Category: Psychology of Dating and Relationships

  • How to dance according to science (includes videos!)

    The theory of sexual selection proposes that certain traits evolved due to the preference of the other gender. These preferences may evolve because the trait is an indicator or genetic fitness, for example through being related to better health. Random genetic mutations that lead an individual to better display this trait are make that person “sexier” to the other sex, and hence the gene is more likely to make it into the next generation.


    T1000 Getting jiggy with it. John Connor, get down!!

    Many such traits are physical characteristics, as we’ve discussed before, but research on numerous species suggests that certain variations in movement patters can also be “sexy,” particularly when displayed by males and preferred by females, as seen in some birds, ungulates and crustaceans, for instance.

    We humans seems to use this fitness indicator too — married couples dance together by tradition, strippers dance instead of just standing there taking their clothes off, and I’ve never heard someone say that they don’t want a partner whose a good dancer! So maybe dance serves to indicate beneficial traits in humans too? A study from 2010 tested this idea.

    Confounds

    A problem with testing this scientifically are certain confounds that tend to go along with good dancers. For example, if you got a load of people to dance in front of participants, then asked them to rate the dancers’ attractiveness, things like facial attractiveness, clothing or height might get in the way.

    To isolate the effect of dancing alone, the researchers had males dance for 30 seconds using a motion-capture system. The movements were then mapped onto an avatar, a faceless humanoid shape that kind of looks like the T1000 from terminator two when it’s in the liquid metal mode. Females then rated the avatars on their dancing quality.

    The best dancer

    The results indicated that the following are preferable to females in a male dancer:

    • Variability and amplitude of movements in the head, neck and trunk
    • Faster leg movements
    • Move and quicker right knee bending and twisting

    Here’s the good dancer:

    I know, it looks ridiculous to me too. Here’s the bad dancer:

    These are really only preliminary results, and more tests need to be done to test this type of movement. Then it’s necessary to figure out if and how these particular movements could be signals of fitness and health. But in the mean time, now you know what to do on the dance floor!

    And here’s (kind of) an attempt by a YouTuber to reenact the good dancer. He seems to have thrown a few of his own moves in, making it only slighty cheesier…

  • Is marriage unnatural?? – the hypothesis

    I recently read the idea that marriage is an unnatural and unfulfilling strategy for most people. On further reflection and reading, I thought, why stop at marriage? and included monogamy generally.

    I thought about this for a while and came up with a phrasing for a hypothesis:

    “Marriage/monogamy goes against our nature, and unless it is enforced externally, will end in failure except in the odd occasional case.”

    Which group are you in? (Credit: GEEKSTATS)

    Now first, let me define the terms:

    • Marriage/lifelong monogamy – When I use these terms I’m talking about life long/long term commitment to a single partner. So if one partner cheats, then by my definition, that’s not monogamy (see failure, below). I’m not sure how serial or short-term monogamy fits in, that might be a kind of exception. But certainly, this idea of “The one”, “true love” and all that, is what I’m referring to here, the very kind we’re brainwashed with in movies and songs all year round. And don’t think the old “There are lots of ‘ones‘” argument counts, because even if you accept that there are many compatible people out there, that line still implies lifelong commitment to one of them.
    • Unnatural – Unnatural, against our nature; these are slippery terms, and it’s not necessarily safe to talk about human nature outside of a cultural context. For instance, it’s in our nature to gorge on fat and sugar when it’s available. For a tribal culture in the Savannah, this is excellent; it helps you get those crucial calories. But in a society with easy access to junk food, people get fat. Likewise, what I’m proposing is that it’s in our nature to seek multiple sexual and/or romantic partners, and that this causes problems in a society that puts monogamy and “true love” on a pedestal.
    • Enforced externally – Through law, superstition, social stigma, or other forces.
    • Failure – As you know, mono means one. With poly we have two terms – polygamous (multiple marriages), and polyamory (multiple partners, no marriage). If someone in a marriage cheats, that’s polyamory, and a point in favour of the hypothesis. Divorces generally are a point in favour, but that’s a pretty deep topic for just now. Also, I say marriages may work if enforced, but if an enforced marriage is not a fulfilling one for both parties, I’m also classing that as failure, because if it wasn’t enforced it probably would end (and if enforced marriages are unsatisfying, that’s a point in favour of the unnatural argument above).

    Answers to some expected questions you might have:

    Mongamy, polygamy, marriage, blah blab blah. Aren’t you just splitting hairs/arguing over semantics?

