I’ve mixed up my two points here. This line should have read:
What benefit is there to putting subconscious knowledge of “She’s attractive because she’s fertile” on top of that?
Acne is especially interesting actually, as it may ward off mates during a period where one would be unlikely to raise fertile offspring (a component of evolutionary fitness). It doesn’t have any real effect on general health though. In fact, a lack of acne despite hormonal triggers could indicate a compromised immune system (don’t recall where I read this, no cite).
If Your cells are well organized on the surface, they probably are so inside too ( brains etc ). Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and Sharon Stone are well-known examples of being good looking and having a Mensa-level IQ.
Pretty = stupid is just jealous people talking, although sometimes good looking people just don’t bother to learn stuff because they can get by with their looks, but they likely have the means to learn. Also the mad scientists that are intelligent but malformed are just as unlikely in real world.
In some articles there is Mrs Adams mentioned ( also mentioned in ‘Who is this man called Cecil Adams?’, although it says it could be his mother ). In this article it however is Ms Adams.
I have a theory on the subject of cuteness. Such as that people (particularly women) like cats because they coincidentally have large eyes, like human babies. When the real reason they have large eyes is to be able to catch prey at night. A little ironic, eh?
Well known, and long generalized. All baby mammals look cute to adult mammals.
Starting with my strikingly handsome self, most of the smart people I know are also good looking. Similarly, in general there seems in my experience to be a correlation between ugly and stupid.
Now, I also know some strikingly good looking people who seem as dumb as bricks (there is a ‘30 Rock’ episode that deals with this to some extent), but I’m guessing that (as **Freakenstein **suggests) it could be a lot of sliding by on their looks.
Oh, while watching the Olympics - 99% of the female athletes are attractive (to me, at any rate). So I think that says at some level that we are wired to find people who are capable of high-level achievement as attractive.
Of their own species, I suppose. Naked mole rats look terrifying when young.
Other species, too, though there are always some exceptions. It’s the big heads and big eyes that seem to do it.
Total guess without justification. What does it mean for cells to be well-organized? Why would a smooth complexion, for instance, equate to brain capacity? Why would symmetrical features relate to ability to recall?
Are you saying there’s a distinction between “Mrs. Adams” and “Ms. Adams”?
Or maybe it says that the thing that makes female athletes have high-level achievement (i.e. physical fitness) is a thing that ranks high on what you find attractive.
Irishman
Yes, I am only guessing, but I didn’t mean just skin deep but all that You can see, like muscles and overall symmetry. Seemingly well built is likely more functional than something that looks like trash. And after all We are all just guessing who would be the one, usually based on something We can evaluate with Our eyes.
As for Ms, I’m not native English speaker and in school We were taught that Ms stands for Miss
( oddly We were never taught how one writes the whole words for Mr and Mrs, We were only taught how they were pronounced - I am still not sure for Mrs… )
Ms was coined to avoid using Mrs or Miss, which represent a woman’s married status. Ms doesn’t imply whether a woman is married or single.
Mr. is simply mister. Mrs. was originally pronounced and spelled “mistress”, but the pronunciation wore down to its current form; it is never written out, except in music, where “mis - sus” is used for lack of anything better.
Thank You, ignorance fought.
I’ve seen missus used in comics but mostly by uneducated blacks, uneducated whites say missis, which I guess is better, but it really doesn’t look like an English word to Me.
And Irishman, after a good night’s sleep I’m going to do even more outrageous guessing.
Connections with looks and health and sanity aren’t My idea. Ancient Romans had a saying ‘mens sana in corpore sano’, that I think in English would be ‘healthy mind in healthy body’. Exercise is easier if You are not malformed and it is well known that it helps Your overall health, body and mind. It improves blood circulation to brains and every other part, it helps for depression etc - all this makes it easier to learn and with that to survive and help others to survive.
