differences, and sexual harassment. But touch offers so many benefits, which should motivate you to touch in safe, nonsexual ways. There have been many studies on how touch affects first impressions, and they show it has positive effects. For example, in one study, subjects who were asked to sign a petition were touched lightly on the arm when the request was made, and 81 percent complied. When the experiment was repeated with a different request, 70 percent of those touched complied; only 40 percent of the untouched individuals did so.6 A restaurant server’s fleeting touch on the customer’s hand or shoulder results in larger tips. Of course there is a caveat: 8 percent of people in the United States don’t want to be touched. (Go to www.snapfirstimpressions.com to watch the video Five Ways to Use a Safe Touch to Make a Positive Impression.)
Attractiveness
Traveling to speak at a convention, I went to the airport straight from the gym. I was wearing my favorite old and stretched-out sweats. My hair was pulled back in a ponytail and, okay, a tad sweaty. Needless to say, there was no makeup in sight. No big deal, I figured; I didn’t know my fellow flyers, and they didn’t know me. We would never meet again.
Upon arrival, I waited with a large group of people for the bus that would take us to our hotel. I noticed that everyone waiting seemed to know one another, and that many had been on the flight with me. These sixty or so people were well-dressed (in suits) and well-coiffed. They also were giving me odd looks or averting their gaze. As we boarded, none of them offered me access to the empty seats next to them. As I made my way to an empty row in the back of the bus, I saw, on the laps of some of my fellow passengers, the convention brochure with my picture on it! These were the people I would be speaking to the next day — and I looked like I’d just gotten out of bed.
We live in a visually oriented culture in which our appearance not only precedes our words but can overpower them. Research shows that individuals tend to agree on their snaps of strangers even when these strangers vary in race, nationality, and culture, and even when their impressions are based solely on facial appearance.7 But appearance is only one aspect of attractiveness, so before you plan on having plastic surgery, read on.
What Is Attractive?
This measurement has a lot to do with symmetry. Research shows that a person with body and facial symmetry is highly attractive. Cate Blanchett, Halle Berry, and Michelle Pfeiffer display bilateral facial symmetry. So did Elizabeth Taylor — a line from her obituary in the New York Times in 2011 reads, “As cameramen noted, her face was flawlessly symmetrical; she had no bad angle, and her eyes were of the deepest violet.”8 A Newsweek cover story, “The Biology of Beauty,” specifically mentioned Denzel Washington as a star whose face had been measured and deemed to be perfectly symmetrical.9 Bilateral symmetry — in which the body or face is perfectly balanced — has a subliminal effect on first impressions. When we say that a person’s body or face is “perfectly balanced,” we mean it can be divided into identical halves by drawing a line down the center; the right half will be a mirror image of the left half. Scientists believe symmetry is seen as an indicator of a person’s freedom from disease and of worthiness for mating and reproduction. Other researchers hypothesize that a face or body that is bilaterally symmetrical is easier for us to read.
A lack of symmetry is uncomfortable for us to view; it can alert the central nervous system that there is something amiss. When I teach deception detection, I show what a lack of facial symmetry looks like: Simon Cowell’s mouth twisted into a one-sided smirk as he judges a performer, or a twitch lowering one side of the mouth of a sports star as he says he never used steroids. When the right and left sides of the upper and lower halves of someone’s face are asymmetrical, or the sides of the body are asymmetrical, as when, say, someone stands with one hand on her hip or leans to one side, we see the incongruence. It indicates that the person is confused or puzzled, doesn’t understand something, is unhappy, or is in one of a long list of other uncomfortable states.
Between the Sexes
I am at my favorite restaurant, sitting outside with two of my girlfriends. Three slender girls in pretty summer dresses walk in and sit at the bar. Within twenty minutes, eight men, puffing up their chests, surround them and lean in to get closer. As my friends and I watch, the men compete to see who can pull out a credit card faster to pay for the girls’ drinks. My friends and I smile, watching men in the pursuit of their idea of beauty as we order another round of mojitos, one dessert, and three forks.
There is a stronger consensus among men regarding which traits are attractive than there is among women, according to a study published by a Wake Forest University psychologist.10 More than four thousand study participants rated photos of young people (age eighteen to twenty-five) for attractiveness, using a ten-point scale that ranged from “not at all attractive” to “very attractive.” But before the participants rated the photos, members of the research team went through the photos and judged the essential characteristics of the people depicted in them — qualities like “seductive,” “confident,” “thin,” “stylish,” “sensitive,” “well-groomed,” “classy,” and so on. Breaking out these factors helped the researchers determine which common characteristics appealed most to men and women.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the men’s ratings of women’s attractiveness centered primarily on physical characteristics. They rated most highly those women who were deemed to be “thin” and “seductive,” although many men also favored “confident” women.
On the other hand, there was little consensus among the women as to which subjects were attractive. As a group, they tended to favor “muscular” men, but some women gave high attractiveness ratings to men that other women said were not attractive at all. Women seem to be programmed to find all sorts of men attractive, perhaps so that they do not all compete for the same Tarzan-like he-man. In fact, while most men have the same standard as other men when deciding what is attractive, women tend to be more individual, having a standard of attractiveness that is eerily similar to the man they are in a relationship with, or have recently been in a relationship with. Women find men who look like their current boyfriend or current mate the most attractive, and, as they change love interests, they change what they find attractive.
Attraction and the Halo Effect
Research shows that we believe what is beautiful is good. We favor facial symmetry and we like a balanced body silhouette. When we meet someone we find attractive, our snap impression of that person is generally much more positive than our snaps of those we find unattractive. Research shows that the positive and more lasting impressions created by attractive people affect how they are treated by teachers, juries, college admissions committees, managers, and job interviewers.
The good news for women — and men — is that you can affect your attractiveness by feeling more confident. Most of the men in the Wake Forest University study rated women who looked confident as more attractive. My roommate in college had a great way of creating a likable, confident first impression. It sounds odd when described, but it worked. She would pause at the entrance as she walked into any room, her shoulders back, her chin slightly raised, her arms slightly extended, and her hands open, as if she were offering the room at large a hug and waiting for the men to notice her and come into her arms. They did.
Most of us would claim not to be so shallow as to judge people on their looks, but research indicates that we do judge others in that way. For example, an attractive boss is liked more and generally perceived more positively than an unattractive boss. In an online survey of 61,647 people (a very large subject pool) by Elle magazine and MSNBC in 2007, “good-looking bosses were found to be more competent, collaborative and better delegators than their less attractive counterparts.”11 This is another example of the halo effect. When we see outstanding positive characteristics in individuals, we assign them other positive qualities as well.
And in a 2008 study at Tufts University in Medford, Maine, psychologists Nicholas Rule and Nalini Ambady asked students to rate faces according to their perceptions of the competence, dominance, likability, facial maturity, and trustworthiness of the faces’ owners. The students did not know they were judging pictures of the