Beauty of Symmetry. In the study depicted in the video, eight out of every ten participants in the study preferred the symmetrical face of either the man or the woman. The researcher believes that the responses to symmetry are largely subconscious, and that they are related to physical and genetic health because of the fact that symmetry is determined in the womb. In Is your Face Attractive? the researchers show that 81%of men prefer "feminine" faces; and the majority of women prefer manly faces. It is suggested that the diff in face preference is caused by sex hormones.
Shapely Figures. The researcher uses software that scans with an eye tracker to see where the person is looking at the images and for how long at each spot. The researcher found that there is a part of the brain that is activated when looking at the human body in particular, and mainly to the hip and waist areas when judging whether figure is male or female. In Sexy Swaying Bodies, both the "hip sway" for women and the masculine "swagger" for men were perceived to be attractive. When people change the way they walk, it is to conform to the extremes of their gender. The researcher concludes that the preferences are not necessarily about health and fertility but also about easy to process categories of gender perception. The researcher also wanted to understand when young children start to recognize differences between male and female bodies. It appears that by the age of six, children make judgments and classifications on gender because the four-year-old subjects see the differences in the bodies but does not place those bodies into gendered categories. The six-year-olds, on the other hand, do.
3. Signals of the Flesh. This study...
The people base their reactions on factors like complexion, whether or not there are blemishes and what times, tone of skin, and smoothness. The responses to skin patches are "deeply rooted in human evolution" because skin signals health. In particular, testosterone production can inhibit immune system and resistance to parasites. The skin signals overall health.
4. Sexy Voices. In this study, the participants rate voices for sex appeal. The researchers found that men prefer higher, softer voices that are more "feminine" to them; whereas women prefer men with deeper more "masculine" voices. It is believed that young women and women with high estrogen have higher pitched voices and that men prefer these women for reproductive attractiveness. Similarly, the female participants preferred the deeper voices in males as being men who are "stronger" or "bigger" because pitch is related to testosterone at puberty and testosterone levels with being a good sexual partner.
5. Incestuous Instincts and Unsexy Scents. These studies show that there are biological and genetically programmed markers that make people averse to their own gene pool. In Unsexy Scents, the researchers show that individuals may be biologically predisposed to find the smells of their relatives aversive, likely as a means of protecting against incest. The smells are perceived of as being "unsexy." This is because closely related individuals have similar scents. Moreover, incest leads to problems in a genetic line such as compromised immune system. Incest avoidance is therefore built into human…