    No. I’ll explain why later.

    My parents/grandparents/friends/pet albatrosses have been in a committed relationship for all their lives monogamously and harmoniously. Ha! Take that mister! You’re wrong!

    Firstly, if you know of someone who has been in a committed, loving, lifelong, monogamous relationship (that is, no affair by either party), GREAT. I’m NOT saying it never happens, nor am I saying it’s not a beautiful thing when it does happen. I’m just saying, these cases are outliers, and the cases where there wasn’t some external enforcement of the relationship are rarer still.

    Secondly, I could be wrong, which is why I’m going to look into it and write about it on the blog as I do.

    Finally, I’m NOT saying marriages that aren’t monogamous can’t work, nor that a marriage in which one partner cheats is unsuccessful by definition. Quite the opposite in fact, as you’ll see…

    You asshole. You have threatened my belief system and I am deeply offended. What gives you the right to question the status quo like this?

    If you’re offended or upset by what you’re read so far, I strongly suggest you don’t read this blog from now on; I might turn out to be right!

    I have data/opinions/a story in support of/refuting this hypothesis, would you like me to share it with you?

    Yes please, either email me or leave a comment.

  • Sex and Death

    Sex and death; these aren’t topics that tend to appear in the same article, I grant you. But you’ll be pleased to know it’s not actual death we’re concerned with here; but it is actual sex, which I presume you’ll also be pleased to know.

    Mortality salience means the extent to which you are aware that life is finite and someday you will die. Obviously this is a fluid concept, and it can be increased just by bringing up the topic, such as I have just done – your mortality salience has now increased. You’re welcome.

    Mortality salience has an interesting effect on people. When reminded of death, people tend to deepen their identification with cultural symbols, as though they are trying to latch on to things that are more permanent than they are. It’s called Terror Management Theory, and some interesting results have come up; when reminded of death, people are less likely to deface flags and crosses, and people in capitalistic societies become more materialistic. But what’s the relationship between sex and death?


    Credit: Micky the pixel

    Well clearly it would depend on the relevance and meaning that sex (and death, presumably) holds for people. Tests of this would be expected to come out differently in different cultures and for different people.

    In one test, researchers reminded participants of their mortality, and then asked them if they would – hypothetically – be likely to have a casual fling with someone. The men said they would, the women said they wouldn’t, on average. Then a second test was done, with different people. This time, the participants were asked if they would want sex following a romantic date, and both genders were up for it.

    That ties in pretty nicely with the socially accepted sexual behaviours of the genders (the double standard whereby being promiscuous is acceptable in men, but shamed in women), and also evolutionary ideas of the different mating strategies for men and women.

    But there is a big criticism here, which I’ll be returning to again and again with the research on dating, sex, relationships and attraction in psychology – the test was not a real situation! Scientifically speaking, the study says nothing about what people would actually do, only what they say they would do. This limitation has particularly strong ramifications in this particular design.

    Think about this for a moment. Terror management theory predicts that people will fall into their cultural roles when people are reminded of their own mortality. So how do we know that, for example, women are not falling into the cultural role of not talking about having one nights stands, especially with someone who is stood there with a clipboard, recording it for all eternity? The very theory being tested seems to deepen the response biases of the participants, particularly the women.

    So is there a link between sex and death salience? Although these results are consistent with that, I think it’s premature that start using “You’re going to die!” as your new chat up line!

    Ref:
    BIRNBAUM, G., HIRSCHBERGER, G., and GOLDENBERG, J. (2011). Desire in the face of death: Terror management, attachment, and sexual motivation.

  • Valentine’s day romance research round-up

    Happy Valentine’s day all! Here’s some romantic research for you:

    Sternberg’s triangular theory of love – A popular psychological theory on the different forms of love (and a big indication of how much work the word ‘love’ has to do!)
    A neuroscientific look at love – Love. Disney magic or neurochemical explosion? You decide…
    Is love blind? – Positive illusions in relationships
    Casual sex in college – Probably the opposite of love, but try telling them that…
    What is beauty? – The maiden in the love story is always ‘fair’. But what is beauty anyway?

