These 2 Personality Traits Make You Instantly More Attractive, Say Studies of Over 4,000 People
The saying 'beauty is only skin deep' has never been more accurate. While looks may play a role in first impressions, a recent study reveals that kindness and helpfulness can make someone more attractive – no matter the situation or relationship.
The Study
For the analysis, published in the British Journal of social Psychology, researchers looked at 10 studies with over 4,000 participants. They created multiple scenarios to assess whether behaviour intended to help other people – also known as prosocial behaviour – influenced their perceived physical attractiveness.
Participants in different studies:
observed real-life examples of helpful behaviour
read descriptions of prosocial acts
imagined scenarios featuring kind actions
Participants also looked at images of people while reading descriptions of both neutral and helpful behaviour, and then rated their physical attractiveness. Sometimes, there were no accompanying images, which allowed researchers to test whether the effects transcended visual impressions.
The team also took into account perceptions of attractiveness in a neutral context; compared the effect of consistent kindness and one-time acts; and explored the difference between other positive traits like humour and intelligence in comparison to kindness.
The Results
There was a consistent link between prosocial actions and increased scores of physical attractiveness.
People who were described as displaying kind or helpful behaviour were rated as more beautiful than those who did not perform such actions. No difference was seen between male and female observers.
Continued kindness was shown to have the biggest effect over sporadic or one-off deeds. Being helpful also made more of a difference than other positive traits.
'We thought prosociality would play a significant role, but we didn’t expect it to surpass traits like intelligence and humour,' Natalia Kononov, study author and Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, said to PsyPost. 'This finding suggests that kindness might be more central to our perception of beauty than we usually assume.'
People were even more likely to view physical imperfections, like scars and asymmetries, more forgivingly on kind individuals, suggesting that being helpful can detract attention from aesthetic 'flaws'.
The desire to find kind people more attractive speaks to our desire for connection. Researchers found that prosocial people were seen as more attractive when a forming relationship was possible. But when it wasn't, the effect of kindness on their attractiveness was less pronounced.
What Does This Mean For Us?
A few limitations to consider: the sample was mainly from US-based participants, and the study focused on participants' initial perceptions rather than long-term impressions, so the extent to which we can generalise these conclusions to other cultural contexts and timeframes is uncertain. It's also worth considering how other traits like reliability or loyalty may play a more significant role.
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