Why do we find certain person attractive? Is there any logic
or science behind that?Well there is. Scientists have researched all the
different aspects of sex appeal. And the conclusion is very deeply fundamental to our very existence
and our inherent desire to live forever by reproducing our genes in the form of
children.We find those people attractive because we want to mate with them.And
why do we want to mate with them
?Because their features suggest to us that they are the fittest to produce good
children,i.e,they have healthy genes inside.
Let us take the case of face first because most of the times we look at the face
of an individual first.
In the University of Aberdeen,Scotland psychologist Lisa
Debruine in her Face Research Lab has
done some very revealing work on this.
In her research she has broken down the face into its
different components, namely eyes,nose,mouth and skin. She has taken an average
caucasian man and woman (by sampling from 60 males and females).The average
woman has smaller jaw,thinner eyebrows ,men have more square jaws,thicker
eyebrow and more square hairline.
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Average caucasian woman and man . Courtesy Discovery Channel
Debruine has devised a way to make the face of a
woman more feminine or masculine by making her eyes smaller or larger, jaw thinner or
squarer,eyebrows more thinner (and raising it a bit) or flatter.She then placed
the unchanged photo,the masculanised photo and the feminised photo to men.81
percent men preferred the more feminised woman. Similarly majority of females
liked the more masculinised male.
masculinised unchanged feminised
Now the question is why a face gets more
masculine or feminine? During childhood both males and females look similar.As adolescence arrives sex hormones begin to generate in both
sexes.Testosterone in men and estrogen and progesterone in women.These hormones
cause male features and female features to develop in case of men and women
respectively.The more male hormone the more pronounced male features and more
female hormones the more pronounced female features. The higher amount of sex
hormones means a very healthy reproductive ability. This also generally
indicate good health. Therefore mating with these individuals has more chances
of producing healthy children.
So we find an individual attractive because his
features indicate that mating with him or her will be profitable for having good children and useful
in passing on our own genes to the future generation and thereby perpetuating
them.
( Adapted from Discovery Channel video Science of Sex appeal)
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