Why looks dont matter

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35, This entry was posted on Thursday, April 6th, at pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.

You can leave a comment , or trackback from your own site. We chose a similar approach to writing our blog posts this week. It definitely is unfortunate how much looks do in fact matter. We all fall prey to judging someone by their looks, whether we want to or not. Like you said, even people who have good intentions at heart exhibit this. The T-Shirt Study presented in our textbook really got me thinking about an intervention strategy that could actually help to decrease making first impression based solely on looks.

The goal of the participants was to talk to as many other individuals from the other sex as possible — kind of like speed dating. The researchers found that participants did not rely mostly on physical attractiveness when choosing who they would most like to date. This would allow others to have information other than our looks to based their opinions on and possibly create connections or friendships. Since we were little kids, we were constantly presented with a fascination for linking attractive appearances with people who tend to be famous or superior to most of the people we have met.

As we grew older, we realized that attractive people surround us frequently. Undoubtedly, physical attractiveness encourages a heightened pervasiveness for receiving positive acknowledgement. Indeed, the way someone presents themselves is critical for achieving self-actualization. Some people are born less attractive than others, but they know how to present themselves.

I wonder how one can get carried away by an aspect, physical in nature, which doesn't say anything else about the person. Deceptive indeed! It is so easy to predict the fate of such relationships. Beauty as a magnetic force attracts only couples who have a tendency to fall in love at a pace much faster than the usual or couples who are in their very initial stage of dating.

As much as this phenomenon is very natural and normal, especially amongst youngsters, it can prove detrimental when followed blindly. There is a second category of people who fall in love but not instantly. They may know someone for long, in the form of an acquaintance or a friend.

And slowly their friendship turns into love. Now, how important is beauty to these couples who gradually fall in love? Guys who can make women laugh, act confidently around them and communicate effectively with them are the men who have high social status.

Men who possess these traits turn on the attraction switches within the minds of women. These switches have been wired since the beginning of time.

I'm talking about when our ancestors were banging rocks and rubbing sticks together, lived in tribes and relied on each other to survive. The men who were most socially adept were considered the alpha males of these groups and were often given the best of everything the tribe had to offer.

They were given the best food, water, shelter and other resources and, therefore, had the best health — something that was incredibly important to a woman looking for a mate. We evolved into the most intelligent animals on the planet because of our spoken word and communication.

We conversed, exchanged ideas and prospered as a species because of our incredibly high-regard for interpersonal communication. Without this, we would not have come so far. He is most likely nonreactive and unapologetic to girls in a healthy way because he knows what he wants and can probably find a new partner any time he would want to.

That type of behavior is very attractive to women. In order to understand that we need to take a closer look into our past.

To make it really simple. Think about human history for a second. Most of human history we have lived a very simple life in small groups or tribes. Just like with most mammals and primates today society or the tribe you would have lived in consisted of alpha males and beta males. The alpha male was the highly social and charismatic leader who was able to take critical decisions and keep the tribe alive.

He was smart, he was confident and had his own strong opinion. Women were naturally attracted to that man because of his great genetics.