The Science Behind An Attractive Face transcript

Which face do you think is more attractive? Most of us would choose this one even though those changes are very subtle. Even though beauty standards change over time, there are three essential components that affect our perceived attractiveness. Number one, facial harmony. Since 1985, People's Magazine annually crowned the sexiest man alive, but the majority of them are not extremely masculine nor feminine. Their faces seem to combine elements of neoteny, aka youthfulness, sexual maturity, expressiveness, and personal grooming.

These same elements enumerated in the study What do women want? But different facial traits tend to have different impacts on your overall attractiveness. Now, most of these features can't be changed without plastic surgery. Fortunately, you don't have to. You just need to harmonize them. If your face is too masculine, you should increase your neoteny. If it's too youthful, increase your sexual maturity. And if it lacks expressiveness, increase your facial contrast.

But how can you figure out what type of facial hair works best for you? Well, in 2016, a group of researchers photographed men at different stages of beard growth, digitally masculinized and feminized their faces, and then asked women to rate their attractiveness. These are the results. As you can see, being clean-shaved tends to backfire if your face is extremely feminine or extremely masculine. On the other hand, most faces tend to benefit most from wearing a heavy stubble.

Except the very masculine ones, who tend to look better with a light stubble. But this is an extreme case. As in another study from 2013, the light stubble was generally described as the least attractive facial hair, mainly because it can be perceived as a lack of personal grooming. Now, every face is unique. That's why you should take these studies more as guidelines than absolute rules. Number two, facial balance. For years and years, people were obsessed with facial symmetry.

Only for this 2024 study to come around and to state that facial symmetry has a significant effect in women's attractiveness, but a non-significant effect in men's attractiveness. Yet, a factor that has a major effect on both sexes are the facial proportions. You see, your face is made up of upper third, from your hairline to the area between your eyebrows, middle third, from that area to the base of the nose, and lower third, from the base of the nose to the bottom of the chin.

Ideally, all three thirds should be perfectly balanced, but even if they aren't, you can make them seem balanced by choosing the right hairstyle. The simplest advice is to, if your upper third is smaller than the others, add more volume up top. If your upper third is bigger than the others, cover a part of your forehead. But, what if your face looks like this? Well, in this case, you need to add some volume to the sides.

You see, besides your facial proportions, you should also consider your facial shape while choosing your hairstyle. In 2017, a company specializing in beauty, cosmetology, and barbering released a professional barbering textbook called Milady Standard Barbering. According to this book, there are seven different face shapes. You can pause the video to see the advice for each one. Oval, round, inverted triangular, square, pear, oblong, and diamond.

Now, you can see how simple it is to transform an average face into an attractive one once you understand the science behind it. If you want to do the same with yours, I have an entire module dedicated to improving your looks and the help of other members in the Zuzimology community. Besides this, once you reach level four by being active, I will analyze your face, give you a personalized game plan, and a preview on how you would look at your peak potential.

Try now for free. Number three, healthiness. When judging attractiveness, men tend to look at the lips, while women tend to look at the eyes and hair. I already talked about hair earlier, so let's focus on the lips and eyes. In 2023, a bunch of researchers analyzed over 5,000 faces and discovered that for women, increasing the brightness difference between facial features and surrounding skin areas increases their attractiveness.

While for men, it decreases their attractiveness. Why? Well, the lips are heavily influenced by a hormone named estrogen, the feminine hormone. When a woman hits puberty, this hormone makes the lips look brighter and fuller to signal sexual maturity. But for men, puberty changes don't include the colorization of the lips. That's why bright ones tend to look odd on masculine faces. But then we have the eyes. Between these two faces, which one do you think looks more attractive? >> [laughter] >> Probably this one.

And the only difference is this little circle called the limbal ring. From an evolutionary standpoint, this ring signals both health and youthfulness by making your iris look more colorful. But as proven in 2012, more important than the color of your iris is the whiteness of your sclera. Just like the limbal ring, a clean white sclera signals youthfulness and good health condition. Now, of course, a man's eyes can't alone predict his facial attractiveness, but apparently his skin does.

You see, in 2012, a bunch of researchers took photos of 160 Caucasian men and then digitally cropped out a tiny square of skin from their cheeks. Then they asked two groups of women to rate their attractiveness. Group one rated photos of their entire faces, while group two rated the cropped square of skin. Apparently, the attractiveness ratings given by the second group for the tiny isolated skin parts strongly correlated to how the first group rated the attractiveness of their entire faces.

And it seems like the same story applies for women. To quote this 2007 study, "Homogeneity, which means the evenness of the skin color, correlated positively with perceived attractiveness, healthiness, and youthfulness." But besides skin evenness, the skin tone can also make a difference in your perceived attractiveness. Apparently, brighter skin tone is considered more dominant and attractive than pale skin tone. Moreover, a pale skin tone can even reduce your attractiveness as it was discovered to be one of the elements that can make someone look creepy.

Now, to get rid of skin paleness, you can try to tan and eat more food that contains carotenoids. Otherwise, people might subconsciously perceive you as creepy just because of your paleness. Now, if you want to know more about how your looks can dictate your life, I know the perfect video for you.