In this episode, we look a little deeper into one of our more elusive video topics, namely why it is that male facial and behavioural dominance and masculinity can be predicted from the length of the second and fourth digits (the first finger and ring finger). Why is this? Is it reasonable to ass...
2022-02-20 21:20:00 +0000 UTC View Post
In this episode, we discuss the evolution of various female bodily characteristics, including waist-to-hip ratio, breast size; the 'hourglass figure' and buttock fat, and discuss why preferences for all are not as universal as one might think. Following on from last week's episode, we then go ont...
2022-02-10 12:16:49 +0000 UTC View Post
In this episode, we talk about why men prefer hairless women and what it suggests about the evolution of sexual dimorphism in humans. We then discuss why women prefer hairy men. However, strangely, it seems to vary hugely according to culture and country. We discuss why.
A recent study by Hies and Lewis (2021) has shown that wearing a mask increases perceived physical attractiveness. This stands in contrast to a 2016 study which showed the opposite. Why has this happened? What effect has the pandemic had on our psychology, and why has it had this effect? Using ev...
2022-01-19 22:20:44 +0000 UTC View Post
In this episode, we talk about the evolutionary reasons why the most attractive couples have a 26% higher chance of giving birth to a daughter than the average couple. We discuss whether their attractiveness might be playing a role, or whether it might be caused by other mediating factors such as...
2022-01-06 01:46:44 +0000 UTC View Post
Guest host, Simon Groome, talks about the relative effects and severity of ageing in men as compared with women. With reference to Bovet's paper, this leads us to talk about whether female attractiveness can act as a cue for residual reproductive value (RRV) or future childbearing potential. Fina...
2021-12-12 00:59:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Men and women value attractiveness differently with contemporary research showing a asymmetric distribution of the halo effect and the benefits it provides to one's desirability. The Halo effect has been popularized as a positive attribution given to strangers, where we expect better looking indi...
2021-11-27 04:52:56 +0000 UTC View Post
For decades, the consensus on male facial robusticity has been that it evolved due to the dietary needs of our early hominin ancestors (see a picture below of what we believe the Australopithicus Afarensis looked like). The discussed paper by David Carrier disputes this, however. We discuss the r...
2021-11-06 06:05:08 +0000 UTC View Post
In this episode, I interview JCTheCatalyst, known on Tiktok (170K) for his facial aesthetics videos and we discuss some of the lesser known things people can do to improve the way they look, as well as the dynamics of how tiktok and youtube are different in the facial aesthetics niche.
Is there such thing as being too attractive? Apparently so, as we look at a thesis by Mehng on a unique case of Debrahlee Lorenzana who was fired for distracting workers by being 'too attractive.' However, the details of the case aren't as simple as they seem, and if Debrahlee was both attractive...
2021-10-22 03:23:49 +0000 UTC View Post
This week, we look at the opposite of Ep.12 which suggests that averageing faces results in more attractive looking composites. Much of the benefits of averaged faces are that they have unusually higher rates of symmetry and perfectly clear skin (as a byproduct of the compositing process). Howeve...
2021-10-09 09:33:56 +0000 UTC View Post
When it comes to assessing facial attractiveness, 'Facial Attractiveness: Evolutionary Based Research ' by AC Little has proposed three tenants: Symmetry, Dimorphism and Averageness; it is the last point that is seldom discussed and even less understood.
An averaged face is one produced as ...
2021-09-30 09:49:44 +0000 UTC View Post
Being unattractive is a disadvantage in many social interactions if you do the wrong thing or act out of line. These unusual behaviours are called 'norm violations' and as it turns out, there is a double devil-effect at play when physically unattractive people behave in an unattractive way. The d...
2021-09-20 11:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
It's undeniable that intelligence is attractive, but the question still remains whether it is attractive enough to outweigh physical beauty. In this episode, we take a deep dive into the importance of physical attractiveness and what role it plays against other commonly praised traits such as int...
2021-09-10 10:01:10 +0000 UTC View Post
Body proportions matter a surprising amount in the context of dating but much of it is only able to be understood in a realistic field study. In today's episode, we go over a unique speed-dating study with a large sample size to confirm that physical features such as shoulder-width ratio and wais...
2021-08-31 10:33:36 +0000 UTC View Post
"Attraction cannot be negotiated"
You may have heard of the phrase that attraction cannot be negotiated and in this episode it couldn't be truer. As we explore through the research of White Et al, unattractive participants in the dating market pay...
2021-08-24 10:49:25 +0000 UTC View Post
Tattoos have gone from a social taboo to the upper echelons of high fashion with Jean Paul Gaultier experimenting with tattoo designs in much of his work in the early 90s. In this episode we discuss the social perception of tattoos and the following research suggesting that tattoos have a sensiti...
2021-08-15 09:58:38 +0000 UTC View Post
In this episode we go over a relatively new concept called 'the fear of being single' (FOBS) which suggests that individuals with higher amounts of this trait, i.e. afraid of being single, anxiety, loneliness, are less selective with their partner choices and willing to go on many more dates to f...
2021-08-05 02:15:52 +0000 UTC View Post
In this episode, we start at the Tokyo Olympics and end at a deep dive into why fringe internet communities such as 'incels' and 'femcels' are dissatisfied with their looks and dating by considering Leonhard Et al's paper on dating preferences based on one's own looks. This falls into the...
2021-07-25 13:17:51 +0000 UTC View Post
In this episode we cover the negative sterotyping of unattractive individuals. You may have heard of the 'halo effect' where attractive individuals have positive attributes and traits granted to them simply by virtue of being physically attractive. As it turns out from Klebl Et al's paper, there ...
2021-07-02 11:09:47 +0000 UTC View Post
In this episode we look at a paper by Groyecka Et al 2017 on how attractiveness is somewhat determined by non-physical cues of voice and smell among other factors such as personality, status and wealth. One of the key findings is just how important smell is, from being able to differentiate...
2021-06-10 08:54:53 +0000 UTC View Post
In this episode we dissect Cunningham et al's 1990 paper on female facial preferences in men and why more 'babyish' (neotenous) features are actually preferred over hyper-masculine ones. This podcast takes a deep dive into facial aesthetics research, providing additional context, commentary and f...
2021-05-20 08:17:08 +0000 UTC View Post
Quite often, we see far too many people who become hyper fixated on one particular facial feature that leads to their insecurities. For many, it is often the lips or the nose which leads to a downhill spiral of elective cosmetic surgeries as an avenue of a fix rather than seeking psychological he...
2021-05-04 09:38:57 +0000 UTC View Post