San Luis Obispo, California

My Home in San Luis Obispo, California

Here are a few readings that you might like:

“Movement in our field of vision can drastically affect the way our brain perceives the world around us. To explain these phenomena, visual researchers have come up with some mind-bending new motion perception illusions. Here, New Scientist brings you our pick of the best.”

“What makes some people so much more alluring than others? Roger Dobson discovers that good looks and sexiness are determined before we’re even born”


7 Comments

rpoppin · October 26, 2010 at 12:06 pm

“Rules of attraction”

I’ve read other research similar to this. I must say, some of the studies on what men find attractive are intriguing. I can’t say that I differ in their preferences. It’s funny how there seems to be an evolutionary basis for everything in our lives, but when you connect ancestral time infections and bugs to mens’ overall preference to blondes, well that’s quite profound. I guess my question is where is this innate knowledge stored within our brains and how is it passed on to each generation? It’d be interesting to know where that kind of knowledge is isolated and to see how it could be added to or modified. Good stuff, Dr. Freberg, good stuff.

Katy · October 26, 2010 at 1:30 pm

I learned a few things related to this topic last quarter during my social psychology class. Its so interesting to fathom that we are “programed” to subconsciously be attracted to people according to their genes, health, likelihood of being able to reproduce, etc. I was actually just discussing with a friend of mine the symmetry of faces and how alcohol influences what we see as attractive. I researched this some more and discovered that the term “beer goggles” actually refers to how alcohol impairs our ability to judge asymmetry. The more the alcohol ingested, the less able we are to judge if faces are symmetrical or not.
The stress aspect of the article is very interesting because I hadn’t connected the attractiveness of a person with the amounts of stress he or she has/will deal with. Interesting article, thanks for giving me something to research in order avoid my English homework. 🙂

Vix · October 26, 2010 at 3:45 pm

It is interesting how the brain perceives the world. Every time we see something, it makes us think. It is also important, for example, why I like to read different things and browse the Internet. I never ask any questions because, if I don’t know a certain word, phrase or something, I always type it in a search (such as Google, Yahoo! or Bing) and see what it means.

Then again, thank you for this blog post, Mom. It is nice to know what you think of the ‘current news’ of all sorts.

johnson · October 27, 2010 at 11:40 am

I do find it interesting that attractiveness has some relation to fitness, and that we choose a mate based off of small indicators of fitness like asymmetry and facial scars. It makes sense, that our basic instincts kick in when we search to essentially mate with another person who’ll positively benefit to our offspring.

stephanielow · October 27, 2010 at 6:29 pm

“rules of attraction”

I am a total advocate of the evolutionary psychology approach, and I do believe that all of the points in this are extremely interesting and have valid points. However, I do see a couple problems with the oxidative stress experiment. The study leads the reader to attribute the person’s physical attractiveness with its level of oxidative stress, saying that the lower level of oxidative stress you have, the more attractive and asymmetrical you are. However, the study does not say anything about if the parents were asymmetrical, which could be the reason why their child is asymmetrical. Although this finding is incredibly interesting, I am still skeptical.

mkorp · October 28, 2010 at 9:28 am

“Rules of Attraction”

I took a class on biological anthropology last quarter, and in that class we learned about the evolutionary approach to attraction. The research we discussed was very similar to the research in this article that suggests women with a small hip to waist ratio are more attractive. I think this is incredibly interesting because it demonstrates just how much our biological tendencies decide our lives. I also thought that the information about men preferring blondes is extremely interesting because it also suggests that biology plays an enormous role in attraction by claiming that blonde hair makes it easier to observe any potential health problems.

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