  • Is love really blind? Positive illusions in relationships

    One of the more interesting of our (many) cognitive biases are positive illusions – a tendency to be view ourselves more positively than others, be optimistic about the future, and exaggerate our perceptions of control.  Positive illusions are typically self-enhancing, but if you’ve ever seen a madly in love couple, or been a part of one, you might have the idea that maybe we project positive illusions onto other people.  And it’s true.  People in romantic relationships really do drench their partners in a wave of idealised qualities, and downplay their more annoying aspects. (1)

    A number of studies have found that people tend to rate their partners attractiveness as greater than their own (2), but there was one study in particular which was particularly ingenious. (3)  Photos were taken of couples, which were manipulated in a computer to create an array of seven faces – the real photo, three that were more attractive, and three that were less attractive (see ‘What is beauty?‘ for more on standards of attractiveness).  Participants had to identify their partners real face from the fake ones.  Couples who were satisfied with their current relationship tended to pick a more attractive face, couples who were dissatisfied tended to pick a less attractive face!

    positive_illusions
    If you look at your partner and see this, that’s an example of a positive illusion. Or an LSD high. (Credit: NaiM eL NoVaTO)

    Why does this happen though?  We’ve already seen that love can have a very powerful effect on us, perhaps these illusions help us to justify staying with a partner, just like a junkie justifies “one more hit.”  That’s an unromantic way of saying that this may just be a normal, healthy way of keeping a relationship going.  And likewise, when a relationship is going badly, the illusions disappear which again could be a way of helping us to make the right relationship choices.

    So, our mind may be responding to the amount of satisfaction in the relationship by altering our perceptions slightly, as a safeguard towards helping us stay in beneficial relationships, and against wasting time in bad relationships (when we could be looking for someone new).  And it does seem to be an effective system – one study followed couples over a 13-year period, and found that positive illusions predicted greater satisfaction with the relationship in the early stages of dating and marriage.

    So is love blind?  Perhaps not blind, but certainly partially-sighted.  However, this is not a phenomenon that is unique to love.  Our perception of reality is far from objective, particularly social reality, and positive illusions in relationships are just another illustration of the idea that we are specialised organisms rather than rational beings.  Natural selection has ‘designed’ our minds to cut the corners of logic wherever this helps us to solve our problems of survival and reproduction in a more efficient or effective way.  Well, there’s either that explanation, or the ‘love-is-magic’ Disney explanation.  Take your pick.

    References:

    (1) Murray, S., Holmes, J., & Griffin, D. (1996). The benefits of positive illusions: Idealization and the construction of satisfaction in close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70(1), 79-98

    (2) Swami, V., Furnham, A., Georgiades, C., & Pang, L. (2007). Evaluating self and partner physical attractiveness. Body Image, 4, 97-101.

    (3) Penton-Voak, I.S., Rowe, A.C., & Williams, J. (2007). Through rose tinted glasses: Relationship satisfaction and representations of partners facial attractiveness.  Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, 5, 169-181.

  • Love on the brain

    Love is a topic that scientists have shied away from – perhaps in the same way as studying humour, they worry that they will take the magic out of it. But as Helen Fisher, one of the foremost researchers of love says, you can know all the ingredients of chocolate cake and it will still taste delicious.

    One of the more popular early theories was Sternberg’s triangular theory of love. This theory has immediate appeal because it points out three aspects of loving relationships that we can instantly recognise – intimacy, passion, and commitment. A relationship can have any two or all three of these, and in the theory, each combination has its own name (see this article for more on that).

    It’s a nice, tidy model. But one problem I first had with it, is that maybe it only has intuitive appeal because I recognise it in Hollywood movies, rather than in people. Is this love?

    It may be: Sternberg’s model matches up nicely with some work in neuroscience and animal behaviour. It seems that there are discrete but interrelated emotional systems common to most if not all mammals and birds, which solve the ‘problem’ of mating. These are lust, attraction, and attachment, and they correspond roughly to Sternberg’s passion, intimacy and commitment. Example behaviours are:

    • Lust / passion – craving for sexual gratification, associated with elevated levels of estrogens and androgens.
    • Attraction / intimacy – increased energy spent on the preferred mating partner, in humans this also includes ‘intrusive thinking’ about the love interest. Associated with increased dopamine and norepinephrine, and decreased serotonin.
    • Attachment / commitment – Characterised by mutual territory/resource defence, nest building, close proximity, separation anxiety. Associated with the neuropeptides oxytocin and vasopressin. (see references 1 and 2 for a review of this evidence)

    These are powerful chemicals, and the power of love should not be underestimated; in one study, evidence of romantic attraction was found in 147 of 166 societies (3). People elope together because of love, they sing songs because of love, and they kill themselves – and others – because of love. Clearly, it is more than a feeling. What is actually going in this attraction / intimacy part of Fisher/Sternberg’s models that has such a maddening effect on us?

