Physical attractiveness outweighs intelligence in partner selection | Hacker News Reader

Physical attractiveness outweighs intelligence in partner selection

psypost.org

This seems like an extremely flawed methodology - it would seem that if you are being shown photos of mates, you can see the attractiveness with your eyes, whereas simply being told the less attractive ones are “more intelligent as reported by their peers” (what does this even mean?) is not as easily visible. Since the mechanism of choice is visual, of course people are going to respond mainly to visual cues. I bet the results of this study drastically change if the women themselves are allowed to interact with mate choices and rate intelligence by their own metrics. What a silly way to go about this.

Imagine a study where all you're given are people's SAT scores, but then told some are "more physically attractive as reported by their peers". For some reason I think this study would find the opposite result.

Thanks hn community for being so smart

I can't tell if that's sincere or one of the sickest burns on this site.

Generally people dislike nerds, so I doubt your prediction.

agreed. Intelligence needs to registered and felt by the participant at a fundamental level (like physical attractiveness). Very good point.

Intelligence doesn’t relate to a visceral feeling, like charisma or power or status or wealth. It has nothing to do with social standing or living your best life. It’s just a metric, like blood pressure or megahertz. If anything it has dork connotations. It’s not surprising it doesn’t sound hot. It is good for social proof—if you claim to like intelligence you sound discerning.

The subjects got to see the photos first hand, but only got a written description of intelligence.

Next time flip it: Have the subjects interact over text as the proxy for intelligence, and give them a written description of attractiveness instead of a photo

really interesting idea:)

> Next time flip it: Have the subjects interact over text as the proxy for intelligence

It's possible to get good measurements of intelligence that way, but for purposes of evaluating the effect of intelligence on attraction it would be about as accurate as using "distance between the top of the person's head and sea level" as a proxy for height.

we could make it a show called Love is Blind, possibly hosted by Nick Lachey

Interesting idea. Let’s connect.

This isn't surprising because physical attractiveness is also known to be subconsciously associated with better health and genetics. These are quite important factors, similar to intelligence.

Meh, you can always come up with reasonable competing hypotheses which is why you need to put it to the test.

If it turned out that intelligence outperformed attractiveness, then you could say that it isn't surprising since parental intelligence would keep their offspring alive longer than just being good looking in a challenging survival situation.

Actually, for me, this is both not and a little surprising. Not surprising because confirms that attractiveness in males is actually important to women (as a puny example of a man, have known this all my adult life, haha). But also it's a little surprising because (if remember correctly) there have been studies showing that success is supposed to be an important factor in how a woman views a man's attractiveness, that the more successful they are, the more attractive the man seems and vice versa. This makes biological sense, because a more successful man would mean more access to resources and status (And maybe not surprisingly, the reverse is not true, where men are evaluating woman's attractiveness. Success has little impact on attractiveness). Yeah, would think intelligence in men would have made a bigger impact...

...Although, attractiveness is of course tied to success as well, with more attractive people tending to be more successful than less, so maybe women are also picking up on this as well?

Arguably "success" is an externally managed and unbiased shorthand for quality.

As in, it's hard to "get ahead" by definition. So anyone that's overtly ahead of the pack has therefore been vetted as superior to most everyone else. It's a reasonable proxy for gauging intelligence, charisma, and interpersonal skills without even meeting them.

As you get more information you'd realize he made his millions making, say, a software product so, fine, that lowers the assumption of interpersonal skills and charisma and increases it of intelligence. Regardless, the shorthand implies an excess compared to average.

TL;DR - Arguably, "successful" is a rational and effective way to gauge a mate's value.

Hmm, I only half agree with your statement on success being a effective way to gauge a mate's value. Yes, success indicates some level of ability, but is in no way a true measure. For instance, a person who has gained his fortune mainly by inheritance and little work of their own is not nearly skilled as a person who has done it nearly all themselves. Or, often someone is in the right place at the right time, but they themselves are fairly average (maybe they joined a randmom startup and was always a junior member of the company, but still became super wealthy because the company IPO'd and they happened to have a decent number of shares).

I'd agree though on average it does indicate some greater chance at being more skilled, but for me at least, success doesn't directly gauge a mate's value. Like many things, it is a lot of factors that all need to be considered together.

Inherited status is a different kind of status, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist or have merit.

Inherited status is an implication of advantage. Sure, YOU didn't out-compete the herd, but your creators did, and my knowing that /you/, through your parents, are the product of success is status for you, too.

