According to the University of California, (San Diego) such phrases as: 'easy on the eyes' judging a book by it's cover and so on have more truth to them than we may think. According to this University and a few other sources where research as occurred, your mind wants what it has been taught to want. This goes for anything and everything; beauty, pets, cars, homes, etc. Basically, the "beauty-in-averageness effect means that if your mind has been trained to think that a woman with blond hair and blue eyes is beautiful, then she is...seems practical and pretty much common sense.
This article seemed interesting because I, myself, have always been interested in knowing why we all like what we like. Sure, things like our peers and family, our society and cultures can help to shape these things...but to see that there is a small link to biology is a little surprising to me.
Article was found here
People do like what they like. People have "types" when it comes to romantic partners, cars, computers, etc. I would agree that their is some truth to the fact that we become trained, to a certain extent, to like what we like. Men love to go fast, and fast cars are appealing to us. I love watching a '67 Mustang, or a Dodge Viper, or a souped up Toyota Supra exceed speeds of 150 miles per hour. I would wager to say that is why NASCAR and other racing sports are so popular. Why else are the "Fast and Furious" films popular? Fast cars and explosions are highly appealing to men.
ReplyDeleteAs for picking a potential mate, I think there are certain things or events in our individual experiences that can alter how our evolutionary stimulus response effects us. However, we do not live in a perfect world. People often get married to a person that shares many of their interests, and has a highly compatible personality. Although, like I said before, this is not a perfect world. I believe that monogamy, an idea spawned from humans' capacity for higher-level thinking, goes against our basic biology. We are biologically programmed to procreate as much as possible. I am not trying to sound sexist, but am just stating that heterosexual men are attracted to young women with symmetrical faces, large breasts, long legs, and a good waist-hip ratio. Men are genetically attracted to these features because they suggest strong estrogen levels, which indicates a fertile sexual partner. The same goes for women. Women are genetically predisposed to find tall men with chiseled jawlines, and a muscular, V-shaped torso to be attractive. Most of us would like to think that we can chose who we find attractive, but our frontal lobe is in charge of screaming out which people would make the the healthiest children. Like I said before, it would really be nice for our biological urges to disappear after marriage, but sadly it does not, and thus vanity causes a lot of problems in our society.