    To find out, Helen Fisher stuck a bunch of madly-in-love people in fMRI scanners, while showing them pictures of their loved one. The results? It appears that romantic love is located primarily in the ventral tegmental area of the brain. This is part of the dopaminergic system, involved in reward, want, and craving. It’s the same area of the brain that fires up when addictive drugs are taken, particularly cocaine and the amphetamine derivatives. In other words, love is addictive – literally.

    But of course, every rose has its thorn, and love does not always end well. In another interesting study, Fisher and colleagues stuck people who had recently been dumped into an fMRI (4). Where is this experience located in the brain? The same place! But additionally, there was also activation in the nucleus accumbens, an area associated with judgements of gain and loss; the area that lights up when we’re willing to take great risks to achieve a high perceived gain – the same area involved in gambling. This is why we get people going to great lengths to get their love back – they are simultaneously focused on what they have lost and at the same time more likely to take high risks.

    So what is love? It is an addiction. It meets the criteria necessary for something to be classed as an addiction (tolerance, withdrawal, relapse). The implications of the above findings are massive – if love is associated with the above neuotransmitters, peptides and hormones, then our experience of love could be influence by anything that interferes with these chemicals – recreational drugs and anti-depressants in particular. In addition to this, the brain areas involved in love seem to suggest that, rather than being an emotion per ce, it is a goal-oriented state.

    old_couple_dancing
    (Credit: txd)

    But, at the risk of leaving on a low note, I’ll finish by mentioning a recent study by the same research team (5). So fond of sticking people into fMRI scanners, this time they scanned couples who had been married for 25+ years, and still report feeling in love with their partners. What was the brain activity in these couples? As Sternberg would predict, they showed greater activity in areas associated with long-term pair bonding in animals. But what about attraction / intimacy? Well, they found just the same activity as they did in the earlier experiments. Perhaps true love can last forever.

    PS. The titles of five love songs are hidden in this article. See if you can find them!

    Recommended Reading:

    References:

    (1) Fisher, H. (1998). Lust, attraction, and attachment in mammalian reproduction. Human Nature, 9(1), 23-52.

    (2) Fisher, H., Aron, A., Mashek, D., Li, H., & Brown, L. (2002). Defining the brain systems of lust, romantic attraction, and attachment. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 31(5), 413-419.

    (3) Jankowiak, W., & Fischer, E. (1998). A cross-cultural perspective on romantic love. Human emotions: A reader (pp. 55-62). Malden: Blackwell Publishing

    (4) Fisher,H, A Aron, G Strong, DJ Mashek, H Li, LL Brown. (2005). Motivation and emotion systems associated with romantic love following rejection: an fMRI study.

    (5) Aceveda, B., Aron, A., Fisher, H., Brown, L. L. (2008). Neural correlates of long-term pair-bonding in a sample of intensely in-love humans. Poster Session#297, Society for Neuroscience, annual meeting

  • Sternberg’s triangular theory of love

    Bob Sternberg is a pretty prolific guy in psychology. Among many other topics, he’s studied intelligence, thinking styles, leadership, and he currently holds 10 honorary doctorates. Below I present a quick overview of Sternberg’s triangular theory of love.

    In Sternberg’s theory, there are three main facets of love:

    • Passion – this includes sexual excitement, feelings of euphoria, infatuation, and physiological arousal generally.
    • Intimacy – includes closeness, feeling loved, shared disclosure, empathy, support and sharing.
    • Commitment –wanting to be with the other person, being loyal, long-term relationships.

    With passion, there is the initial infatuation, the strong emotions, and the attraction. With intimacy, the lovers become closer, inter-dependant, and psychologically their self-concepts begin to overlap. Commitment is the most volitional of the three, the decision to take steps to maintain the love and the relationship.

