
Also, in the absence of physical a...
2021-08-24 10:49:25 +0000 UTC
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Tattoos have gone from a social taboo to the upper echelons of high fashion with Jean Paul Gaultier experimenting with tattoo designs in much of his work in the early 90s. In this episode we discuss the social perception of tattoos and the following research suggesting that tattoos have a sensitive cost-benefit ratio of providing some masculine edginess (for both men and women) which correlates to increased desirability but comes at a hit in terms of long term mate characteristics such as sta...
2021-08-15 09:58:38 +0000 UTC
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In this episode we go over a relatively new concept called 'the fear of being single' (FOBS) which suggests that individuals with higher amounts of this trait, i.e. afraid of being single, anxiety, loneliness, are less selective with their partner choices and willing to go on many more dates to find a partner, regardless of who it is. This specific paper looks at if this FOBS trait is linked to physical attractiveness such that less attractive individuals have higher FOBS and thus are much le...
2021-08-05 02:15:52 +0000 UTC
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In this episode, we start at the Tokyo Olympics and end at a deep dive into why fringe internet communities such as 'incels' and 'femcels' are dissatisfied with their looks and dating by considering Leonhard Et al's paper on dating preferences based on one's own looks. This falls into the category of Festinger's dissonance theory, where couples in such one member is significantly dating down in physical attractiveness undergoes cognitive dissonance in an attempt to justify their reaso...
2021-07-25 13:17:51 +0000 UTC
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In this episode we cover the negative sterotyping of unattractive individuals. You may have heard of the 'halo effect' where attractive individuals have positive attributes and traits granted to them simply by virtue of being physically attractive. As it turns out from Klebl Et al's paper, there is evidence to suggest a similar but opposite effect happens to the unattractive parties.
Unattractive individuals are seen to be more morally 'impure' by the general public, i.e. more wil...
2021-07-02 11:09:47 +0000 UTC
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In this episode we look at a paper by Groyecka Et al 2017 on how attractiveness is somewhat determined by non-physical cues of voice and smell among other factors such as personality, status and wealth. One of the key findings is just how important smell is, from being able to differentiate between men and women to being able to smell actual personality dominance from different scents. It's not surprise then that many masculine perfumes try to mimic this smell of dominance while feminin...
2021-06-10 08:54:53 +0000 UTC
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In this episode we dissect Cunningham et al's 1990 paper on female facial preferences in men and why more 'babyish' (neotenous) features are actually preferred over hyper-masculine ones. This podcast takes a deep dive into facial aesthetics research, providing additional context, commentary and findings while simplifying the research into a more generalized application of beauty research for a contemporary audience.
In the audio, male model Dan Brown is mentioned for his neotenous look...
2021-05-20 08:17:08 +0000 UTC
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Quite often, we see far too many people who become hyper fixated on one particular facial feature that leads to their insecurities. For many, it is often the lips or the nose which leads to a downhill spiral of elective cosmetic surgeries as an avenue of a fix rather than seeking psychological help to treat the underlying body dysphoria. In this episode, we discuss the potential pitfalls of too much elective surgery and why this is often a result of a lack of understanding of facial harmony, ...
2021-05-04 09:38:57 +0000 UTC
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