What is Beauty - Literature review Example

? What is Beauty? An Argumentative Essay College What is Beauty? Many people assume that there is a “gold standard” (Kassin, Fein & Markus,2011, p346) for beauty because we get so accustomed to seeing beautiful people in the media. However, it is important to realise that different cultures and even different eras have different perception of beauty – not all of which are similar to those found in the typical Hollywood star. An interesting debate in social psychology is not about features or styles that are considered beautiful by individuals, but about whether or not certain features are found to be present in any culture’s perception of beauty. The purpose of this essay is to explore the social psychology of beauty and to explore whether or not there are common features that can be considered beautiful, independent of culture or style. The thesis here is that there will be some features of beauty that are cross-cultural and therefore play a significant part in the psychology of beauty and sexual attraction. Firstly it is interesting to consider why beauty is considered to be so important. There are a number of pieces of research that suggest that being considered attractive may increase income, success and even longevity (Kassin et al, 2011). One of the most interesting, however, is a study by Berggren, Jordahl & Poutvaara (2007) which explores the effect of beauty on electoral success in candidates for political positions. Using over ten thousand evaluations of 1929 Finnish candidates to calculate perceived attractiveness, there was found to be a statistically significant correlation between success and beauty in all female cases and the majority of male cases. This supports the point that beauty is an important quality to have, but what really is this important quality? Singh (1993) published an interesting hypothesis about one of the most well-known examinations of female attractiveness – the waist-to-hip ratio. Essentially, the theory states that women (in all cultures) who have a 0.7 waist-to-hip ratio are considered to be more attractive than those falling outside this criteria – regardless of weight. Singh posits that this is because this ratio is an important indicator of health and longevity that makes females an attractive child-bearing partner. Streeter & McBurney (2003) evaluates the hypothesis by manipulating photographs of the same woman to have waist-to-hip ratios of 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.9 and 1.2. The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that men have a strong preference for the 0.7 ratio, and this supports the thesis that there are some elements of beauty which stay consistently attractive regardless of culture or overall weight. There is also evidence that other “signals” of health are commonly found in those considered to be attractive by a large majority of raters. Dzhelyova, Lefevre & Perrett (2013) examined the role of various indicators of health (skin colour, jaw shape and size in men) and how these correlated with perceived attractiveness by using computer-manipulated images. By doing this, the actual features of the individual remain unchanged, so the test is reliably measuring skin colour and facial shape. Overwhelmingly, there was a strong correlation between these two variables and perceived attractiveness in all groups – again supporting the hypothesis that there definitely some traits that are associated with beauty regardless of culture. Again supporting the thesis that these features of beauty are wide-ranging, these groups all included a mix of racial groups and skin colours (with perceived healthy and unhealthy variations of each skin tone). Halberstadt, Pecher, Zeelenberg, Wai & Winkielman (2012) studied another interesting concept in attractiveness – the feature of averageness. It has long been suggested that the most average faces are those that we find most attractive. In this study, 52 students from The Netherlands and 60 students from New Zealand were asked to rate the attractiveness of several photographs. The photos were 28 (14 from each country) famous people – Dutch people unknown in New Zealand and vice versa. These photographs were then skewed to appear more like the average in the country the experiment was taking place. Overwhelmingly, the photographs were voted more attractive when adapted to look more familiar – suggesting that there is strong evidence for averageness being a feature of beauty. This sounds counterintuitive, but there is much evidence that things that are familiar often appear more attractive to us (Kassin et al, 2011). The most interesting part about the Halberstadt et al study is that it incorporated results from two different countries on opposite sides of the world, suggesting that there is a cross-cultural need for familiarity and averageness in beauty. Komori, Kawamura & Ishihara (2009) compared the effects of averageness and symmetry in faces in Japan to ascertain which is the most important feature for perceived attractiveness. 