The science of attraction is the pursuit of the facial aesthetics industry, who utilize
scientific research techniques to unveil findings about what and how specific features of the
human body and face interact to make someone get that gut feeling of saying, “He or She
is attractive”.
Across the countless videos QOVES has uploaded, concepts of sexual dimorphism, golden ratios,
Ideal side profiles, perfect hairlines, best skincare techniques and so many more concepts
have been described in detail to help you understand how your facial aesthetic can be
improved, helping your attraction rating.
Yet so many research studies are in part limited by their design.
As scientists, there is a common tendency to rely on well-controlled experiments in
the lab, a technique that can be criticised for lacking real life validity.
As the common counter argument to facial aesthetics research says, it’s not about what happens
in a lab, it's about that gut feeling that makes me know if I’m attractive or not.
With all of that said, it makes sense that the next pursuit in scientific research should
be to get out of the lab, and see how the force of physical attraction plays out in
more realistic scenarios, which is why a concept like speed dating can tell us so much about
the difficult to discover laws of attraction.
For those unfamiliar with the concept, speed-dating attempts to suppress all the awkwardness of
a long movie and dinner date by squashing it into a short sharp session, designed to
see if there is any initial flare between two people.
On top of that, it also aims to rid the issue of picking the wrong person, as speed dating
involves going on multiple short dates in one night.
Put simply, speed dating is about having people meet multiple potential partners in a short
period of time.
Today, we will use this modern dating phenomenon to ask the question, “Why are we attracted
to some individuals but not to others”, and if we can answer that question, we can
be better equipped to determine the principles of attraction.
First, looking towards an American university study acting as a methodological primer for
speed dating, we see as Finkel and colleagues claim, that “Speed-dating is an invaluable
tool for studying romantic attraction.”
The study outlines the methodology behind trying to utilise speed dating as a scientific
procedure, recognising the limitations of stigma on the efficacy of speed dating research,
as well as the issue of speed dating drawing a bias sample pool that is not representative
of the wider dating population.
Most importantly from this study are the follow up questionnaires that have been developed
in order to draw scientific findings from the participants
of the research.
As we can see here, concepts about dating seriously, dating casually, and the idea of
friendly attraction versus sexual attraction are all covered to allow for findings.
Now, we’ll look towards another American university study titled “What Leads to Romantic
Attraction: Similarity, Reciprocity, Security, or Beauty?” that investigates four leading
principles of attraction and attempts to test each theory through a speed dating study.
To uncover the secrets from this study, let’s look at each of these primary principles of
attraction.
First, the similarity principle is the idea that people are attracted to other people
with similar features to them, as doing so has many adaptive functions, including facilitating
dyadic interactions, fostering a sense of familiarity and safety, and validating an
individuals’ self-concepts.
Research from Byrne and colleagues throughout the 1960’s and 70’s have found evidence
towards this theory in a lab setting, and even found attraction ratings increased a
little for people with similar personality traits for the same reason.
The second principle of attraction is reciprocity, a principle stating simply that people like
others who like them, or, “Attraction breeds attraction”.
The concept dates all the way back to the 1950’s, however several meta analyses uncovered
that this reciprocity principle does not hold over sexual attraction, but instead only holds
as a general reciprocal friendliness.
The third and perhaps most obvious principle of attraction is the concept of Beauty, whereby
there has been a great deal of evidence that a partners’ physical attractiveness is a
reliable predictor of attraction in initial encounters.
As well as this, there is a pronounced sex difference in stated preferences of partner’s
physical appearance, with men placing greater value on beauty than do women.
This has its roots in an evolutionary view as men and women's brains have evolved to
have different mate preferences in order to maximize their success in gene reproduction.
While we discuss and unpack the principles of attraction, and how you can utilise these
principles for your own benefit, take a minute to recognise the unbearable attraction your
keyboard mouse is radiating and like this video.
If you still see the power beyond the like, also make sure you have subscribed to the
QOVES channel, to make sure you’re the first to learn about all things facial aesthetics.
The final principle of attraction is that of security, in which it is hypothesized that
people should be most attracted to partners who are neither anxious or avoidant, because
they offer the best opportunities for forming close, emotional bonds.
This theory is less relevant in the field of facial aesthetics as it is due to mental
processes, however it highlights the importance of confidence in judgements of attraction,
confidence which can be improved by feeling comfortable with your facial aesthetic.
To actualise this speed-dating study, 108 heterosexual American college students who
were currently single were recruited to attend three sessions in order to obtain course credit.
In the first session, candidates were assessed for their political attitudes, personal values,
interests, general personality, affectivity, attachment, and self-esteem.
After this, the actual speed dating was completed, with individuals participating in multiple
5 minute long dates with potential romantic partners from the opposite sex.
After the speed dating sessions, every participant responded to questions like ‘‘Would you
be interested in seeing this partner again after the speed date event?’,
similar to the concepts defined in the methodology primer.
So, with all of this procedure in mind, which of the attraction principles were deemed significant
due to the results of this study?
As it turns out, Beauty was the strongest predictor of initial attraction, with physical
attraction having a huge influence on the perceived overall attractiveness of an individual.
In the speed dating arena, it was found that the
security principle does not significantly predict attractiveness.
On a similar wavelength, it was also found that reciprocity was not as important in attraction,
and finally, there was a striking lack of evidence for the attractiveness
of similarity.
To sum everything up, it's been found that speed-dating procedures, in which participants
have brief ‘dates’ with a series of potential romantic partners, allow researchers to recognise
the precursors to close relationships, allowing them to determine and study the initiators
of romantic attraction.
Speed dating also allows for strong scientific tests, outside the lab, of many fundamental
attraction related theories, which can unify the whole field of attraction, tying in nicely
to the concept of facial aesthetics.
When looking at the specifics, characteristics of the self were better predictors of women’s
attraction, compared to men, whereas partner characteristics were better predictors of
men’s attraction compared to women.
After all of this consideration, it's divulged that the strongest predictor of attraction
for both sexes was the partner's physical attractiveness, providing the scope to the
importance of research on areas such as facial aesthetics, which looks directly at the physical
anthropology
of the face to recognise what is objectively attractive.