Kind people are seen as more physically attractive than unkind people

A study has come to the conclusion that kind people are seen as more physically attractive than people who are unkind. There are nonphysical factors which can influence the way people look to others in terms of their attractiveness or unattractiveness. It isn't just about physical features and what society deems to be attractive or unattractive which is another story because these will be conventional viewpoints.

Obviously character does have an impact upon whether others perceive a person as attractive or not. And money can have an influence as well! But that's another story. This research's objective was to "unpick some of the non-physical factors that lead an individual to be perceived as good-looking." The quote comes from The Times, the source of this article.

The researchers came to the conclusion that "being thought intelligent or funny can increase an individual's aesthetic appeal. But being perceived as generous and altruistic beat both of those traits in boosting attractiveness."

Dr. Natalia Kononov, of Tel Aviv University, Israel, who led the research, said: "We discovered that people who are kind to others are judged as more beautiful. So beauty really isn't just skin deep. Being a good person can make you look better too."

The research was based upon 10 experiments involving more than 4000 participants. The results were clear according to The Times report. People considered to have "prosocial" traits i.e. kind, helpful and generous, were consistently judged better looking.

The study worked like this. The participants were first given a verbal description of a person. Let's call them Person A. One group was told that Person A had volunteered at a soup kitchen or helped package food for the needy. A second group were told that Person A lacked prosocial elements.

The participants were then introduced to Person A physically and asked to judge their attractiveness on a scale of 1 meaning not beautiful at all to 7 meaning very beautiful. Those who had been described as prosocial were consistently ranked more highly in terms of looks. They scored about 10% higher than those who had been described as funny and about 7% higher than those that were described as being clever.

Sidebar: here is Cilla Black singing about being kind! I love this song as do millions of others:

Dr. Natalia said: "We did expect to see a connection between prosocial behaviour and attractiveness, but we were surprised by how consistently the effect held across both men and women, whether they were the ones being judged or doing the judging."

She added that, "Being helpful, generous and cooperative is beneficial in social and survival context. These traits signal that someone could be a reliable, long-term partner."

And on that basis, they become more attractive because they are a better partner and someone to live with and more likely to survive and live a better life.

The results were published in the British Journal of Social Psychology.

They decided that "This finding opens the door to a broader question about which traits people prioritise when evaluating others. While our study doesn't directly answer that question it does suggest that at least when it comes to beauty evaluations kindness carries more weight than we might have assumed."

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins. Also: sources for news articles are carefully selected but the news is often not independently verified. Also, I rely on scientific studies but they are not 100% reliable.