Having established that we have a strong preference for 'average' looking faces, psychologists have repeated their tests using fish, birds and cars as the subjects in order to ascertain whether there is a general cognitive mechanism asigning attractiveness to things of average appearance, or whether it only really works with the kind of things we might want to copulate with.
Cognitive Daily reports the results: "For birds and fish, there was still a relationship between averageness and attractiveness. But there was no link in the case of cars, suggesting that we may judge attractiveness in living organisms differently than we do for artifacts."
But a car is one of those artefacts that tends to play a significant role in mating rituals. Not all artefacts profer differentiation or status. Perhaps these tests could be usefully expanded!
Also, are teenagers as likely to prefer average-lookers as adults? There are surely stages in our pyscho-sexual development where differentiation counts a whole lot more.
No comments:
Post a Comment