Sure, earned success is /also/ a boost, but... let's not pretend like inherited success is a /detractor/.

Everyone weighs what they know with what they don't and assigns status.

Good looking? Plus! Overtly intelligent? Plus! Very awkward around people? Minus! Inherited status? Plus! Black sheep? Hm... If I respect the family's status then... Minus? If I don't then... Plus?

and so on.

We all know "it is a lot of factors" and quite obviously status is merely among them, including inherited status.

Well, I guess like everything, it's up for personal interpretation, which is why I think that success is still only one of the factors in determining viability as a mate. Yeah, what I have tended to notice is that the few friends I have that come from rich families, often from foreign countries and grew up with servants, is that they are limited in ways that I don't really see as someone I'd regard highly as a mate. They often lack simple basics skills, like fixing simple things around the house or the social skills to treat others as equals (well, this last one I only know one person like this). To me, coming from a lot of money can actually be a negative.

Yeah, for me, success is just one of the factors, but to each their own - and I am sure I'm personally biased, because I have not be as successful as I would have liked in my own career paths. If I was really successful, might be saying something completely different (would hope not, but who knows?).

I don't think this shows anything because intelligence was given as a rating, while attractiveness was given as photo. Presenting attractiveness on a scale would make it more fair but only shows how a rating is not how we measure these things naturally. A video of the man doing something intelligent or stupid might be better. But like this, it just replicates prejudice.

The word "physiognomy" comes to mind.

There may be some good reasons for this heuristic - there are some aspects of attractiveness that are completely out of peoples' control; however, in the general case, a lot of a persons's physical attractiveness comes down to choices that the person makes. For example, if you can't control your self in how much sugar or alcohol you consume, you will become less physically attractive. Often, if you are making unhealthy choices, your body will complain. And if your mind is unwilling to sacrifice personal pleasure for the good of your own body, that might be a good sign that you will be unwilling to sacrifice personal pleasure for the sake of other people.

Physiognomy is a pseudoscience that often makes big waves in pop science, but its studies are lacking substantially even evolutionary psychologists don't take it seriously.

Physiognomy is just a name for the heuristic described in the article.

Weak study. You show photos where attractiveness is obvious. When you talk with people intelligence is obvious. Likely in a real meeting things could go differently.

Intelligence is likely difficult to assess during most of our evolutionary timeline. There weren't signals like attending Harvard. So physical attractiveness, providing reasonable value in health/strength/etc..., has likely evolved to be how we generate attraction.

This makes sense, although what is interesting is that what is physically attractive does change quickly. For example, chest hair as recently as the 70s was considered attractive and now less so. But how did something that seems as intrinsic as physical attractiveness could change in a generation (and so drastically).

* But how did something that seems as intrinsic as physical attractiveness could change in a generation (and so drastically)*

Influx of people with different genetics.

Even within the US in the 70's, there were subcultures where chest hair was not considered attractive. These subcultures tended to align fairly closely with certain ethnicities. Different people evolved to find different physical attributes attractive. Flat v curvy. Hairy v hairless. And on and on and on. These preferences concerted to evoke the different forms we see today.

> Even within the US in the 70's, there were subcultures where chest hair was not considered attractive. These subcultures tended to align fairly closely with certain ethnicities

Can you be more specific on the ethnicities? This seems unlikely given how pervasive the shift was, as there was not a huge ethnic genetic shift since the 70s (AFAIK).

Well, the ideal male aesthetic for black americans for instance included athletes like basketball players and the great boxers. Most of whom were hairless. Joe Frazier only had a smattering of chest hair that hardly even registered. Others from Liston to Ali to Frazier and so on might have had some peach fuzz on their chests, but it's doubtful we'd be able to see it in a photo from that era. In the 70's among that demographic you saw body hair most often in contexts where they were working hard for crossover appeal. ie - entertainment, music etc.

I'd put money on most males from that demographic being largely hairless, or having difficulty growing chest hair, even today. Despite their family lines having lived in North America in some cases as long as four or five hundred years. I'm also positive that the fact that chest hairlessness is so widespread in that demographic is a direct result of centuries of female sexual preference. Likely dating all the way back to long before they even arrived in North America. The cultural echoes probably continued the reproductive pressures selecting for that aesthetic when they arrived in North America. Even when other extrinsic reproductive pressures were brought to bear. (Slavery).

Same with other demographics that came later by the way. (Without the slavery induced reproductive pressures obviously). Reproductive pressures selected for a lack of body hair in some of those demographics. And males from those demographics probably have far less body hair at the median than males from demographics where reproductive pressures selected for more body hair.

