BODY

Here Are 8 Things That Are

Making People Less Attractive,
According To Science
Forget the Law of Attraction. What's the Science of Unattraction? Find out what the
research has to say about what makes us less-than desirable.

BY R.J. WILSON

1. Asymmetry
Poets say that beauty is ineffable and indescribable and mysterious or whatever. Science
says that's rubbish. In fact, psychologists have uncovered the mathematical rules behind
what we call "a pretty face," and it's disappointingly, even discouragingly, simple.
Getty Images Entertainment / S. Alemdar

People prefer symmetrical faces. That's it. That's the big secret. Well, people also gravitate
toward "average" proportions, so people whose facial features are right in the middle of th
population in terms of size and "layout," for lack of a better word, are seen as more attrac-
tive. But those are the only two factors, at least in terms of initial aesthetic preference.
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"People's faces usually only differ subtly in symmetry," Anthony Little, a University of Stirlin
psychologist, told education site Science News for Students. "So symmetry looks normal to
us, and then we like it."
Getty Images Entertainment / Tristan Fewings

So what can you do if your proportions are all off? You can always be funny. That seriously
works.
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2. Off-Putting Body Language

When your body language remains closed off, maybe even a bit foreboding, that makes you
seem less attractive. Scientists proved it not long ago.

That's right. In 2016, a team of researchers from a handful of universities published a paper
called "Dominant, open nonverbal displays are attractive at zero-acquaintance." If you regu
larly follow the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, you might have
read it. If not, allow us to explain.
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Researchers took a group of assistants and had them make two dating app profiles (the
study doesn't say which app). In the first profile, the assistants were depicted adopting a
"contractive" pose—arms crossed, shoulders hunched, et cetera. In the second, they took a
"expansive" pose, like raising their arms in victory or reaching toward an object.

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Getty Images News / Leon Neal

Same people. Different pics. The unwitting participants in the study overwhelmingly chose
to swipe right (literally or metaphorically) on the pictures that featured expansive poses.

3. Lack of Sufficient Sleep

This goes way deeper than bags under the eyes. A team of researchers in Stockholm, Swe-
den, devised an experiment to see just how real beauty sleep can be. They took 23 unfortu-
nate test subjects between the ages of 18 and 31 and photographed them after a nice, 8-ho
sleep.

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Getty Images Entertainment / David McNew

Then they kept the poor lab folks awake for 31 hours. The published study doesn't mention
exactly how they kept them awake so long, but we have to assume they have a pretty loud
stereo at the sleep laboratory.

Anyway, armed with two sets of pictures of the same group of people, the researchers aske
65 strangers to rate them on attractiveness. Unsurprisingly, subjects looked "less healthy"
and "less attractive" after this extreme sleep deprivation.

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AFP / SAUL LOEB

The study concludes, a bit cheekily if you ask us, "our results provide important insights int
judgments about health and attractiveness that are reminiscent of the anecdotal wisdom
harbored in ...the colloquial notion of 'beauty sleep.'"

4. Being Lazy
Here's another reason to haul yourself off the couch and help out every once in awhile. It
turns out that being seen as lazy can wreak havoc on your attractiveness score. Not that an
one's keeping score.
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Pexels

Except that someone actually did keep score. Their names were Kevin Kniffin and David Wil
son, and they're authors of a paper that proves the laziness theory, published in the journa
Evolution and Human Behavior in 2004.

They took an incoming archaeology class and had them all rate each other on certain per-
sonality traits and general attractiveness. After the 6-week course was over, the researchers
asked the questions all over again. Subjects who scored low on "effort" saw their attractive
ness numbers drop significantly.

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Unsplash

"If we were to state our results in the form of a beauty tip," the authors concluded, "It would
be, 'If you want to enhance your physical attractiveness, become a valuable social partner.'
5. Lack of Humor
We've already established that being funny can make you seem more attractive. It seems
that the opposite is also true. Being a humorless lump can even make a chiseled hunk start
to look a little "blah."

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Getty Images Entertainment / Gareth Cattermole

This information comes to us courtesy of a 2009 psychological study from the University of
California, San Diego. Researchers exposed their subjects to "vignettes," then had them pic
the folks they'd like to go out with. The clowns got all the love. (They weren't literal clowns
we don't think, but the scenes were described as "vignettes," so who knows?)

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Incredibly, humor seemed to be the dominant trait that subjects found attractive. Average
senses of humor scored lower for attractiveness than great senses of humor. A nonexistent
taste for cracking wise was a non-starter.
Getty Images Entertainment / Vittorio Zunino Celotto

This study "found no significant interaction between gender and humor," meaning that bot
men and women preferred funny partners. So there is hope for all of the sad comedians ou
there. The way to anyone's heart is through their funny bone.

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6. Mean Muggin'
If you're trying to win love by projecting a tough image, you're sneering up the wrong tree.
That's because science suggests that people don't find "evil" or "mean" folks that attractive
Getty Images Entertainment / Brendon Thorne

That might come as news to all the vampiric anti-heroes of the world, but the evidence is
pretty hard to refute. Consider this: In 2014, Chinese researchers conducted an experiment
to find out whether "personality manipulations...modulate facial attractiveness ratings."

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In other words, do perceived personalities make people more or less attractive (or even
more-or-less attractive, which is what we've always aspired to)?
freestocks.org

The answer seems to be yes. Study subjects looked at a collection of portraits of people
bearing blank expressions. But the photos were labeled. Some bore the Chinese word for
"decent" or "honest." Others were marked as "mean" and "evil."

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The evil folks lost this battle. Participants overwhelmingly called the decent folk more attra
tive. That's nice news for nice guys.

7. Being Stressed Out

You know that old saying that warns us not to "let them see you sweat?" That old chestnut
got it wrong. People can actually sense you sweat, if this study from the journal Biology Let
ters is accurate.

Getty Images Entertainment / Frazer Harrison

Researchers theorized that women find men attractive in part because a handsome face is
somehow an indication of a healthy immune system. Don't ask us where they got that idea
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Anyway, they were trying to test that theory on women's facial attractiveness, so they got a
bunch of Latvian women, shot them up with hepatitis B vaccine, and had men look at their
faces to decide who was the hottest of them all.

As part of this study, the researchers were measuring the subjects' cortisol levels. Cortisol i
a stress hormone, and when levels are high, you're under pressure.

Getty Images News / Joe Raedle

Researchers didn't find any correlation between antibodies and attractiveness in women
(which is strange, because previous studies did find that link in men). But the cortisol did
seem to make a difference. The men found women with higher cortisol levels to be less at-
tractive—despite the fact that they had no information about these women's cortisol levels

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8. Plain Old Untrustworthiness

"I cannot tell a lie," said young George Washington. "I cut down the cherry tree."

That's the kind of attitude that later helped Washington hook up with Martha. People dig
honesty, and we can prove it. At least, we can cite someone who sort of proved it.
John-Mark Kuznietsov

In 2006, Sampo V. Paunonen, of the University of Western Ontario, published a study called
"You are honest, therefore I like you and find you attractive" in the Journal of Research in
Personality .

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Paunonen handed short descriptive paragraphs about fictional men and women. The char-
 acters were all over the map, ethics-wise; they were described as having three personality
characteristics, or their opposites. The characters were smart (or they weren't), independen
(or hopelessly clingy), and honest (or fibbers).

William Stitt

Then Paunonen asked the subjects to measure the characters' attractiveness. The only cha
acteristic that had any link to that attractiveness score was honesty. People were attracted
the honest characters.

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Hey, don't blame us. We're just being honest.

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