    There are actually eight types of relationships that the model loosely predicts. You can have none, any one, any two, or all three of the presented aspects in a relationship. I drew a diagram below to illustrate. I had visions of this being a glorious and beautiful feat of graphic designery, but it ended up looking like it had been thrown together in 20 minutes using Microsoft Word. Mainly because I did, in fact, throw it together in about 20 minutes using Microsoft Word:

    sternbergs_triangular_theory_of_love

    • No aspects = Nonlove
    • Intimacy + Passion = Romantic love
    • Intimacy + Commitment = Companionate love
    • Passion + Commitment = Fatuous love
    • Intimacy + Passion + Commitment = Consummate love

    So in romantic love you’ve got the passion, and the sharing and caring stuff, but the long-term commitment is not there. I can imagine this can be a frustrating situation. In companionate love, you’re in it for the long haul, and you’re each others’ best friend, but the lust isn’t there. Fatuous love sounds pretty good, if perhaps less stable; the heat is there, and so is the long-term commitment to make the relationship last, but you do without all the lovey-dovey-yucky-disney stuff. And consummate love is the crem-de-la-crem, the combination of all three aspects.

    It’s an interesting model. Do you recognise any of your current or past relationships in it? Or those of anyone you know? It is tempting to suggest that nowadays, younger people appear to be mistaking romantic love for one of the other combinations which involve commitment. Tomorrow we’ll look at love in more depth, but right now I have the strangest urge to listen to my “Best of Power Ballads” double album…

    Recommended Reading:


    Reference:

    Sternberg, R. J. (1986). A triangular theory of love. Psychological Review, 93, 119-135.

  • Casual sex in college

    No, before you get excited, that wasn’t an offer. Psychologists have chosen some fascinating topics for study. The evolutionary roots of personality. The nature of mental disorder. The antecedents of a fulfilling life. And now… “What happens when college students get horny!”

    Most ‘first-time’ experiences happen in the context of a romantic relationship, but there is a trend now, towards sex with a friend, or with strangers. And the earlier your first time is, the more likely you are to have casual partners in the future. So ‘casual sex’ can refer to hook-ups with a friend (some papers in the scientific literature really do refer to it as a ‘hook up’) or stranger, and can be of long or short duration (the relationship, presumably; not the act itself).

    This move towards more casual sex seems to be the general trend, rather than specific to a particular subculture. The reasons for this could be many – greater availability of contraception, alcohol, changing social norms. The explanation is unclear, but as a lot of experimentation happens at college, this seems to be a good place to look.

    Catherine Grello, Deborah Welsh, and Melinda Harper carried out a large survey, which asked people about their hook ups, alcohol use, previous sexual experiences, and also included a validated measure of depressive symptoms. (1) The results were pretty interesting. I present to you….

    The psychology of the hook-up

    cow_having_sex

    Sure I’ll call ya… (Storem)

    Gender

    Firstly, as the stereotype might predict, more males than females reported having engaged in casual sex. Maybe I’m missing something, but I can’t see how this adds up unless:

    • Females are viewing casual sex as something more
    • Males are viewing something more as casual
    • Males are hooking up more off-campus than females

    Also in line with stereotypes, females typically expected the hook up to be the beginning of a romance (18% female vs. 3% male), while more males expected the relationship continue on a casual basis (33% male vs. 16% female). Interestingly, females were more likely to view the sex as ‘experimentation’.

    First-time experiences

    As predicted, those who had earlier first-time sexual experiences were more likely to hook up. But more interesting is this: females who engaged in casual sex tended to describe their first sexual experience more negatively than either males or females who did not hook up.

    Alcohol and drugs

    Again fairly obvious, but alcohol and drug use were commonly involved in hooking up – 65% of those who reported casual sex were either drunk or high at the time. Beer goggles earning their money?

    Depression

    Males who had the lowest levels of depression, and females who reported the highest levels of depressive symptoms were the most likely to engage in casual sex. Added to this, the more depressive symptoms a female reported, the more casual sex partners she was likely to have. This did not hold true for sex with a romantic partner, which had no relationship to depression. Why are symptoms of depression higher among females who hook up more? The authors suggest a few possibilities:

    • They are seeking external validation from sex
    • They are maintaining a depressive cycle by unconsciously selecting partners with whom a healthy relationship is unlikely
    • The depression increases the desire for a healthy relationship, and they engage in casual sex to try to get into a romantic relationship

    And what about the less depressed males, why are they more likely to hook up? One possibility is simply that they are more attractive, as evolutionary theories predict that females perceive a self-confident man as having more resources.

    There were also more depressive symptoms in males and females in the people who regretted their hook ups.

    Infidelity

    Incredibly (or not?), 21% of those who hooked up were involved in a relationship with another person at the time! That’s one in five! Maybe they should try Urge Surfing whenever they feel the, umm, need. No gender was more likely to cheat than the other. When someone did cheat, they reported that the sex was less ‘affectionate’ than those who were not cheating.

