Posting #2

Beholding beauty: How it's Been Studied
Kim. L
Health
Elizabeth Landau
cnn.com
3 Pages

Semir Zeki a professor of neuroesthetics at University College London has found that there are cultural trends for what people believe is beautiful. The Japanese have a preference for asymmetry, while the Western idealize symmetrical faces as most do. Zeki believes that because we see ourselves everyday in the mirror, analyzing all of our faults, and blemishes we do not see ourselves as beautiful. Seeing others from afar and less constantly gives us less time to recognize their defects, which is why they seem more beautiful. The perception of beauty may weaken as we notice these imperfections.

Faces that are more symmetrical and average looking are deemed as more attractive in scientific studies. In the more primal state of hunters and gatherers, men who were good hunters generally liked females with symmetric faces, and women tend to like men with symmetric faces even more so when they are pregnant or nursing. Even babies respond more positively towards people with symmetrical faces, because it is the most basic shape. According to a 2007 study in Perception and Psychophysics, human ancestors would pass on good genes to offspring and be repelled by trains that were useless in survival. In 2011, a study in the journal Economics and Human Biology found that people with asymmetrical faces had come from more difficult and deprived childhoods than those with symmetrical faces.

Women are more drawn to rugged, dominant men during periods of high fertility because dominance is perceived as fitness, which is why women buy sexier clothes when they're most fertile. They are also attracted to men with higher testosterone levels as they would have strong immune systems, which is a key attribute in survival.

Beauty is also plays a key role within friendships, women tend to have friends with similar attractiveness in a study in 2010 in the journal Human Nature. This is because woman who's the less attractive one in a friendship pair are likely to see their more attractive friend as a mating rival.