While beauty varies from culture to culture, history shows that beauty can bring benefits to those who possess it.
Current Western standards of beauty emphasise a toned, slender look, exuding fitness, youth and health. However, there do appear to be some universal truths in beauty. For instance, unlike the rest of the animal kingdom – where males are the beautiful ones – the human focus of beauty has always been on women’s faces and bodies, and this is so in all cultures: it is more important for women to be beautiful.
How we judge beauty
Recent research suggests beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, and that ideals of human attractiveness may already come ‘hard-wired’ into the human brain, that, in fact, we have a built-in ‘template’ of beauty by which we judge the attractiveness of others. However, you are not the best judge of your own beauty. In fact, contrary to popular opinion, you are more likely to over-rate your looks than under-rate them. Neither are your friends the best judges of your beauty – because they know you, they include other aspects, such as your personality, when judging you. This generally results in them giving you a higher rating.
The best judges of beauty are complete strangers, who because they don’t know you are not biased and so will make a purely physical appraisal – an act amazingly consistent among groups. Males and females agree in their judgments of another person’s physical attractiveness, with research reporting no significant differences between the physical attractiveness ratings given by male and female judges. We all seem to know what is beautiful and also how far an individual deviates from that ideal.
The importance of beauty
Some people believe physical attractiveness has no effect on them. They state that physical attractiveness is superficial and peripheral, and that it should not and does not influence their lives. But research provides evidence at odds with this. Studies have shown that people are either not fully aware of or not fully honest about how important physical attractiveness really is to them.
Beautiful women realise there are some definite advantages to their beauty, but they don’t seem to realise how different their lives actually are on a day-to-day basis. An analogy I like to use is that we are surrounded by air; it affects us all but because it has always been there, we simply take it for granted. We only notice it when we are deprived of it. The same goes for beautiful people and their beauty. They take it for granted because their lives have always been that way.
The power of beauty
There is no doubt that the following examples of the power of beauty are a bit of an eye opener. However this list is not exhaustive – there are hundreds of other examples of how beauty benefits those who possess it.
- Physically attractive women are more likely to marry. College students were rated for beauty and then followed up several years after graduation: 34 percent of the beautiful had married, 28 percent of the good looking, 16 percent of the plain and 11 percent of the homely.
2. Attractive women are much more likely to marry successful men.
3. Adults often treat attractive children differently (usually better) than unattractive ones.
4. More physically attractive people are perceived to have more positive characteristics, as well as happier and more fulfilling lives.
5. Physically attractive people are perceived to be more intelligent, sensitive, kind, interesting, sociable and more likely to attend college than their less attractive counterparts.
6. The less physically attractive a person is, the less the person is liked.
7. Experimental research shows that physically attractive people receive a significantly greater frequency of positive looks and smiles than do those less attractive.
8. The likelihood of someone being perceived as mentally disturbed or mentally ill increases as the person’s physical attractiveness decreases.
9. Identical resumes were sent to the personnel offices of major corporations and employment agencies. The applicant’s photos were made more or less attractive by a makeup artist. Prospective employers who received the resumes with the highly attractive photo offered starting salaries of 8 to 20 percent more than those offered to the less attractive.
10. More physically attractive people date more, have more friends and have happier marriages. They experience less social anxiety, possess and exhibit greater individuality and are better adjusted socially.
11. Both males and females expect better looking people to do better work than those less attractive and this work is rated higher than that done by a less attractive person.
12. When in need of help, highly attractive people receive more of it than less attractive people.
13. Both for legal crimes and social offences, the physically attractive are treated more leniently, given milder punishment and in civil cases receive more favourable outcomes and larger amounts of money. However, the physically attractive are punished more severely for crimes of embezzlement and swindling.