    While people who cheated did tend to regret the experience, they did not have higher symptoms of depression.

    Although there are a number of limitations to the study such as whether the results are transferable to other colleges, and it was limited to heterosexual sex (due to not enough gay or bi participants), some of these results are very interesting, particularly the link between casual sex and depression. But maybe this is the wrong time of year to be talking about hook ups. Tomorrow we’ll look at love.

    Reference:

    (1) Grello, C. M., D. P. Welsh, and M. S. Harper. (2006). No strings attached: The nature of casual sex in college students. The Journal of Sex Research, 43(3): 255-267.

  • What is beauty?

    Is beauty just a cultural thing, based on whatever the common consensus is at any particular time?  Or is there a ‘true beauty’, that we find in all cultures and times?  Actually it’s a little of both. Do you want to know which aspects of ‘beauty’ are arbitrary, and which seem to be biological? Or whether stick thin models are truly beautiful, or just an artificial fad? Then keep reading!

    A strange event got my mind onto this topic. I was in Primark, a discount clothes store here in Leeds.  An interesting peculiarity about this store is that its layout makes it impossible to get to the men’s section without walking through the women’s underwear section.  Having no other option, I made my way through this mysterious section of the store.

    As I slowly walked towards my destination, I saw someone from the corner of my eye who caught my attention, and my head instinctively moved to her.  And there she was, in all her glory.

    An industry-standard ‘female’ mannequin.

    I’d just walked through a women’s underwear section, which, being a busy Saturday afternoon, was filled not only with lots of women’s underwear, but also lots of women, and a mannequin is what catches my eye.

    Maybe that’s an interesting peculiarity about me?

    No… don’t open that door…

    Female Mannequins
    Sexy?

    Why did the mannequin catch my eye?  The mannequin’s job is display the clothes in the best possible light. It’s a hard job to get into – the hours are long and employers will only hire you if you’re the epitome of attractiveness; because the same item of clothing worn by two people will generally look better on the more attractive one.

    ‘Male’ mannequins don’t have sunken chests and pot bellies, do they? The idea is to make you think you’ll look like that, if you’d only purchase the item of clothing.

    Fair enough.  But, why do they look like they do?  Why am I supposed to find this particular shape and size woman attractive? I looked into it, but stuck to female beauty, because (a) it’s a more interesting topic (don’t ask how long I spent “researching” pictures), and (b) it has more relevance to issues like body image concerns, the effect of the media, and so on.

    Eye of the Beholder

    We can start to answer this question by looking at what different cultures and times have held to be beautiful.  If there is wide variety, we can say beauty is mostly cultural.  If there’s wide agreement, we can say it’s biological.

    The classic comment I got while chatting to people about this, is that although “thin is in” right now, in the past, fat was desirable.  Not ‘curvy’, but actually overweight.  I wondered if this was actually true.

    Here are a couple of adverts.  The left one’s from 1885, the right one from roughly 100 years later:

    'Get Fat' Advert.
    'Get Skinny' weight loss Advert

     

    Things have changed since 1885!  Though to be fair I did pick both of these specifically to illustrate my point, so they don’t really prove anything.

    To find more evidence I searched the web, looking at how different cultures across time had depicted women in their art. I don’t have time or space to give a full rundown, but here’s some stuff I found out:

    Women through time

    Women over time
    • The oldest known representation is the Venus of Hohle Fels.  It’s around 35,000 years old, and is most clearly an overweight woman.
    • Of course there’s the work of Flemish artist Paul Peter Rubens in the early 1600s, who influenced the ‘Rubanesque’ movement.  Rubens displayed women as pale and plump; this was considered attractive.  For example, have a look at his painting, Venus at a Mirror.  This is the same Goddess of love and beauty who was depicted more slimly in other times.
    • Slim women got their fair share of attention too.  The Egyptians consistently portrayed a more slender ideal in their art, similar to the current trends.  See the painting here, from the Tomb of Nakht, around 15th c BCE.  Also, based on the paintings I found, the Chinese also preferred the slim look.
    • Weight wasn’t the only factor.  For example in Elizabethan England (1558-1603), beauty was pale skin and a plucked forehead!  Yes, the hair was plucked to make the forehead appear larger.  Not sure where that one came from, but pale skin was a sign of wealth, partly because the ingredients of the cosmetic of choice to achieve this look were rather expensive, and also health because if your face was clear and pale you probably didn’t have small pox.