Essentially, my bet is that chest hair or no chest hair was decided for human males long ago by ancient female sexual preference. Why females from different demographics had different preferences? Can't say. Maybe climate?

Of course I can't prove any of the last part, but climate induced reproductive pressures on genetic ancestors would be my bet as the largest indicator of whether or not males will have chest hair. Reproductive pressures like that don't just go away over night. Not even over millennia.

I get that, but what about white males? Tom Selleck and his chest hair were iconic. Guys used to wear shirts to show off their chest hair. This is gone almost completely now, not just along black men. If we limit your discussion to black men and attraction of black females I’d agree, but it seems the preferences of white females also changed.

> There weren't signals like attending Harvard.

Oh trust me it's still not that great a signal.

Hm, what if they were also presented with the potential mates material wealth? A bank statement, portfolio, etc. right next to their picture and IQ test score.

And social status?

Hypergamy (marrying up) is a thing in many cultures.

And then there's always the good ol' standby - sense of humour.

Yeah, if I remember this correctly, studies have shown that a man's level of success effects a woman's determination of how attractive they find him (where the reverse isn't nearly as true. A woman's level of success doesn't affect a man's determination of attractiveness)...

It was years ago when I saw this, and after only a quick search, can't find any studies on exactly this online, but am sure these have been done.

Surely the title should indicate somewhere that this is about selecting partners (which I find to be a terribly dull topic).

Updated.

Imagine not considering that physical attractiveness is really just health, and that raw IQ doesnt capture the full spectrum of quality of human thought.

Physical attractiveness is not just health lol. Lots of counterexamples to that. As for "spectrum of thought" nobody cares much about what your IQ or thoughts are if you're hot enough.

they dont care because all they need to do is look at your facial symetry to gauge how well your mind is working. its a psyop by society that people dont know this is biologically how brains interpret attractiveness

That's not how brains work. Many things cause facial asymmetry, most notably dental issues which can happen to anyone. People prefer facial symmetry and facial symmetry is correlated to good things, but as far as intellectual fitness it isn't very good. Look around at the smartest people you know and see how many of them are attractive. I'm betting that most of them are average at best. One could argue that attractive people often don't develop intellectually because there is no pressure to do so, but is it really plausible that behind every pretty face is a latent genius? I doubt it very much.

You need to segment looks by genetic pools to get an accurate read on this. So, select the most attractive of Swedish, they will be above the rest of the swedes. Select most attractive of Jewish, run the same exercise.

Again, there are more variables you need to normalize by, but this idea that facial symmetry is not an indicator of many other vectors of human performance and health is a psyop by modern society

Facial symmetry may be slightly correlated with other positive things but again, there are many causes of asymmetry. Some of them are directly counteracted with money and good upbringing, such as good dental care and avoidance of various accidents, and even direct attention paid to appearance. Furthermore, there has been at least one study where polls showed that people had lower expectations of competence from attractive scientists than unattractive ones. If you have even a tiny bit of awareness of human nature, you'll know instinctively that unattractive people are more competent in various pursuits in life than attractive ones, because they have to overcome an insidious bias against them at every turn.

In extreme cases, I think you can say that assymmetry is more correlated with worse outcomes in all kinds of things. But that's different from saying that symmetry is this big indicator of good character or intellect. It's just not. There is a psyop in society to say that looks don't matter, when they do. But let's not kid ourselves. Discrimination based on looks is 95% exactly that, and there is little correlation between looks and intellectual potential. If you look good, it's like playing life on easy mode, because everyone wants to accomodate you and not because you're better at everything. If you're not attractive, you have no choice but to cultivate higher talent because there is no other way for you to succeed.

Honestly yes. Why would I want an ugly partner? Don’t downvote me because you disagree. Engage in conversation.

I want good looking children. I can provide for my family by myself. Why would I care if my partner is was a super genius or not as long as we were both attracted to each other and she wasn’t brain dead?

I agree with some asterisks. For me at least my perception of how physically attractive someone is, is also affected by their kindness/empathy levels.

There have been a lot of conventionally attractive women in my life that looked ugly af when they said something sucky like "ugh why doesn't that beggar get a job instead of begging".

You're right but we have been repeatedly told that attractiveness only matters for women, or somehow matters more for them than for men. That generally isn't true. You might be able to pay to play if you're a really rich guy, but that is anti-romantic isn't it?

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