Have you ever thought of mental perception and beauty? There is no denial in the fact that the world that we live in has been a little favourable to people who fit under the general standards of attractiveness. Beauty standards are changing throughout the world, but the stereotype of box beauty has always contained similar features and factors and to add to it, the way you dress up and carry yourself adds to your attractiveness. The society has made attractive as a measure of status ranking among same-sex peers.
The concept of injustice favouritism is, However, changing in today’s world due to the voice of people on social media and other platforms but it has been going on since a very long time and our brain and psychology plays a major role in it.
Mental Perception of Beauty: How Brain Attracts to Beauty?
It’s quite a wonder how being attractive has always been something which sets the course of your life, be it dating, mating or getting more likes on your pictures, everything is ruled by personal attractiveness. A study conducted was conducted by Zhang et al., where MRI was used to see what happens in our brain when a person thinks of beauty. It was found that different regions of the brain were activated when thought about a beautiful object, like areas of perceptual, cognitive, emotional and reward processing. (source: the nerve blog)
A TV show called Brain games did an episode where they showed by live experiments how a stereotypically attractive person got help much sooner and by a much larger mass when he was put in the same situation as somebody who did not fit in the typical category of attractive. Later when asked by people, why did they choose to help the attractive person, most of the answers revolve around how they felt that the attractive person looked very trustworthy to them and they felt that he was genuinely in need.
Even a theory suggests that serial killer Ted Bunty who was at that time perceived as very attractive himself and did appear how a serial killer was supposed to look to the public eye. His attractiveness made it easier for him to find more women as victims, he particularly picked his victims as women who had similar features ie. Long, dark hair, parted down the middle which resembled his ex-girlfriend who was really attractive as well. It is also interesting to note that because he was attractive.
Both of these in itself shows how much our brain is affected by the standards of beauty. Our brain is a beauty detector, it starts noticing beauty the moment before we realise we are meeting a new face. People generally read other’s intentions and emotions in the other person’s face, health is also judged by our brain by looking at the face. For mating as well, an attractive person is chosen because the brain attractiveness is difficult to fake and shows a person’s reproductive health.
Method of Deception
Makeup and beauty surgeries also help you look more attractive to the eye by the method of deception. Makeup helps to even out the skin and accentuate our features. It helps to increase the likeability of a person. It was also believed that male patrons used to give more tips to the waitresses who had makeup on. ( source- Danjel B. Yarsoh ‘perception and deception: human beauty)
In conclusion, the brain has evolved modules to perceive beauty and acts accordingly, However, beauty and attractiveness are subjective to every person and it is just a mere social construct.