    I didn’t do an extensive study of all cultures prefer, but it’s pretty clear that there’s been a lot of variation over time. So far, beauty does look like it’s in the eye of the beholder.

    Metal necks, ceramic mouths and silicone breasts

    Even within the cultures of the world today, there exists massive variation in what is considered beautiful.  It’s amazing how creative we are with this; all manner of adornment, tattooing and manipulation of body parts are linked to beauty.  Again, not a comprehensive study but just a few points:

    images of beautiful women across cultures
    • In many parts of Africa, obesity is desirable – it is associated with abundance and fertility.  In some areas, girls go to “fattening farms” – much the same in principle to health farms and gyms – a cultural institution aimed at increasing the appearance and charm of its clientele by placing them more in line with the current consensus.
    • This preference was also found in a study in 2008; in the US, men preferred a body shape thinner than the average, while men in Ghana preferred a body shape that was heavier than the average. (1)
    • Again though, we find that there’s more to beauty than body weight.  The Padaung women of Southeast Asia place metal rings around their necks.  They start this practice from a young age, and over time, the rings lengthen the appearance of the neck, increasing their desirability.  This has lead to an imaginative nickname: “Giraffe Women”.
    • In some African tribes, large ceramic and wooden plates are held in the mouth to stretch out the lips. Bigger lips = more desirable.  Eventually, the lips have stretched so much that the whole plate can be pushed into the mouth with ease!
    • Perhaps strangest of all is the modern West.  Many women undergo surgery to alter the size of their breasts, waists and lips.  Other surgical procedures are also common, usually based around increasing the appearance of youth.

    Imagine if Western culture had evolved to desire mouth-plates instead of silicone breasts. Imagine women on the cover of Vogue holding ceramic plates in their mouths, or Pamela Anderson running down a sandy Californian beach, mouth-plate bouncing up and down as she goes.

    It sounds ridiculous, but is it any more ridiculous than putting lumps of silicone in your breasts? Or something like liposuction, where you save up thousands to literally have the fat sucked out of you?  All over the world, people go to incredible lengths to match up to the standards of beauty their culture endorses.  At first glance these standards do not appear to be consistent.  When a culture changes, its standards of beauty often change with it.  So to a certain extent, beauty is ‘democratic’, decided by whatever the people happen to prefer.  But there’s more to this story than differences.  For example, even though “thin is in” at the moment, it’s not true that every thin woman is considered beautiful, is it?  You couldn’t replace a Playboy centrefold with a random girl of equal weight.

    So there must be something else going on, other than cultural influences.  Perhaps the answer to what this is lies in what the different cultures agree on.

    We’re not so different after all

    Evolutionary psychologist Devendra Singh discovered that all around the world, men have a preference for women with a low waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) – A waist that is relatively thin and hips that are relatively broad.  This is regardless of the actual weight of the woman. The magic ratio is 0.7;  here’s an example you might recognise: (2)

    Marilyn Monroe - Perfect 0.7 waist-to-hip ratio
    Marilyn Monroe – 0.7 waist-to-hip ratio

    If you zoom in so that the hips measure 20mm, you’ll find the waist measures 14mm – a perfect 0.7 WHR.  This ratio is consistent in beauty icons across time and culture.  Audrey Hepburn had it, the average Playboy centrefold is 0.68: even the Venus de Milo has a WHR close to 0.7. And a relatively thin waist has been seen as attractive through time – a study of English and Chinese literature consistently found references to thin waists in descriptions of women considered beautiful at that time. (3)

    So what’s the attraction to this particular shape?  It’s because a favourable WHR suggests that a woman is young, healthy, and fertile.  It’s a signal of genetic fitness and a good choice for a mate. Women whose fertility has been impaired tend to have higher WHRs, and unhealthy, starving women cannot maintain large buttocks and breasts – they need to use this fat as fuel.

    Not surprisingly then, the magic 0.7 ratio is a preference shared in almost all cultures studied.  WHR provides very important information to a species whose main drives are to survive and reproduce.  Although there is some controversy over just how universal the 0.7 WHR preference is, there is reason to believe that even if fads and fashions change, this preference would remain – to so some extent.(4)

    Face the Facts

    One thing we haven’t looked at yet is facial beauty.  This is typically studied by showing photographs of faces (or actual people sometimes) and asking participants to rate their attractiveness on a scale.  In a massive meta-analysis of over 900 studies of this kind, psychologists discovered a huge agreement both cross-ethnically and cross-culturally on which faces were attractive.  This analysis strongly disagrees with the idea that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, and suggests there’s something universal and genetic about facial attractiveness – something we all recognise.

    images of beautiful women across cultures

    Three important aspects seem to be symmetry, clear skin, and averageness. The more symmetrical a face is, the more attractive it seems to us, and when a group of faces are morphed into one by taking the average of all their proportions, that artificial face is usually seen as more attractive than any of the individual ones.

