Is beauty “in the belief of the beholder?”
Do other people’s comments and opinions influence what we find beautiful?
And can other people’s opinions even change our brain activity?
Research says yes!
“Beauty is in the belief of the beholder” study
In a fascinating scientific study, researchers wanted to determine whether other people’s opinions can influence our own beliefs about faces’ attractiveness.
What the researchers did:
The researchers showed college-age study participants many photos of faces. Participants were shown one face at a time.
Before seeing each face, participants were first shown a numerical “rating” of that face. Participants were told that this rating indicated how attractive other college students had found the face.
The catch: the attractiveness ratings weren’t actually real! They were fake, arbitrary ratings made up by the researchers.
After seeing a fake attractiveness rating (which participants were told were real), participants were then shown the face and asked to make their own rating of its attractiveness.
The researchers wanted to see if participants’ judgments of facial attractiveness would be influenced by others’ opinions—even when those opinions were completely fabricated.
Study Results
Here’s what the researchers discovered:
Even prior to seeing a face, participants' brains showed increased activity when they were expecting an attractive face, compared to when they were expecting a less attractive face.
When participants were told that a face had been rated as highly attractive, participants subsequently rated that face as being more attractive than the exact same face when they were told that it wouldn’t be as attractive.
As the researchers write, “Findings showed that information about a person seen before a face powerfully influenced neural responses to their attractiveness, as evidenced by a modulated LPP. This was accompanied by robust changes in participants’ self-reported attractiveness of the faces.”
Translation: if someone tells you that a face is or isn’t attractive, this can markedly influence your judgment of that face’s attractiveness.
Real-World Takeaways
The study has so many real-world implications. One thing it makes me think of is how People and other magazines have their “most beautiful” edition in which they select the world’s alleged most beautiful person (who always just happens to be a well-known celebrity).
Based on the scientific study discussed above, it seems like even if we disagree with People Magazine’s idea of beauty, their opinions might still influence us (even if subconsciously). We might actually come to find someone more (or less) attractive simply because People Magazine declares or implies they are.
The same is true of any media outlet or any person who gives us their opinion (explicit or implicit) on what is or isn’t beautiful. Even if we don’t consciously agree with their opinion, whatever they say can potentially infiltrate our own beliefs.
Personal Takeaways
Some other things the study makes me think about:
When it comes to beauty, I want to be careful about whose opinions I listen to. Am I listening to many messages from the media, or even those close to me, about what is and isn’t beautiful? Am I internalizing these standards and upholding them as facts, and forgetting the reality that they are opinions?
What kinds of things do I tell myself about beauty? We know that words are powerful—we know that they can even change our brain activity. Am I giving myself constructive, compassionate feedback, or am I viewing myself in a negative way? Am I holding myself to fit arbitrary cultural standards that are ultimately just other people’s opinions? Am I treating others’ opinions as facts?
In other areas of life beyond beauty, am I aware of how much others’ words, and my own words, may influence my beliefs? Am I using this knowledge to my advantage by engaging in positive self-talk (or at least neutral vs. negative self-talk)? Or am I frequently being self-critical?
There is an inevitable subjectivity to beauty. Based on the “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” study, hearing people’s opinions on what is beautiful can change our own opinion. This wouldn’t be true if beauty was truly objective. If beauty was fully objective or universal, then we would find faces just as beautiful regardless of other people’s opinions.
Does this study relate to style analysis?
I’m not sure. But based on the study, it does seem possible that if a person dislikes their style type, or part of their type, they may want to experiment with changing the way they talk about it to themselves.
Research suggests that people’s words and opinions—including our own—can be extremely powerful.
Style analysis can be used in healthy and less healthy ways
Style analysis can be useful when it comes to maintaining healthy ideas about beauty, because style analysis generally promotes a realistic outlook that’s also applicable to other areas of life.
Specifically, style analysis promotes the idea that you can’t look your best in everything (just like you can’t be the best in everything), and that this is ok. Your beauty (and your abilities) are unique and valuable, and there is a context (a fashion context or other context) that flatters them.
Style analysis can also probably be used in less healthy ways, for instance by using it to fuel self-criticism. But it does have the potential to be used very constructively.
Final Takeaways
My ultimate takeaway from the study is to remember that others’ opinions can influence my own, even subconsciously.
So if I’m frequently listening to media or other sources that tell me, explicitly or implicitly, that certain celebrities or influencers are the standard of beauty, or that certain facial features are the standard of beauty, I’m going to potentially be a lot more likely to adopt those beliefs.
Conversely, if I listen to sources that encourage and celebrate diverse kinds of beauty—or if I remind myself to do this—I’m potentially going to be a lot more likely to adopt those healthier beliefs.
The main takeaway: when it comes to beauty, and to what we find beautiful, the words and opinions of others can be extremely influential—for better or worse.
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As a final point, I don’t love scientific research that uses attractiveness ratings of faces, because 1. it’s reductive and 2. the idea that you can use science to truly and fully define attractiveness is a logical fallacy (since beauty is ultimately a sensory, aesthetic judgment that’s opinion-based, just like other sensory, aesthetic judgments—favorite color, favorite ice cream flavor, favorite face—all opinion based. Science can’t tell us which of any of these things is most sensorily and aesthetically pleasing).
But what I really like about this study (at least the part that I summarized) is that it didn’t use actual attractiveness ratings, it used fake ones—and the study found that the fake ratings STILL influenced people’s own attractiveness judgments!
Again, the study really illustrates the malleability (for better or worse) of our views on beauty.
