Recipe for love at first sight: look, smile

17:24 Wed 07 November 2007

It looks as though people don’t solely judge attractiveness on physical characteristics such as a preference for symmetrical faces or masculine versus feminine features. According to new research, social factors such as maintaining eye contact and smiling play a huge role.

“It does seem to be a sort of narcissistic thing. People are attracted to people who are attracted to them,” said Ben Jones of the Face Research Laboratory at the University of Aberdeen. “Social signals about how attracted someone else is to you actually seem to be quite important. You are attracted to people who are attracted to you, and that shows attractiveness is not just about physical beauty.”

So, this all means that people are more likely to get together with those who are attracted to them. Wow! Really? This must be the most important scientific finding since ‘How to make the perfect beans on toast’…

(Image: from hans’s Flickr stream)

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