    Researchers did exactly that with photos of entrants to the Miss Germany contest. The average face was rated more attractive even than the eventual winner. Here ‘she’ is on the left. But, it’s not purely averageness that is attractive, because several unattractive faces morphed into one is not seen as more beautiful than a prototypical attractive face. (By the way, check out Beauty Check, where this photo came from – it’s an excellent site).

    Don’t forget to indicate!

    Looking at the evidence, a certain portion of the beauty pie is taken up by biological preferences inherent in most, if not all, humans – the indicators of health, fertility, and good genes.

    The rest is taken up by cultural preferences. Why do societies differ in these ways?  Are they just arbitrary?  Way back in time, did a group of high-status people in a tribe decide that long necks were sexy, and dictate that preference to their subordinates, eventually spreading the idea through the whole tribe?

    Partly, but even cultural preferences are indicators in their own right. They might signal things like health or whether a person has reached breeding age, but the thing about health is that it looks pretty much looks the same wherever you live. Other things might look differently in different areas – for example, wealth. There seems to be a pattern between body weight preference and wealth – although the specific weight that is used as this marker seems to differ across cultures.

    Researchers Sobal and Stunkard did a large review of sudies that looked into both body weight and socioeconomic status.  They found that in rich countries, the correlation is negative – the richer you are, the thinner you tend to be – and in poor or undeveloped countries the correlation is positive – rich people tend to be overweight. (5)

    The reasons for this are unclear, but it’s thought to go something like this: in a poor society you need to be wealthy to become fat, and if you’re a hungry person in a poor society, wealth is very attractive. So overweight people suddenly become appealing. Also, more weight is seen to relate to maturity, and it’s useful to have mature people around in hard times. However, in a society that’s generally rich, these preferences aren’t activated, which allows thinner body ideals to evolve more often in these places.

    Another interesting study found that men going in to a canteen reported that they preferred heavier women than men going out of the canteen. Hungry men prefer heavier women. So if you hate the thin ideal and want a way to get rid of it, now you know how – starve all the men in the society! (please don’t, though). (6)

    What is beauty?

    Combining these findings, we come to a basic formula:

    Adherence to social consensus + Genetic Fitness = Physical beauty

    Social consensus will be things like the current body size preferences, fashion/adornment preferences, and so on. Genetic Fitness is WHR, facial symmetry, and things like that.

    So take a genetically fit (‘biologically attractive’) woman, and throw her in any space and time. Provided she can match up to the status quo of that time, she’ll always be a catch. And even if she didn’t match up, she’d probably be seen as attractive to some extent. Likewise, a woman who isn’t as genetically attractive can ‘trade up’ by adhering to the social consensus.

    In other words, take Jessica Alba, and fatten her up, or use brass rings to make her neck seem longer, or pluck her hair line back and make her skin pale – and she’d still be considered beautiful in Ghana, Northern Thailand, or Elizabethan England, respectively.  Do all three, of course, and she’d be an absolute smash in a goth club.

    I’m being superficial

    I’m being superficial on purpose here, because I just wanted to look into beauty. There’s more to attractiveness than physical beauty of course – personality, how you carry yourself, confidence, and all kinds of other things – although I know it doesn’t seem that way, because our culture is very superficial. The only thing is, I don’t know how much of the attractiveness pie is taken up by physical beauty, and how much is taken up by these other things. Maybe that’s a topic for another day.

    Is it right or wrong for a society to be as focused on physical beauty as we are? I don’t know, but it’s clear that we’re not alone on this – through time and space, people have altered their bodies to look more attractive.  All manner of cosmetics, paintings, decorations, piercing, exercise regimes, scarification and accessories have been used.  But all of these practices are essentially arbitrary, and relevant to a specific culture at a specific place and time.  They establish connections with the norms of that time, or to a particular group within a society.

    But it’s useful to understand that apart from the biological markers of health and fertility, there’s no definition of beauty that isn’t considered ugly in another place or time.