why facial hair exists beards mustaches and goatees love them or hate them there
are a lot of reasons why someone might decide to grow out their facial hair
maybe they're doing it to look more rugged or masculine or maybe they're
just trying to hide a weak jawline either way the existence of beards in
general is kind of strange when you think about it why does hair grow out of
faces and while we're at it why does it also only happen for some of us as it
turns out there may be some interesting reasons as to why human beings grow
beards before we continue we must stash you a question
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according to Mark Travers of Psychology today most evolutionary theorists
speculate that facial hair and beards evolved as a display of dominance
masculinity and aggression however if that's really the case then
why is it that beards these days are associated with coffee shop hipsters and
old-timey prospectors if beards really did evolve as a symbol of macho
dominance and aggression they still hold that purpose today in the April 2019 of
psychological science a team of Australian researchers decided to
conduct the study to see what social information is wordlessly conveyed by a
person sporting a full bushy beard to begin the Australian started their
research by asking over 200 participants to look at a series of photographs of
men's faces some bearded and some clean-shaven and asked them to identify
as quickly as possible what emotion they felt each face most strongly conveyed
to avoid experimental bias each of the men whose likeliness were used in this
experiment at four different photographs taken each man had two photos taken
while clean-shaven one where their expression was happy and one where they
looked angry the other two photos were the same but taken eight weeks after the
first batch of photos so the male models could have a chance to fully grow out
their facial hair so what did these tests managed to uncover well as it
turns out participants were quicker to correctly identify the photos taken of
angry bearded men compared to any of the other photos used in the experiment and
likewise the researchers also found that participants were quicker to identify
the pictures of clean-shaven men as happy to make sure that personal bias
wasn't leading the cause behind the anti beard discrimination the Australian
researchers conducted a second study as a follow-up to the first this time
instead of angry faces they used pictures of shaved and bearded men
looking sad if participants identified the sad bearded men as quickly as they
identified the angry bearded men then it meant that a negativity bias towards
beards was the root of the cause of the study's results instead participants
were slower to recognize the photos of sad men with beards which would appear
to indicate that the effect seen in the first phase of the experiment was only
limited to recognizing anger finally the researchers decided to perform a third
experiment to test whether or not growing out a beard presented any sort
of social benefit to the beard grower in question this time around the
researchers asked 450 participants to rate the faces from the first experiment
based on measurements of how much they found the person in each photo to be
aggressive masculine or pro-social you probably wouldn't be surprised to learn
that the pictures of bearded men were deemed to be more aggressive and more
masculine than the photos of clean-shaven men but the interesting
part is this the photos of happy smiling bearded men
were also rated as looking more social in their clean-shaven counterparts what
can we glean from this information based on the data collected from the
participants it would appear that beards may have an intended dual purpose in our
evolution while the sight of an angry bearded man has much more aggressive
commanding presence a smiling bearded man was also considered to look more
helpful and even friendlier than a shaved face if you've ever wondered why
Santa Claus has a beard this might shed a little bit of light on
that particular fashion choice so if this research is to be believed it would
seem that beards are not only effective at conveying aggression but also
conveying kindness as well where do you stand on the whole beard versus no beard
stance feel free to let us know in the comment section below to help keep the
conversation going and as always be sure to share this video with anyone you
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you