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It's a case of facial attraction
What makes us attracted to some people and not to others? SCOPE investigates the science of attraction and asks Professor Robert Winston, a well-known scientist and medical researcher, what's important. "Body shape is very important," he says. "The hour glass shape for the woman is attractive in most cultures. Wide hips suggest fertility - the ability to bear children." Professor Winston says that in men, broad shoulders, a narrow waist and muscular build would be more attractive. "Somebody that is physically able to protect you, who is strong, who is a hunter, who would be able to provide food - that has come through evolution," he says. It seems that this thinking hasn't changed much since the earliest cave men and women. Shape experiment SCOPE tries an experiment to find out what men - and women - think is the most attractive female body shape. For the experiment, Danann picks which body shape he finds most attractive out of three volunteers. He picks number three which is interesting because she actually has the curviest shape. "The majority of men asked pick number three, the curviest woman," says Kathriona. "She had the greatest difference between her waist and her hips, so she was classical hour glass shape." Petite shape SCOPE next asks some girls to guess which of the three body shapes most guys would go for. Most pick number two, thinking that men would be most attracted to the slimmest girl. However, the experiment shows that women often have it wrong about what men want. "It's probably because women are influenced by magazines and fashion, which is all aspiring to be skinny, whereas in fact, if they had a few more pies, they might be more attractive to men," says Kathriona. Perfect face When you spot someone you fancy, you might think it's because they have great eyes or kissable lips, but there's a lot more going on. One single female, Jenny Huston of 2FM, was willing to take part in SCOPE's next experiment, to determine how important faces are in finding a mate. Dr Sarah Casey, an expert on facial perception at Trinity College Dublin, helps SCOPE analyse Jenny's decision-making in the mating game. Jenny is shown a series of faces and has to rate each for attractiveness. Some faces are regular images and some faces have been altered to look perfectly symmetrical. The experiment shows that Jenny tends to give higher attractiveness ratings to faces that are symmetrical. "Symmetry is an important property when it comes to rating faces for attractiveness," says Dr Casey. "Symmetry tends to be an indicator of how healthy an individual is and how good their genes are, when it comes to picking someone that you might like to settle down with, and maybe have children. It's a good indicator that your children will be healthy." Familiarity In the next test: Jenny has to say which of two faces she prefers, A or B. What she doesn't know is that Dr Casey has taken a photograph of Jenny and used it in the experiment. She has blended Jenny's image with images of different male faces. In each pair of faces Jenny was shown, one was the original male face, and the other face was the male face blended with Jenny's. The results show that Jenny preferred the ones blended with her face each time. "You tend to find faces that resemble yours quite attractive," says Dr Casey. "You can see aspects of yourself in their face. It's kind of a trade-off between getting very different genes to you so that you'll have healthy children, but someone to be there to invest in them as well. You look for your own traits in that person and then settle down and hopefully you'll have a very happy, stable relationship." So what does Jenny think? "I never would have guessed in a million years that I was looking at a photograph of myself," she says. "That could be a new chat-up line: 'I think you're very symmetrical'," she adds. Familiarity Read more about the science of attraction Find out what makes you fancy someone |
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