2. How Your Brain Decides What is Beautiful

While we engage with beauty, what happens without our knowledge?

Beauty also engages us

Only what kind of organisms can afford to divert resources to maintaining such an extravagant appendage?

Only especially fit organisms

In plants, animals and humans, asymmetries often arise from what?

Parasitic infections

What happens under these relaxed conditions?

Preference and trait combinations are free to drift and become more variable.

What pings every time we see beauty?

"beauty detectors"

Our brains respond to beauty even when

We're not thinking about beauty

Why are some people regarded as less good, less kind, less intelligent, less competent and less hardworking?

minor facial anomalies and disfigurements

The selection criteria of what from the Pleistocene doesn't really apply today?

Reproductive success

What do average faces represent?

The central tendencies of a group

How are the filters for reproductive success being relaxed? List 2 ways.

Birth control, antibiotics, surgery, in vitro fertilization

What is not one of the top ways that people die, at least not in the technologically developed world?

Death by parasite

When were the so-called universal attributes of beauty selected for?

During the almost two million years of the Pleistocene

Only very rich men can afford to pay more than $10,000 for a watch as a display of what?

Their financial fitness.

Many experiments have shown that a few basic parameters to what make a face attractive. List 2 of the 3.

These include averaging, symmetry, and the effects of hormones

What did people do in one condition of an experiment where they were shown a series of faces?

They had to decide if a pair of faces were the same or a different person

Taken together, what do these studies suggest?

They suggest that our brain automatically responds to beauty by linking vision and pleasure

What are some of the advantages that attractive people recieve in life?

They're regarded as more intelligent, more trustworthy, they're given higher pay and lesser punishments, even when such judgements are not warranted

Facial disfigurement is often used as a shorthand for what?

To depict someone of villainous character

Why do we need to understand these kinds of implicit biases?

To overcome them and aim for a society in which we treat people fairly, based on their behavior and not on the happenstance of their looks.

After 10 generations, 98 percent of the population will have a green preference if those preferences are associated in a ratio of 3:2:1 with what?

different likelihood of producing offspring

Men typically find women attractive who have what?

elements of both youth and maturity. youth: large eyes, full lips, narrow chins maturity: high cheekbones

When it comes to seeing beauty in each other, while this decision is certainly subjective for the individual, it's sculpted by factors that contribute to what?

factor s that contribute to the survival of the group

Symmetry is an indicator of what?

health

Under what condition can preferences for specific physical features that are arbitrary for the individual become universal for the group over time?

if those features are heritable and they are associated with a reproductive advantage

What is the fascinating irony of testosterone?

in many species, testosterone suppresses the immune system so the idea that testosterone infused features are a fitness indicator doesn't really make sense

What did the beauty micrometer do?

it measured tiny assymetric flaws which could then be made up for by products from the company Max Factor

Despite the fact that they were thinking about a person's identity and not their beauty, attractive faces robustly drove what in their visual cortex?

neural activity

In the last few decades, how have scientists addressed the question of beauty?

using ideas from evolutionary psychology and tools of neuroscience

How is the "disfigured is bad" stereotype exploited and magnified?

by images in popular media

What stereotype is embedded in the brain?

Beauty is good

What technique does Galton present in his talk that could be used to characterize different types of people?

A technique which combines different photographs and produce composite portraits

Charles Darwin wrote that the sight of the peacock's tail made him physically ill in an 1860 letter to who?

Asa Gray

List 3 of the 5 professions of Sir Frances Galton.

Explorer, Anthropologist, Sociologist, Psychologist, Statistician

The fusiform gyrus is especially attuned to processing what?

Faces

Estrogen produces features that signal what?

Fertility

What does Galton believe he can do with his composite photographs? What actually happens?

He believes that if he combines photographs of violent criminals, he will discover the face of criminality. To his surprise, the composite portrait that he produces is beautiful.

How did Darwin create his theory of sexual selection?

He developed it out of frustration when he couldn't explain the peacock tail with natural selection.

In 1878, where does Sir Frances Galton give a talk?

He's speaking to the anthropologic institute of Great Britain and Ireland.

What features produced by testosterone are regarded as typically masculine?

Heavier brows, thinner cheeks, and bigger, squared off jaws

What part of the brain is especially attuned to processing objects?

Lateral Occipital Complex

What are teenagers and young adults not exactly known for?

Making decisions that are predicated on health concerns

Who designed the beauty micrometer in the 1930s ?

Maksymilian Factorowicz

Why do many people find mixed race individuals attractive and inbred families less so?

Mixed features represent different populations, and presumably harbor greater genetic diversity and adaptability to the environment.

Even as we are profoundly affecting the environment, what is profoundly affecting the very essence of what it means to look beautiful?

Modern medicine and technological innovation

Attractive faces activate parts of what in our brain?

Parts of our visual cortex in the back of the brain

Attractive faces activate what kind of centers in the front and deep in the brain? Name 2 of the 3 areas.

Reward and pleasure centers; - Ventral Striatum - Ventromedial Complex - Orbitofrontal cortex

The peacock is more likely to mate and have offspring due to the display of its tail which is about what?

Sexual enticement

What is the second factor that contributes to beauty?

Symmetry

What would a scientist discover when coming in to sample this population?

That green preferences are universal

What is the modern twist on the peacock display argument?

That the peacock is also advertising its health to the peahen.

What do many people think when they hear these kinds of evolutionary claims?

That we are unconsciously seeking mates who are healthy.

What is the third factor that contributes to facial attractiveness?

The effect of hormones

Which finding of Galton's has been replicated many times?

The finding that composite or avergae faces are typically more attractive than each individual face that contributes to the average

There is overlapping neural activity in response to beauty and to goodness within which part of the brain?

The orbitofrontal cortex

What is the most commonly cited example of a handicap?

The peacock's tail. The beautiful but cumbersome tail doesn't exactly help the peacock avoid predators and approach peahens

What can only especially fit men afford?

The price that testosterone levies on their immune system

What may be the biologic trigger for the many social effects of beauty?

The reflexive association between beauty and good

What questions does Galton's findings raise?

What is beauty? Why do certain configurations of line and color and form excite us so?

Where did another group similarly find automatic responses to beauty?

Within our pleasure centers.

Our visual brain that is attuned to processing faces underpins the experience of beauty by interacting with what?

our pleasure centers