Blog 6 (4th December 2012)

I was curious to look into smiling as part of attractiveness, as this is something i do alot of the time myself, although i think it is more a reflection on my personality.

I came across a website called 2KnowMyself.  It starts with the title “Does smiling make you more attractive”.  It goes on to say “A recent study has shown that women rated happy men or men who smiled often as less attractive than men who looked proud and arrogant”.  My initial thoughts after having read this was i had to question why women would prefer a man that did not smile, as this to me would seem unattractive.  It explains that “a proud and arrogant appearance reflects “Higher power and Status”.  The writer of this article does not show evidence of how this study was conducted.  The other question i was left wondering about was why are women attracted to higher power and status in a man rather than smiling?

Although i found this interesting to read, i would not say that this is a reliable source of information. What percentage of the population does this cover?  A happy smiling face must surely contribute to women finding men attractive.

Reference http://www.2knowmyself.com/does_smiling_make_you_more_attractive

Blog 7 (4th December 2012)

I have covered a variety of different theories to the “secrets to attraction” including popular myths,questionaire,quiz,googled websites and academic text books.

Numerious studies have found that it is not one factor that relates to how one person finds another person attractive, but contributing factors such as body language, facial attraction, personality, smiling etc.

I found that more convincing evidence was based on the open question i asked people and academic text books.  Alot of website information demonstrated that perhaps it was the judgement of the writer.  This experience has taught me that gathered information must be robust with supporting evidence.

Blob 5 (1st December 2012)

It had actually never occured to me before that personality may have a strong link to attractiveness, and i was remarkably struck by my findings in my last blog.  I felt drawn as a result of this to do a personality questionaire of my own.  I feel i know myself pretty well but was intrigued to see what a questionaire would reveal.  It was important to me not to do just any old questionaire, so the BBC Science and Nature website looked like a good option to me.  I had never done anything like this before and felt this site would perhaps give me a reasonable form of opinion.  The test took around 15 minutes to complete and said the questions were about 68 different emotional states.

The results referred to confidence saying, “you seem to have described yourself as someone who does tend to be cautious and careful”.  This seems to be a fair description of how i have analysed my own personality.

Next was about openness saying that “you may be reluctant at times to consider new approaches”.  I would not agree with this one as i feel i am flexible in my approach to most things.

Agreeableness described me as “getting on with people is very important to you”.  Although this is correct, i assume that this would be important to most people in society.

Lastly was conscientiousness saying “I don’t like having things too structured”  In my opinion this is completely inaccurate, as i am the exact opposite of this.

Overall i found the experience of doing a questionaire interesting to complete, but would not consider this an accurate finding of personality.  It did not reveal to me anything that i did not know before, or help me in my findings to believe anything new about myself.

Reference; http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/personality/index.shtml

Blog 4 (28th November 2012)

Last night i had a bit of a get together with some of my family, so i took this opportunity for my blog research. I asked them “what attracts you to someone” I wanted the question to be an open question so it could be answered as honestly as possible.

Here are the results;

Person 1   eyes

Person 2   face

Person 3   personality

Person 4   eyes

Person 5   personality

Person 6   eyes

I thought this would be an interesting way of doing research as it was an answer that i could hear for myself.  Personality surprised me as a first choice, as i tend to think of attractiveness being a more physical factor.  It has given me insight that attraction is not all about looks.  My findings have shown that eyes was the most popular answer, which would have been my answer had i included myself.  This short question has opened my own eyes to other people’s perception of attractiveness.  Although these findings are not an accurate conclusion about the “secrets to attraction”  i had fun doing this with real people and certainly something to consider in my own judgement about this subject.

Blog 3 (23rd november) Opposites Attract- Popular Myths

I found this information in Atkinson and Hilgard’s Introduction to Psychology 15th Edition p-669. To my surprise after having read this, it has altered my thoughts on this. I was absolutely convinced that “opposites attract” and in my opinion was undeniably true.

It says “An old saying declares that opposites attract, and lovers are fond of recounting how different they are from each other; ‘I love boating, but she prefers mountain climbing.’ ‘Im in engineering, but he’s a history student.’ What such lovers overlook is that they both like outdoor activities; they are both preproffesionals; they are both the same nationality, the same religion, the same social class, and the same education level; and they are within three years of each other in age and within five IQ points of each other in intelligence. In short, the old saying is mostly false.”

With one past but significant relationship in my life, i never thought anything other than how opposite we were. However, these explained factors have led me to consider similarities that i never gave thought to. This reading has helped me to think and compare with my own life experience.

Reference; Atkinson& Hilgard’s Introduction to Psychology p-669 Nolen-Hoeksema Fredrickson Loftus Wagenaar 15th Edition

 

Blog 2 (14th November 2012) “What Makes You Fancy Someone”

From the BBC news website, i read an article about this today. It explains that “men in paticular go for women with symmentrical faces” While “the preference in women for symmetry is not quite so pronounced” I do not know on what fact or evidence this is based on as the researcher only describes this as being what is “thought”

The next part of the article goes on to talk about “The Hour Glass Figure” saying “studies have shown that men prefer women with a waist to hip ratio of 0.7” It also reported that “A group of researchers even compared this ratio with the average ratio of Miss America winners over the years. It was exactly the same”

At this point my thinking is that the research comparissons are reasonably believeable, but it would have been more informative if the article had gone on to describe what studies had been carried out with men, so i feel that this part was a bit vague.

The last part of the article is a study that has been carried out by cognitive psychologist David Perrett at the university of St Andrews saying that “what people really, really want is a mate that looks like their parents” Perrett suggests “that we find our own faces attractive because they remind us of the faces we looked at constantly  in our early childhood years- Mum and Dad”  The article goes on to say “Perrett studies what makes faces attractive. He has developed a computerised morphing system that can endlessly adjust to suit his needs. Students in his experiments are  left to decide which face they fancy the most. Perrett has taken images of students own faces and morphed them into the opposite sex. Of all the faces on offer this seems to be the face that the subject will always prefer. They can not recognise it as their own, they just know they like it”

As my blog is to discover the “secrets to attraction” this last study gave me valuable information, that people are attracted to certain faces that are similar to their own. It is something that i have never thought/considered before that is subconcious in attraction.

http://www.bbc.co.uk./science/hottopics/love/attraction.shtml

WHAT ARE THE SECRETS TO ATTRACTION ?

6TH November 2012

This question really gets me thinking, so today i have searched google and typed in “what are the secrets to attraction”

Belfast Telegraph

Interestingly in their new book psychologists Viren Swami and Adrian Furnham say that they have unlocked the secret to attraction. They discovered by asking the question “Are Looks Everything” that apparently yes they are.

With this in mind, i know that we are all drawn to different features of attractiveness, and i will google again to discover more about these features.

Reference

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/the-secrets-of-attraction-what-makes-a-person-desirable-13375856.html

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