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In Your Face: The new science of human attraction
In our daily lives, in our memories and fantasies, our mental worlds overflow with faces. But what do we really know about this most remarkable feature of the human body? Why do we have faces at all, and brains that are good at reading them? What do our looks say – and not say – about our personalities?
And perhaps the most compelling question of Why are we attracted to some faces more than others? In Your Face is an engaging and authoritative tour of the science of facial beauty and face perception.
David Perrett, the pre-eminent scholar in the field, reveals and interprets the most remarkable findings and in the process demolishes many popular myths, setting the record straight on what neuroscience and evolutionary psychology are teaching us about beauty. The record is more surprising and often more unsettling than you might think.
And perhaps the most compelling question of Why are we attracted to some faces more than others? In Your Face is an engaging and authoritative tour of the science of facial beauty and face perception.
David Perrett, the pre-eminent scholar in the field, reveals and interprets the most remarkable findings and in the process demolishes many popular myths, setting the record straight on what neuroscience and evolutionary psychology are teaching us about beauty. The record is more surprising and often more unsettling than you might think.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
About the author
David Perrett
5 books9 followersDavid Perrett is an internationally recognized leader in the field of face perception and the study of human attractiveness. His work has appeared in the most prestigious scientific journals and is often featured in the popular press around the world.
Perrett is a professor of psychology at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, where he leads the Perception Lab. The main focus in his team's research is on face perception, including facial cues to health, effects of physiological conditions on facial appearance, and facial preferences in social settings such as trust games and mate choices. Perrett received the Golden Brain award for his discoveries about the way the brain processes faces and pioneered the use of computer graphics to study the perception of facial attributes such as beauty, health, and personality.
Perrett is a professor of psychology at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, where he leads the Perception Lab. The main focus in his team's research is on face perception, including facial cues to health, effects of physiological conditions on facial appearance, and facial preferences in social settings such as trust games and mate choices. Perrett received the Golden Brain award for his discoveries about the way the brain processes faces and pioneered the use of computer graphics to study the perception of facial attributes such as beauty, health, and personality.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
April 22, 2018
Good overview of the literature.
Recently I saw a videoseries by the vlogger "FaceandLMS", who stressed that facial attractiveness is both important to men and women. Now, you might say "duh", but it's a lot more sophisticated than that. For one thing, PUAs all stress that women's attractiveness to men can be worked on with "game", a whole series of sly behaviours and mannerisms; same with all the experts and magazines and whatnot. MGTOWs and incels (involuntary celibate young men), however, argue that PUA/game is all marketing bullshit -- at best overrated, at worst a scam. Personally, I don't see why game is necessarily nonsense or bad; it's good for young men to learn what women like and don't like. OTOH, most of these PUAs are definitely sleazeballs who will literally say anything to both men and women in order to exploit them, respectively for cash and sex.
This book definitely supports the MGTOW/incel side of the story. Besides tallness, male facial attractiveness is a huge plus in dating. A guy who has a masculine, "average" (i.e. without deviations from the ideal) face, and conforming to the 1.618 "golden ratio" will have a huge advantage over his peers, according to many research and tests. If you deviate from these norms, you will be disadvantaged. So, having a great personality and a sense of humor are great assets, as all these magazine claim, but they're secondary to being attractive. This isn't just a Western thing either, all women of all nations and cultures respond similarly. All of these things hold for men as well, but everyone already knew that men are mostly attracted to physical appearance.
The last third of the book isn't so much about facial attractiveness, but more about attraction in general. The author seems to want to sugar down some of the implications of the harsh truths he's saying. Suddenly, he mentions that being nice and reliable are important to women for long-term relationships. Everyone who has had a friend for more than 2 months knows that, yes, you need to be need to be nice and reliable in order to keep them -- so, yes, you also need to be nice and reliable in order to have a happy long-term relationship. But that wasn't the issue.
I mailed the author with the question if there had ever been done a worldwide investigation into facial attractiveness. It's remarkably easy to do. Just fit the golden ratio mask on various groups of people and see how strong the correlation is to the mask. Perrett responded that this would be difficult, because, for example, Asians like "rounder" faces more so than Westerners do. However, it's a valid question to ask in my opinion. In all these top 10 lists of countries with the "most beautiful people" you always see Venezuela, Ukraine, Sweden and Russia ending up on top. So, there might be some truth in it? The whole point of the book is to argue that beauty is objective and measurable.
Anyway, it's a fun, well-written, to-the-point (excepting third part) book. I recommend it.
NB I'm not advocating PUA/MGTOW/Incel or whatever else these guys call themselves. They're, as far as I know the only ones talking about these things.
Recently I saw a videoseries by the vlogger "FaceandLMS", who stressed that facial attractiveness is both important to men and women. Now, you might say "duh", but it's a lot more sophisticated than that. For one thing, PUAs all stress that women's attractiveness to men can be worked on with "game", a whole series of sly behaviours and mannerisms; same with all the experts and magazines and whatnot. MGTOWs and incels (involuntary celibate young men), however, argue that PUA/game is all marketing bullshit -- at best overrated, at worst a scam. Personally, I don't see why game is necessarily nonsense or bad; it's good for young men to learn what women like and don't like. OTOH, most of these PUAs are definitely sleazeballs who will literally say anything to both men and women in order to exploit them, respectively for cash and sex.
