The attraction to good-looking people--Why the evolved preference?

[quarky]

If I was a straight babe, I wouldn't be attracted to Leonardo De Crappio. Johnny Depp, just barely.

Jesse V. was damn good as an announcer for the WWF.
You have to give him that.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Why did humans evolve such a huge preference for physical attractiveness?

It's undoubtedly been said, but whatever sort of people we evolved to be attracted to would be considered the attractive people, almost by definition.

~~ Paul

 

[Comrade Raptor]

That you think it is good looking is because Evolution has you thinking that. Had the dice fallen differently, Kirstie Alley would be the hottest thing in Hollywood...

Star Trek II -era Kirstie Alley was.

 

[Baylor]

It's undoubtedly been said, but whatever sort of people we evolved to be attracted to would be considered the attractive people, almost by definition.

~~ Paul

So why do we find one female's facial features more attractive than the others?

 

[little grey rabbit]

Take two 20 year old females. Girl A has a history of chronic health problems and has a subnormal IQ but has the same facial features as the girl on my avatar - big eyes, symmetrical face, full lips. Girls B hasn't had a history of serious health problems in her life and has near genius level IQ but has Meg Griffin-type facial features-- pudgy, square face, small, squinty eyes, small lips. Assuming both girls have the same body type (~5'5" 115 lbs., athletic) Girl A will always be selected as the better mate. Why did humans evolve such a preference for girl A's facial features even though they aren't the best indicator of health or good genes?

A. High IQ is not necessarily useful for survival. At the moment humans are using it as a pretty good strategy, but 100 000 years ago it wasnt that big an advantage over the gorillas and who knows where our high IQ will have lead us in evolutionary terms in another 100 000 years. High IQ might prove to be disastrous strategy.

B. Ugly girls seem to have no problem getting knocked up if they want to.

 

[Mark6]

B. Ugly girls seem to have no problem getting knocked up if they want to.

But they do have problem holding onto their mates afterward. Not having a father who sticks around is a big evolutionary disadvantage among humans.

 

[little grey rabbit]

these days it isn't and the history of committed meaningful monogamous relationships is but an eyeblink in man's evolutionary history.

If the haram or the flange of baboons is the background of our evolutionary psychology then the dominant male appears capable of looking after a number of mates and offspring.

 

[quarky]

Bubba genetics rules!

(pity, too, but i guess it beats the heavy hand of government.)

Turns out the 'lookers' aren't really doing much reproduction.

 

[Cavemonster]

It's undoubtedly been said, but whatever sort of people we evolved to be attracted to would be considered the attractive people, almost by definition.

~~ Paul

Well, a possible outcome would be an attraction measure that wasn't visually based. We could have wound up linking most of attraction to smell, with appearance as a small afterthought. We could have evolved to make our mating decisions based solely on observed behavior. We might have evolved to not think about attractiveness much and just mate with whoever's handy at the moment.

I'm fairly sure there are animals whose mating practice can roughly be described in all those ways, or at least not visually centered.

What's particularly odd about humans is that our mating standards seem to color a lot of our behavior strongly divorced from reproduction.

We can deny that advertising effects us, but we're more likely to buy toothpaste or motor oil if it's pitched by someone who fits a beauty standard, even if it's someone of the same gender and we're heterosexual.

Although we're not the only animal that appreciates pornography, we seem to be the only animal that produces it and dwells on visual attractiveness divorced from actual reproduction.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but while other animals do masturbate, I don't think any deliberately seek out visual stimuli to do so.

 

[The Man]

Are you trying to say this man isn't the object of every woman's desire?

Well, I'm Glad "this man" ain't "The Man". Though experience has taught me that the latter part of your question still applies. Since I do have long hair and still got some of it on the top of my head, perhaps I should go for the goatee and long hair look. Might give me that pirate like (or evil alternate universe twin) bad boy look. Dang, I just shaved off the full beard (I usually sport during the winter months) last week. Well, there is always next spring.

 

[little grey rabbit]

when I lived in Iceland for a while, a study had just come out suggesting that predominantly the Y chromosome of icelanders was derived from norway, whereas the mitochondrial dna (maternal descent) mostly derived from Scotland/northern England.

The hypothesis was that it was mostly landless younger sons from Norway that settled Iceland and they stopped of in Scotland to pick up wives.

And this, (according to the icelanders) is why iceland is full of good looking women and Britain is full of ugly women.

 

[Dragonrock]

About a 100 years ago I read a book in which the author describes his theory of everyone having 2 faces. One on the front of their head and one inside of it. The face inside of your head is an amalgamation of every face you've ever seen in your life with precedence given to faces seen more recently. A person measured another's attractiveness based on how closely they resemble this mental face. In tribal days our internal face was made up of our family and tribe mates. Mirrors have made our mental face mostly a copy of our own face which isn't too much of a change as we generally look like our relatives. People we see regularly will also become more attractive over time as they continue to affect our internal face.

I don't remember the author's name so I wouldn't be surprised if this is just part of the body language/handwriting analysis/biofeedback craze of the 70s and 80s.

But, the only over-arching theme in attractiveness seems to be symmetry. Pretty much everything else is cultural.

 

[Roboramma]

A. High IQ is not necessarily useful for survival. At the moment humans are using it as a pretty good strategy, but 100 000 years ago it wasnt that big an advantage over the gorillas and who knows where our high IQ will have lead us in evolutionary terms in another 100 000 years. High IQ might prove to be disastrous strategy.

Intelligence was certainly being selected for 1 million years ago. As to 100,000, well, we haven't changed much in that time, so it's hard to say what the selection pressures were, but there is some evidence that the brain changed some in the last 100,000 years, which suggests selection pressures.

As to "high IQ might prove to be a disastrous strategy", the thing is that natural selection isn't about the future, it's about the present: are these genes increasing in frequency from one generation to the next? If so, they are likely being selected for (unless it's just genetic drift), and that's really all there is to it. What will happen 100,000 years from now, well, hasn't happened yet and doesn't impact on evolution today.

 

[Soapy Sam]

First, humans are pretty new. It's likely we harbour genes coding for behaviour which formed long before anyone capable of entry to a country club evolved. Maybe we like big eyes because Lemurs have big eyes and that attraction set about the time we last shared a common ancestor- which I'd guess would be in the Eocene.

Second, if our attraction sense is cultural rather than genetic, (why do white men on average prefer white women in a white culture, but are happy to mate with coloured ones elsewhere?), then we must ask to what extent Sexual Selection is genetic and to what extent cultural in humans. If females can "breed" peacocks with big tails and deer with immense antlers, what parts of men did women select for? Big noses?

This is a complicated issue.

 

[Eos of the Eons]

It is complicated. Do keep in mind that peacock feathers and antlers are a burden only during mating season. Those things shed. Humans are very different animals for many reasons with lots of variables.

There was this strange show on TV, where couples met only in the dark. At first, all of them together. Then people paired off with who they met in the dark. Some even made out. Then, they changed their minds most of the time when the lights came on. They could have had everything in common and even were attracted to each other until they saw each other. Most of them didn't want to date afterwards. Very few left the show wanting to see each other again. So many things must click, even looks, for a couple to want to see each other more than once.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

So why do we find one female's facial features more attractive than the others?

Well, in the case of the two woman you posted, the one on the left is pasty white and thus looks dead, while the one on the left has a healthy-looking skin color and has probably not fallen for the go-out-in-the-sun-and-you-die scare of late. Nor has she fallen for the pencil-thin eyebrow thing and appears to believe that hair is a perfectly good thing.

Now, please tell me who Deborah is.

~~ Paul