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Mental Tempest

United States

May 16, 2010

I was reading through Slashdot this afternoon, and saw a post about an on-line experiment being conducted by scientists in Australia.  They are attempting to understand attraction in people by having them go and rate the attractiveness of avatars on their site (http://www.bodylab.biz/Default.aspx).  The avatars are stripped of all features that are not necessary for determining if the avatar is male or female.  To help you determine the height of the avatar, the outline of a VW Bug is placed in the background.

It made me wonder a little about what we consider to be attractive.  How much is instinct and how much is learned.  If we see something on one person, and find it unattractive, would our opinion change if we see it on someone with the same proportions but a different look?  What if the person was more or less intelligent or dependent on others.  Maybe a better dancer, or provider, or lacking confidence?  How much of what we consider attraction is based on what we see and how much is based on other things that are little harder to describe right away?  If everything is stripped away except for one feature, be it shape, voice, or eyes, would our opinions change?  Would we still find the same people attractive?

An interesting experiment indeed. 

More entries: Something I Scribbled at "Dunkin Donuts" One Night (3), An Interesting Experiment (4)

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07:37 AM May 21 2010

Mental Tempest
United States

zzzzzz321, "We always encounter the same people and their own, as recognized a long time."  Are you saying that we are attracted to that which is similar to ourselves?  In many cases that does seems to be the case.  What I wonder is since we are not all pursuing clones of ourselves, how similar to ourselves does someone need to be in order for us to consider them attractive?  Which factors increase or decrease their attractiveness?  In the case of the avatars used in the experiment, if we mentally filled in the missing details with those qualities we consider similar to ourselves, (or with the qualities from someone we do consider attractive,) at what point do we start to consider them average, or no longer attractive? 

08:44 PM May 20 2010

zzzzzz321

zzzzzz321
China

 We always encounter the same people and their own, as recognized a long time.

10:15 PM May 18 2010

Mental Tempest
United States

I agree with you CranBerry.  Our minds do not like incomplete things, so we try to fill in the missing data based on what we see or what we are expecting to see.  Those features that do not fit into our view are usually ignored until we must accept them.

While I did not think of your book/movie example, I do understand what you mean.  I often read the book and then see the movie, and my results are similar to yours.  Your mind created the perfect characters for you, which often do not match the picture we created in our minds. :-)

05:06 PM May 16 2010

CranBerry

CranBerry
Russian Federation

An interesting experiment!

Usually connecting with  people having hidden features( mentioned in the article) we use our imagination and  subconsciously finish the portrait of them in our mind.

It's similar to reading a book and watching a movies based on it afterwards.Frankly, there is only one film, where the charachters's appearance coincide with my imaginatively-drawn image. It's " Gone away with the wind" .All the other films were  disappointing.

The same with avatar-users. But anyway, a  litle shock maybe be  washed away with the time and  after sometime our mind will change one image by another one.