This book definitely supports the MGTOW/incel side of the story. Besides tallness, male facial attractiveness is a huge plus in dating. A guy who has a masculine, "average" (i.e. without deviations from the ideal) face, and conforming to the 1.618 "golden ratio" will have a huge advantage over his peers, according to many research and tests. If you deviate from these norms, you will be disadvantaged. So, having a great personality and a sense of humor are great assets, as all these magazine claim, but they're secondary to being attractive. This isn't just a Western thing either, all women of all nations and cultures respond similarly. All of these things hold for men as well, but everyone already knew that men are mostly attracted to physical appearance.
The last third of the book isn't so much about facial attractiveness, but more about attraction in general. The author seems to want to sugar down some of the implications of the harsh truths he's saying. Suddenly, he mentions that being nice and reliable are important to women for long-term relationships. Everyone who has had a friend for more than 2 months knows that, yes, you need to be need to be nice and reliable in order to keep them -- so, yes, you also need to be nice and reliable in order to have a happy long-term relationship. But that wasn't the issue.
I mailed the author with the question if there had ever been done a worldwide investigation into facial attractiveness. It's remarkably easy to do. Just fit the golden ratio mask on various groups of people and see how strong the correlation is to the mask. Perrett responded that this would be difficult, because, for example, Asians like "rounder" faces more so than Westerners do. However, it's a valid question to ask in my opinion. In all these top 10 lists of countries with the "most beautiful people" you always see Venezuela, Ukraine, Sweden and Russia ending up on top. So, there might be some truth in it? The whole point of the book is to argue that beauty is objective and measurable.
Anyway, it's a fun, well-written, to-the-point (excepting third part) book. I recommend it.
NB I'm not advocating PUA/MGTOW/Incel or whatever else these guys call themselves. They're, as far as I know the only ones talking about these things.
April 19, 2015
Very interesting, good scientific value, and a bit disturbing. :D
August 3, 2017
Attractiveness has been a topic that has fascinated me recently, and I should bear that in mind when I say that I found this very accessible and readable, and have turned into a one-topic vsauce with anyone who has talked to me recently.
The book isn't just about that, and first explores how the face developed, how babies react to it and possible reasons as to its evolution. The majority of it focuses on the subtitle, however, and is well presented, if not having the more personal flourishes you might find in more 'popular' science books. There are two aspects that fascinate me most about attractiveness: one, how uncontrolled our attraction to others is despite being quite powerful, and the fact that attractiveness is so influential in our behaviour but has become a bit of a taboo subject - I'm not saying the subject is censored but certainly in more enlightened circles, 'objectification' is thrown around like 'racist' whenever someone comments on appearance. And yet, even on Goodreads, you only need to look at the highest rated reviews and their pictures to see this effect in action. This is not a sociology book, so only addresses the scientific aspects of my interest, but does so expertly.
There are so many aspects covered, and Perrett is clearly a passionate expert, who is prepared to state the obvious but also put forward findings that are less morally nice - we have a bias towards people of our own race, no matter our skin colour, and men only like looking at attractive women, while women like looking at both attractive men and women, suggesting why both men's and women's magazines have hot women on the covers. One of the strengths of this work is that Perrett keeps the social commentary to a minimum, using it to break up the experimental results, rather than trying to draw any moral lessons from the findings. And as he mentions, a lot of the time all we know are the experimental findings, with the reasons behind them often only speculative - for example, do extroverts appear warmer than introverts just based on their face because extroverted personalities are warmer towards others, or because people respond more positively to warmer-looking people, which would encourage extroversion?
I won't just list more and more of the findings, but instead mention the crucial final chapter which discusses love. Although it doesn't cover it too deeply, it does remind us that attraction is not everything, and that it is just one stage in which we judge someone, however influential that is. It also highlights the difference between the physiological workings, and our conscious selves - it can be quite unnerving to think that perhaps it is not 'Karen' that 'we' are attracted to, but that her features have triggered a positive response from our sensory perceptors and that looking at her again will release some more dopamine.
The book isn't just about that, and first explores how the face developed, how babies react to it and possible reasons as to its evolution. The majority of it focuses on the subtitle, however, and is well presented, if not having the more personal flourishes you might find in more 'popular' science books. There are two aspects that fascinate me most about attractiveness: one, how uncontrolled our attraction to others is despite being quite powerful, and the fact that attractiveness is so influential in our behaviour but has become a bit of a taboo subject - I'm not saying the subject is censored but certainly in more enlightened circles, 'objectification' is thrown around like 'racist' whenever someone comments on appearance. And yet, even on Goodreads, you only need to look at the highest rated reviews and their pictures to see this effect in action. This is not a sociology book, so only addresses the scientific aspects of my interest, but does so expertly.