If You compare Quasimodo-type person with a hero-type, I think you would expect the hero-type to be smarter, stronger, healthier, living longer, more hard-working, more durable, braver, more friendly and considerate, nicer to kids and old, happier and funnier, more honest, more generous, better for teamwork, Straight Dope member, more docile, neater and cleaner, handier, more artistic, not drunkard, not ruthless, not unfair, not ungrateful and whatever…
It’s an interesting hypothesis, but you’re going to need to do more than refer to Roman proverbs in order to support it. If you come up with a method of operationalising “beauty”, discover a correlation with generally accepted measures of sanity or intelligence and account for confounds* statistically then you may be on to something. Or you could find scientific literature already supporting the contention.
- One major one would be wealth. Education is a major component of success in most intelligence tests that I’ve discovered and wealth plays a major role in the quality of the education for most individuals globally. I can’t think of a metric of attractiveness which wouldn’t be likewise affected by factors in turn affected by wealth like access to sanitation. Unless you’re proposing that there’s an objective measure with which to determine whether cells themselves are superior or inferior. In which case, godspeed. You could start here, perhaps.
gamerunknown.
I’m not specially educated guy and hardly can make any serious studies.
All I say that if You don’t know somebody already, You make guesses.
People are greedy. If You want Your mate to be perfect in all ways, You don’t start Your search among the ugly ones. I’m sure You don’t go to a bar with test tubes, microscopes and some papers to do a survey of family illnesses. You pick the one that pleases Your eye and work from there.
Actually, I think I have encountered the hypothesis before, as a cognitive bias (physical attractiveness bias). No correlation with between perceived attractiveness and mental health (though social skills are a component of that, I suppose). Of course, the wiki points out the feedback effect: an individual largely shunned or ignored will be less inclined to work on social skills or seek social situations.
As for predictors of relationship success, I’ve been informed that mutual perceived physical attractiveness are the best predictors of short term relationship success, but that similarity of moral outlook is the best predictor of long term relationship success. No cite, unfortunately.
gamerunknown.
I read that wiki-article and it makes sense to me.
But… that guy in the picture… caption says citation needed. Indeed, to Me ( male, straight, 40+, white ) he looks very unpleasant, he’s like some old moneybag’s sadistic toyboy. Eye of the beholder etc, but still…
It’s a bias as a generalization, but not a correlation.
Basically I would expect there to be a correlation between attractiveness and physical health. Broadly speaking, it’s the reason why we instinctively discriminate on the basis of appearance at all (obviously it’s not quite that simple; species sometimes select for features that don’t benefit their owners. But it’s the general picture).
And I would expect there to be a correlation between physical health and mental health. We still often think of a big divide between body and mind but they are of course integrated and things like, say, malnutrition, have been shown to impair brain function, sometimes irreparably, as well as the body.
Not necessarily. There may have been a period where there was abundant food and few predators, and any silly preferences females had for mating could have been amplified, being the primary factor for “fitness” in this scenario.
The thing is, fitness is as fitness does, and what fitness does is have progeny.
Creationists like to criticize the phrase “survival of the fittest” as a tautology. Darwinian apologists who can’t think straight object. The objections are wrong: it is a tautology. So what? It means you can’t use it as an argument. It’s not an argument; it’s a catch-phrase that helps focus thought in a useful direction. (BTW, “1+1 = 2” is a tautology, but that doesn’t mean it’s useles.)
Sorry for that little rant. The point is, what procreates is what procreates. Sometimes it’s due to health advantages; other times it’s due to fooling mates into thinking one has a health advantage. And frequently, it’s just cuteness, which can be arbitrary. Yes, over time, “cuteness” can be molded by objective fitness criteria. But it can also have heaps of arbitrariness. The objectively negative ones tend to weed themselves out in the long run, but there will always be heaps of them in any case (because we get new ones). How long would the species of pea-foul persist (and other species with obvious sexual preference factors that are anti-survival)?
It’s actually more general than that: among vertebrates, those that care for their young tend to have young with “cute” features (big eyes, receded chin, roundish features). Those that don’t, tend to have young that are more or less like small adults.