Words About Things

A recent study by the University of Valencia has discovered that men experience stress when meeting a beautiful women, particularly one who is ‘out of their league’. An encounter with an attractive woman can raise a mans Cortisol levels (cortisol is commonly referred to as a stress hormone). High Cortisol levels can increase the negative effects of medical conditions such as heart disease and diabetes although it can also have a positive effect in small doses.

The researchers asked 84 (presumably straight) male students to solve a Sudoku puzzle in a room with two strangers, a man and an attractive woman. They monitored the student’s stress levels which did not alter when the woman left the room. When the man departed leaving the students on their own with the woman their stress levels rose.

The researchers came to the conclusion that the possibility of courtship had the male participants hot under the collar:

“In this study we considered that for most men the presence of an attractive woman may induce the perception that there is an opportunity for courtship. While some men might avoid attractive women since they think they are ‘out of their league’, the majority would respond with apprehension and a concurrent hormonal response. This study showed that male cortisol levels increased after exposure to a five-minute short social contact with a young, attractive woman.”

It would be interesting to see if the level of stress hormones released was effected by other variables. Would men who were happily married for instance, be less likely to feel stressed due to the reduced chance of courtship? Would what the woman was wearing effect stress levels, for instance what effect would sexy lingerie have? Would the presence of the male volunteer’s girlfriend make the situation more or less stressful?

Beautiful women: Bad for your health?

British people are among the least attractive in the world according to BeautifulPeople.com. The site is described as ‘elite dating site for beautiful people only’ and those applying for an account must first be rated by members of the opposite sex. Apparently only 12% of British men who apply are accepted into the site. 15% of female applicants from the UK are considered attractive enough to use the site.

BeautifulPeople is the first community of its kind. To become a member, applicants are required to be voted in by existing members of the opposite sex. Members rate all new applicants over a 48 hour period based on whether or not they find the applicant ‘beautiful’. Should applicants secure enough positive votes from members, they will be granted a full membership to the BeautifulPeople Network.

Statistically speaking we can’t all be beautiful (I have a face for blogging) because beauty by its definition is outside of the norm. Strangely most people consider themselves to be of above average intelligence and looks particularly in comparison to other people (see Illusory superiority).

Georgia Jagger

The stats presented by BeautifulPeople.com clearly show that some people overestimate their attractiveness. Its also worth pointing out that the people who are accepted into the site are those who are considered attractive by the majority of those rating. When the majority vote we tend to end up with predictable and bland winners (see X-factor). If you look at the hottest rated people on Hot or Not most of the girls look like Barbie and most of the men look like Ken.

There are clearly lots of attractive British people but perhaps we aren’t as uniformly attractive as other countries. According to the site Swedish men and the most attractive (65% of applicants approved) and Norwegian women come out on top (76% approval).  Brazilian women have proved to be considered attractive by the majority of members.  1.8 million people have been rejected in the last 2 weeks since the site went world wide.

Scientists from the University of Helsinki have recently claimed that women are becoming more beautiful with each successive generation. The theory goes that attractive women tend to have more children than less attractive women and more of these children are girls than boys. This means that attractive genes are passed on resulting in more beautiful girls or girls who are more beautiful? I’m still not sure but one thing the article was clear on was than men aren’t getting any better looking.

You would think that this seeing as this generation of men is more inclined to use moisturizer and care what we look like we would be better looking than the previous generation. I guess we should give up trying to compete and just enjoy being surrounded by beautiful women.

“If more attractive parents have more daughters and if physical attractiveness is heritable, it logically follows that women over many generations gradually become more physically attractive on average than men.”

Markus Jokela from the University of Helsinki designed the study which involved assessing the attractiveness of 2,000 American men and women. Researchers also looked at how many children those in the study had and confirmed that those considered more attractive were more likely to have female offspring. The eventual outcome of this is that each new generation contains more attractive women (or women who are considered more attractive, it’s a very subjective thing beauty and very hard to measure).

Megan Fox: Minger