Eye candy: Looking at attractive people of the opposite gender makes men happy but not woman S de la Rosa, R Choudhery, H Bülthoff, C Curio |
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Department Perception, Cognition and Action, Max Planck Institute Biological Cybernetics, Germany
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| There is ample evidence for gender specific mating preferences: While women tend to put more importance on men's reproductive capabilities, men tend to favor female attractiveness when selecting a partner. Here we explored whether looking at attractive people induces emotions in the observer. We presented images of faces to participants (40 male and 40 females) and subsequently asked participants about their current emotional state. Specifically, we manipulated the gender (male vs. female) and the attractiveness (normal vs. attractive) of the presented faces and asked participants to report their felt happiness, sadness, and attractedness. We found that both men and women felt more attracted to attractive faces, as opposed to average faces of the opposite gender (p<0.05), but only men felt happier looking at attractive women and felt more sad looking at normal looking women (p<0.001). This result suggests a gender specific effect of attractiveness on happiness that is in line with existing theories about human mating preferences. This work was supported by the EU Grant FP7-ICT Tango 249858. |
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