SEXUAL ATTRACTION: FACES AND HEIGHT

There is evidence to suggest that there is a widely held notion of the ‘ideal’ face. In one study people were shown photos of twelve young women between the ages of twenty and twenty-five and there was marked agreement as to which faces were the most attractive. The only people who disagreed to any extent were the over fifty-five-year-olds and some members of the unskilled occupations.

As so many people agreed about what is attractive they must clearly be making their judgement using certain shared standards. People shown photographs of physically attractive people readily assign them more socially desirable attributes than they do photos of unattractive people. On balance, we also assume that attractive people will be more likely to hold top jobs, be better parents, be more happily married and have better lives generally. It also seems that we are more likely to trust physically attractive people on a first meeting than the physically unattractive. This confers a tremendous advantage on the attractive because by definition almost all contacts are one-offs and will never get any further if there is no immediate attraction. There is a greater chance that this immediate attraction will happen with attractive people.

Height

As a man’s height increases so does our expectation of his socially desirable personal qualities. People tend to guess the height of authority figures and attractive people as taller than they actually are and one researcher has noted that every American president elected since at least 1900 has been the taller of the two major candidates. Women almost everywhere invariably prefer men who are taller than themselves.