In an instant, the person sitting opposite of you has decided whether you look attractive or not. Could it be that love at first sight exists?
Day by day, we go outside neat, well-cared-for and ready to seize the day.
Until one day comes when you go outside to the bakery on the corner with a crumpled t-shirt from high school that says “Greek booze trip”, checkered shorts and slippers, and for a short time, you actually believe that you will run into no one.
I believe that this is the exact moment when you are challenging your karma.
And finally, while leaving the bakery, a guy with dreamy blue eyes, light brown hair and a beaming smile unintentionally pokes you. He apologizes politely and carries on with his life.
This is the moment where you wonder: “why…? why…? I come to this bakery every Wednesday morning dressed up like Khloe Kardashian. Not once has anybody poked me. But today when I am out and about dressed like a slob, the neighborhood’s Brad Pitt had to poke me?
It’s totally normal to wonder why. Because it seems the human brain does indeed form a first impression on whether you look attractive or not very quickly.
If you’ve ever wondered whether the first impression matters, the answer is YES in capital letters.
But – first things first.
What does the science say about being attractive?
Based on a survey of York University, in just 13 milliseconds our brain has formed an opinion about the person sitting across from us and specifically about his/her attractiveness.
It was the first time that data processing clocked the time that a human brain needs to process a face.
In the past, scientists believed that these kinds of processes took 100 or 200 milliseconds. So, 10 times higher.
It’s the first time that it’s been proven that, in reality, the time needed is way less.
For a big part of my life, I used to look at people’s shoes first to decide whether they were attractive or not.
Ripped gray sneakers with acid-washed jeans in the center of the city on a Saturday? The game is lost for you pal. Clean white sneakers with blue denim? Congratulations! Made it to the next round.
The brain does something similar with the characteristics of a face. Every piece of the face is scanned to determine how attractive someone is.
How can someone test the way a human brain processes a face? How can we see the motives that show which characteristics are considered attractive at the very first glance?
And above all: how can we examine the whole project objectively?
Researchers from York University conducted experiments where they showed people other people’s faces and observed which characteristics their minds connected with attractiveness, trust or loftiness.
The researchers clocked the time that the people in the experiments needed for their brains to analyze the face they were seeing for the very first time and reach a conclusion.
Then, they made some small changes on these faces with the help of a computer.
For example, they changed the distance between the eyes or the size of the lips of the person in the photograph.
The result was that the changes in certain characteristics of the face “brought out” something else.
For example, the process showed that the longer a smile is, the more trustworthy we consider the person to be. Respectively, the sharper the corners of a face are, the more imposing and dominant we consider him/her to be.
The characteristic that plays the biggest role in deciding whether someone is attractive or not are the eyes. It was shown that the eyes position on the face, the iris, the width of the eye, all contributed to the decision of the subconscious about whether or not the person is attractive.
SO…what do we do now?
And York’s University’s study is not the only one that proves the brain’s ability to reach a conclusion based on external characteristics.
Older studies have shown that it is hard to ignore the external characteristics no matter how much we try.
A face shows how the person feels. We avoid a frowning person but we want to be close to a smiling one.
So, it’s not the geometry of the face that is important, but we should always wear our smile!
Of course, what attracts us is so complex that it is hard to explain for sure.
Our taste is so subjective and we are attracted by so many different people that some might think there are no patterns.
Those are just certain cross points.
Besides, today’s society has so many common experiences and stimuli which affect what we think to be familiar or beautiful.
That’s why all of the above implies that there isn’t only one category of characteristics that form the manual to an attractive face.
It’s just that, for yet another time, our wonderful brain surprises us with its potential. In just an instant, it has analyzed a completely strange face and has interpreted it.
That doesn’t mean that if someone hasn’t passed the first test, he/she will fail the game.
The chemistry between two people isn’t based only on first impressions and it doesn’t depend only on a beautiful look. Well, not only…
Our brain has 86 billion neurons, each of which leads to our personality. And this is what makes us attractive or not.
Of course, my neighborhood’s Brad Pitt couldn’t possibly assume that such a catch is hiding underneath the outfit of a half-awake beggar. So, let’s meet halfway.
Let’s build the inside as well as the outside. For better or worse.
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