Photo: flickr
We get our eyes, height, hair and smiles from a combination of mom and dad. Our appearances are physical representations of our genes and DNA. Yet, for those of you who inherited a nose that's slightly large or a body that's too thin, know that attractiveness is not something that is fixed! According to new research, there's a social trick that boosts how appealing you seem to others.
Have you heard of the phenomenon where if you place the same amount of food on two different sized plates, eating the food on the smaller plate will influence you to be less hungry? This is because compared to the small plate, the amount of food seems much more, and more food means less hunger. Well, the same type of comparison phenomenon can be applied to appearance. If you surround yourself with less attractive people, you actually seem more attractive! New research says that how appealing you seem to others also depends on how appealing other people around you are. So if an average-face individual is surrounded by less attractive people, then that average person is rated as more attractive!
Nicholas Furl, author of the study that conducted this research, says that the way we measure beauty is a grey area. It's not all black and white! People make judgements based on relation. In fact, we do this all the type. If I showed you a photo of a baseball and asked how big it is, you would probably think you have the answer because baseballs are quite small. Yet then I show you another photo of that same baseball, except this time it's the same size as the car it's next to! How big is it now? To get an answer, people have to compare items to another object and its environment. Everything is relative. That is why when it comes to attractiveness, your ratings can actually go up (or down!) depending on the group you're surrounded by.
Source material from PsyBlog