114 participants were found and asked to rate un-manipulated faces with neutral expressions. These were then mirror reversed to look more symmetrical and were rated more attractive. The photographs were also manipulated to look more like the Japanese average by computer editing. There was an interesting result – male faces were rated more attractive when they were symmetrical and had increased averageness (and there was no difference between the two), whereas female faces were rates more attractive with increased averageness, but not with increased symmetry. These results suggest that these elements of perceived attractiveness and beauty may be cross-cultural, as the results from Japan support the research outlined above from other countries, but they may not be the same for both sexes. Jung, Ruthruff, Tybur, Gaspelin, & Miller (2012) also suggest that it may require quite a lot of concentration for this attractiveness to register. Ewing, Rhodes & Pellicano (2010) completed some research into how gaze direction affects how people judge facial attractiveness. The study states (using previous research) that a direct gaze suggests social engagement, meaning that it is likely to be perceived as more attractive than averted gaze. To test this theory, 32 male participants were asked to choose the most attractive face out of a pair, one with a direct gaze and one with a non-direct or averted gaze. There was a strong preference for faces with a direct gaze, as predicted. However, it is interesting that this stronger affect was found to be much stronger in those faces which had been measured to be more average and more symmetrical (the “high-attractive” face sets) – suggesting that this element of beauty may be present across different individuals but may have more of an effect if you are already considered attractive. The study also asked the participants to rate photographs (rather than choose a preference) and the ratings were much higher for those with direct gazes. Although this does not provide information about a cross-cultural preference for direct gaze, it does suggest that there may be some elements of beauty that we do not necessary expect or describe when we think of something typically beautiful. Another interesting thought about beauty is discussed by Elliot & Maier (2013). There is suggested to be a strong link between the colour red and attractiveness, with women even being more likely to wear red when ovulating. The red-attractiveness effect has been replicated by several independent researchers and there is evidence that the colour red is considered to be more attractive in several different countries, irrespective of cultural traditions surrounding the colour red. The discussion points to several pieces of research that focus on the colour red, including several that use comparative ratings of individuals – some in which the photograph is non-manipulated and another where the colour the person in the image is wearing is red. There is overwhelming unanimous support that the colour red receives higher ratings in tests such as these. In conclusion, there are several elements to beauty or attractiveness that can be considered to be cross-cultural. Two of the most prominent are those features of averageness and of symmetry in faces, which are considered to be cross-cultural as they have been replicated in a huge number of studies across the globe. Additionally, the feature of wearing red is also considered to be more attractive, despite cultural traditions about the wearing of red – this suggests that beauty may have similar features in different countries. Finally, there are other elements that may contribute to beauty although it is not necessarily known whether they are cross-cultural or not – the effect of eye gaze direction, for example. Overall, it is interesting to consider that beauty may not be as simple as we had previously thought and that there may be different features that we do not recognize underneath what we consider beautiful. As with many things in social psychology, what occurs is actually much more complicated than it seems on the surface. References Berggren, N., Jordahl, H., & Poutvaara, P. (2007). The Looks of a Winner: Beauty, Gender, and Electoral Success (SSRN Scholarly Paper No. ID 993016). Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network. Retrieved from http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=993016 Dzhelyova, M., Lefevre, C., & Perrett, D. (2013). Cues to health impact perceived trustworthiness and attractiveness. Journal of Vision, 13(9), 857–857. doi:10.1167/13.9.857 Elliot, A. J., & Maier, M. A. (2013). The red-attractiveness effect, applying the Ioannidis and Trikalinos (2007b) test, and the broader scientific context: A reply to Francis (2013). Retrieved from http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xge/142/1/297/ Ewing, L., Rhodes, G., & Pellicano, E. (2010). Have you got the look? Gaze direction affects judgements of facial attractiveness. Visual Cognition, 18(3), 321–330. Halberstadt, J., Pecher, D., Zeelenberg, R., Wai, L. I., & Winkielman, P. (2013). Two Faces of Attractiveness Making Beauty in Averageness Appear and Reverse. Psychological science, 0956797613491969. Jung, K., Ruthruff, E., Tybur, J. M., Gaspelin, N., & Miller, G. (2012). Perception of facial attractiveness requires some attentional resources: implications for the “automaticity” of psychological adaptations. Evolution and Human Behavior, 33(3), 241–250. Kassin, S. M., Fein, S., & Markus, H. R. (2011). Social Psychology. Cengage Learning. Komori, M., Kawamura, S., & Ishihara, S. (2009). Averageness or symmetry: which is more important for facial attractiveness? Acta psychologica, 131(2), 136–142. Singh, D. (1993). Adaptive significance of female physical attractiveness: Role of waist-to-hip ratio. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(2), 293–307. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.65.2.293 Streeter, S. A., & McBurney, D. H. (2003). Waist–hip ratio and attractiveness: New evidence and a critique of “a critical test.” Evolution and Human Behavior, 24(2), 88–98. doi:10.1016/S1090-5138(02)00121-6 Read More