Ignoring Age, Study Explains 5 Reasons Why Someone Looks Attractive

Illustration attracted to someone (Pexels / Katii Bishop)

JAKARTA - Maintaining appearance and age can be ignored for a moment. Because a number of studies have found reasons why someone looks attractive. When experiencing an 'ahha' moment, the attraction is sometimes unexplained. Suddenly fell in love and became interested in a closer relationship.

Reporting from Reader's Digest, Thursday, March 11, there are things that scientifically prove why someone looks attractive. Physical standards, may be different for each culture or every era. Well, the human brain and body have amazing mechanisms.

Even how it works is rarely realized, including determining what criteria make someone look attractive. It has been explained that smell and the combination of feelings are the reason someone looks attractive to our eyes.

The attraction is hormonal

A senior lecturer in the cognitive science department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Alicia Walf, PhD says that the mechanisms of human attraction are not fully understood. However, the excitement involves hormonal modified brain circuits in many mammal species.

Regarding attraction, scientifically related to motivation and social behavior that is useful for reducing stress.

More than just physical

There are smells and voices when speaking that make a person look attractive. This is evidenced in research conducted over 30 years by Agata Groyecka-Bernard, PhD. He is a researcher at Wroclaw University in Poland.

Although visually we are attracted to people who have similarities with special and close people, such as mothers, grandparents, fathers and others. We tend to like the smell of partners with different genetic backgrounds.

You may not realize that smells and tone of voice attracts us to someone the first time you meet them.

Involvement of hormonal mechanisms

Walf observed that the attraction is closely related to hormones and social behavior. Hormonal mechanisms influence the emotional and memory changes associated with attraction.

It works much like the excitement experienced when feeling stressed, and dopamine and norepinephrine are involved in the moment we are attracted to someone.

When dopamine is released, our experiences can be enjoyed and remembered, which encourages us to look for positive emotions in interactions with people we find 'interesting'.

Illustration of interested facial expressions (Pexels / Cleyder Duque)

The harder it is to get the more attractive it is

It is true if everyone has their own criteria, but for most people it is more attractive to the hard to find. It can test everyone's strategy to get it.

In a study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationship, people who attract attention too easily may be perceived as more hopeless.

This makes them appear less valuable and less attractive than someone who does not immediately show romantic interest.

Generosity affects physical appearance

Sara Konrath, PhD says that people who are considered more attractive are generous people. This means that a physical appearance supported by generosity looks perfect to others.

From the above studies, the stigma about physical standards and ideal age seems to be collapsing. Things that are not realized, including hormonal mechanisms, memory power, smells, and sounds when speaking, actually play a big role in determining who someone is the most attractive.