Beauty is a fascinating attribute due to its relativity; something “beautiful” to an ape would certainly not be considered beautiful by a human being. Even amongst humans, the term beauty can differ: an object may be considered beautiful by one human being, but not the other. Beauty can be linked to attractiveness. Scientists believe that our attractiveness to one another originates as an evolutionary predisposition to be attracted to those who are most able to produce healthy offspring. Common “attractive features,” such as a muscular body for a man, indicates healthiness and the ability to produce offspring, making women biologically attracted to this feature. Common “unattractive features,” such as large amounts of acne or skin lesions, place the individual’s health into question and cause people to not be attracted to these features.
A common psychological study dealing with beauty usually involves pictures of many different women shown to men (or vice versa). The men are then asked to determine which female in the pictures is the most beautiful. One of the pictures, however, will be a computer-generated woman consisting of the “average features” of all the other women. In other words, the computer will superimpose all the faces of the women and produce a composite photo of a female with the average traits of all the other women. The men will almost always pick this computer-generated photo for being the most attractive, proving that we find normality to be most appealing.
Beauty affects our judgment, although we may not realize it. Subconsciously, we feel more comfortable around “beautiful” people/objects and have a greater disposition to liking them more than “ugly” people/objects. We are essentially hard-wired to both reproduce and find the best suitable environment for ourselves. Because of this, a beautiful person or piece or artwork will instantly affect our judgment towards that person or artwork. Obviously, however, exceptions do exist, with people finding someone with “unattractive” traits to be beautiful and “ugly” pieces of artwork to be amazing. The trends described in this essay, however, refer to the majority of judgments made by people toward other humans and artwork based on their physical appearance.