There are so many aspects covered, and Perrett is clearly a passionate expert, who is prepared to state the obvious but also put forward findings that are less morally nice - we have a bias towards people of our own race, no matter our skin colour, and men only like looking at attractive women, while women like looking at both attractive men and women, suggesting why both men's and women's magazines have hot women on the covers. One of the strengths of this work is that Perrett keeps the social commentary to a minimum, using it to break up the experimental results, rather than trying to draw any moral lessons from the findings. And as he mentions, a lot of the time all we know are the experimental findings, with the reasons behind them often only speculative - for example, do extroverts appear warmer than introverts just based on their face because extroverted personalities are warmer towards others, or because people respond more positively to warmer-looking people, which would encourage extroversion?
I won't just list more and more of the findings, but instead mention the crucial final chapter which discusses love. Although it doesn't cover it too deeply, it does remind us that attraction is not everything, and that it is just one stage in which we judge someone, however influential that is. It also highlights the difference between the physiological workings, and our conscious selves - it can be quite unnerving to think that perhaps it is not 'Karen' that 'we' are attracted to, but that her features have triggered a positive response from our sensory perceptors and that looking at her again will release some more dopamine.
September 8, 2012
Won on Goodreads in June 2012.
Quite an interesting read in the research of attraction based on faces. This work also references a lot of genetics, pheromone and chemical response work done buy other research groups. The book itself if well written and has a good flow. Great for general educational reading. I have read about some of the research before and fore the most part it is put forth in vary coherent, accurate and accessible way.
My biggest criticism of it is that why studies that included other ethnic groups are referenced no images are shown and the results are spoken of in general terms only. It would have been better to have asked the groups doing that research to collaborate on the book and have those images included.
A minor note is on the t shirt study which is mentioned in an earlier chapter and then discussed fully in a later one. To both of the instances several paragraphs were devoted and for the most part they seems to be written in in the same way. The first instance does not mention that this will be discussed further, nor dues the second refer back to the first mention. This creates an effect of reading the same thing twice.
On an aesthetic cover note, especially in light of the topic. Why is the woman on the cover photo shopped to have perfect skin, very obviously, and the man left as is with no make up to be seen either?
I will be donating the book to Psychology department.
Quite an interesting read in the research of attraction based on faces. This work also references a lot of genetics, pheromone and chemical response work done buy other research groups. The book itself if well written and has a good flow. Great for general educational reading. I have read about some of the research before and fore the most part it is put forth in vary coherent, accurate and accessible way.
My biggest criticism of it is that why studies that included other ethnic groups are referenced no images are shown and the results are spoken of in general terms only. It would have been better to have asked the groups doing that research to collaborate on the book and have those images included.
A minor note is on the t shirt study which is mentioned in an earlier chapter and then discussed fully in a later one. To both of the instances several paragraphs were devoted and for the most part they seems to be written in in the same way. The first instance does not mention that this will be discussed further, nor dues the second refer back to the first mention. This creates an effect of reading the same thing twice.
On an aesthetic cover note, especially in light of the topic. Why is the woman on the cover photo shopped to have perfect skin, very obviously, and the man left as is with no make up to be seen either?
I will be donating the book to Psychology department.
July 8, 2012
I received this book from a goodreads giveaway. This was a very entertaining and thought provoking read. This book is written in a style that makes it easy to read for those that don't have a scientific background. However, even those with a scientific background will find it interesting as it takes information that you may already be familiar with and applies it to new concepts. I would recommend this book for anyone looking for sceintific reason's on why we may be attracted to the people we are.
August 14, 2012
In Your Face is a very interesting book. It sets out to see what humans find attractive in one another, and why. Not only is it very well researched, the author also presents the information in a very accessible manner. Someone without a scientific background could easily pick up and following along in this book. It is clear, concise, and engaging.
Overall, this is a very fascinating read, and I definitely recommend it!
Overall, this is a very fascinating read, and I definitely recommend it!
March 25, 2013
I just skimmed through this but what I found was actually interesting. I mostly read the parts about corresponding facial structure and health, sexual attraction, etc. Some parts were a bit boring but overall nothing was too complex to follow. What I learned is that there is really no way of determining how attractive you will be, but the research says that genetics is not always a part of it.
December 19, 2011
Lots of cool experiments (has photos of some of the pictures used in research) to demonstrate scientifically what most of us know experientially. Scientists always amaze me with their creative experiments.
July 8, 2012
I received a free copy of this book through Goodreads First Reads.
Interesting topic and a good conversation starter. What makes us more attracted to certain faces? Read the book to find out.
Interesting topic and a good conversation starter. What makes us more attracted to certain faces? Read the book to find out.
May 8, 2014
I found it was really interesting, and an engaging read.
I found myself pulling faces and half testing some of the theories myself.
loved it
I found myself pulling faces and half testing some of the theories myself.
loved it
June 13, 2012
I really liked it! It wasn't too science-y at all!
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews