Cosmetics Role in People’s Perception of Our Attractivity
Makeup amplifies our natural facial features and despite men claiming to prefer the natural look, numerous of psych experiments have yielded opposite results. How does makeup work psychologically? Cosmetics increase people’s perception of our attractivity, and have been known to signal friendliness and availability. A study published in International Journal of Cosmetics Science also found that women who wore makeup were perceived to be of higher status and wealth.
A few years ago, Nicolas Gueguen from the Universite de Bretagne-Sad was deeply intrigued by the effects of women’s cosmetics and how men perceived these dolled up appearances. Although research has found that makeup does improve female facial attractiveness when men judged photographs, Gueguen wanted to conduct a field experiment, which hasn’t been done just yet.
Gueguen played with the idea of just how quickly a woman would be approached in a bar, with the correlation of if she was wearing makeup or not. Two females were seated in two popular bars in France on 10 Wednesday and Saturday nights from 8:30 PM-midnight, with three sessions per night lasting one hour. Meaning: this experiment resulted in 60 observational periods. Two male observers/researchers calculated two things 1) how many times a male initiated convo and 2) length of time it took prior to the initial and advance being made.
Average time until first male initiated convo:
- With makeup: 17.09 minutes
- Without makeup: 23.08 minutes
Average number of men who approached them in 1 hour span
- With makeup: 2.07 men
- Without makeup: 1.56 men
Another study done in 2003 by Mulhern, Fickman, Hussey, Leveque and Pineau asked male and females to rate a set of 5 photographs of women volunteers. They were asked to rank these photographs from least attractive to most. The women in the photographs were dolled up by professional makeup artists under 5 conditions: 1) no makeup 2) foundation only 3) eye makeup only 4) lips makeup 5) full face makeup. What were the findings? The photographs with the full face makeup were rated as more attractive.
Despite many men claiming to like the natural look, these two studies conclude that makeup amplifies a woman’s natural appearance in a positive manner. What’s your insight on women utilizing cosmetics?
Xoxo,
Chrissy
http://nicolas.gueguen.free.fr/Articles/NAJP2008.pdf
http://www.spring.org.uk/2009/02/womens-makeup-draws-33-more-men.ph
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