John Oliver did a wonderful segment recently about how horribly the media reports science. Today, I saw a piece in the New York Magazine that illustrated this. In Kids Don't Trust Ugliness, author Cari Romm begins by saying, "Being little doesn't exempt you from being a shallow little jerk."
Let me stop you right there.
Yes, I know that Romm probably did not pick the title or subdeck -- that's typically the editor's job -- but I don't love that everything I've read so far is misleading. The study didn't suggest that kids don't trust ugly people. It's that they trust attractive people more -- which is true in adults, too.
The article goes on to discuss a study by Ma, Xu and Luo that appeared in the journal Frontiers in Psychology: "A team of Chinese researchers recruited groups of 8-, 10-, and 12-year-olds, with 33 to 34 kids in each group (a similarly-sized group of college students served as a control). These pint-size volunteers viewed a series of 200 unfamiliar faces, categorizing each one as trustworthy, untrustworthy, or neither; a month later, they came back to view the same faces, this time rating them on attractiveness. Across age groups, the two judgments were closely linked — the more attractive faces, in general, were also considered more trustworthy." This result isn't surprising, given several other studies on children's perceptions of attractive people -- including one that found that preschoolers prefer more attractive peers as playmates. But I object to jumping to the conclusion that this alone makes kids shallow, mean, or jerks. Because, first of all -- who's to say that their perceptions are wrong? There is evidence that more attractive people are, in fact, more trustworthy. Psychology studies show that nice people often "look" nice, and mean people "look" mean. One reason for this is that the expressions we make most often etch themselves into our faces the more we age. People who smile a lot get laugh lines; in fact, adults tend to judge people with crows feet (pictured below) to be more intelligent and attractive.
Meanwhile, people who frown a lot begin to take on a bulldog-like appearance:
If you had nothing but a photograph to make an assessment of another human, who would you trust more? Someone who looked happy and nice, or someone who grumpy and mean?
Additionally, many of the things we find attractive in others are hardwired preferences, designed to help us seek out the best possible mates, friends and tribes. While some beauty standards are dynamic and culturally-determined, there are some traits that are universally considered to be attractive. These traits are all signs of health, youth, power and fertility. Why do we find these traits so attractive? Because people who didn't, don't exist anymore. They mated with and invested their resources in sick, old, weak and infertile people -- meaning they produced fewer and less viable offspring. (Moreover, we evolved to find certain traits to be ugly, even repulsive -- this helped contain the spread of infectious disease long before we had germ theory, and prevented people from investing in mates with genetic issues that would impair their offsprings' survival.) They formed alliances with weaker tribes, and were overcome by those with a preference for stronger allies. As I wrote in These Specific Traits Will Make You More Charismatic, Starting RIGHT Now, charisma isn't an art -- it's a science. We evolved to find charismatic people to be charismatic! People who exhibit both warmth (e.g., looking nice, seeming to like me) and power (good health, height, strength, resilience, confidence) are people we want to associate ourselves with, because they are the ones who will do the most to ensure our survival.
If they are warm but weak, we can count on them to try to protect and provide for us... but not to succeed.
If they are powerful but cold, we can count on them to protect and provide... just not for us. Because they don't seem especially fond of us. Going back to the Ma et al. study -- kids are shown a picture and asked to rate trustworthiness. The kids have nothing to go on except for appearance. Of course they trust the attractive people more. They're the ones it makes the most sense to trust. They're the ones who are more likely to be nice, healthy and powerful. This heuristic is one that is powerfully ingrained. Even as babies, beautiful things make us feel good. And the thing that makes us feel the most good -- by far-- is an attractive face. Especially an attractive female face. I would love to see another version of the study in which kids rate the attractiveness and trustworthiness of adults with whom they interact. I think that would tell us more about how children assess trustworthiness than a study focused on a single photo. *** Want to know more? Check out:
Oh! And here's that wonderful John Oliver segment I mentioned in the beginning of this post:
8 Comments
christina
7/16/2016 08:39:44 am
This is BS. Some people who are "grumpy-looking" or have sad lines etched into their faces are not only kind but intelligent and strong. Perhaps we are mistaking mean looking for what it might really be, HARDSHIP. I've seen beautiful looking people become "ugly" (not just to my eyes but others I've spoken with) because these beauties were very mean. Children should be taught that looks are only skin deep, like I was by my parents. We should not judge people by how pretty they are. We should judge them on how they behave. Remember, Ted Bundy was very charming and good-looking. But many young women lost their lives because they trusted him.
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7/18/2016 04:09:40 pm
You're absolutely right. I didn't mean to imply that everyone who looks mean *is* mean. Only that some people who do, are. I attended an interesting lecture at Stanford once on Converging Appearances in Couples, and that was one of the findings they discusses. They also talked about mirror neurons, and how people who are together longer start to talk, move, and smile more like each other. It's a very interesting topic.
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Anna
4/18/2017 10:36:02 am
But kids don't know that
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Markus
12/12/2016 10:07:01 am
This is spot on! Being ugly is the way of god/the universe to tell you that you are total garbage. A waste of air and ressources. And not only will people hate you and bully you for all your life (that is a totally NATURAL and HEALTHY response towards biological failures), but the universe, LIFE ITSELF hates you with never ending RAGE!!
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4/20/2017 01:48:30 pm
That's one way of looking at it. My way is, We all have biases. Some of them are hardwired. Being aware of them is the best way to start overcoming them.
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Shenaye
6/5/2017 03:01:55 am
I just don't like ugly guys I I have a cute guy handsome looking guy the then be Stuck with some ugly guy
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7/8/2017 11:39:12 am
I hope you people in the comment section die in a car wreck for your disgusting shallow comments.
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asd
2/26/2018 04:20:10 pm
Unattractiveness doesn't define character. But some people just look REPULSIVE, and you can bet that they behave like that too
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