There’s this guy I met that has
gotten me thinking. I first met him in a dinne/partyr among his circle of
friends. I really find him good looking back then but now he doesn’t seem to be
all that good looking especially when I’m alone with him. Don’t get me wrong
though, I’m not that superficial! It’s just that he seems far better looking
when he is with his friends. I don’t want to think anything about it but I
heard from a friend of mine that is a girlfriend of his bestfriend’s ex that he
feels the same way. I’m not sure if I made a right choice with this guy but I
don’t want to think were incompatible because of these. What am I suppose to
do?
Love,
Courtney
Xoxo
Yow Courtney!
I’m
going out of my whim to assume two things before I actually tell you anything.
First is that during your first meeting with this guy you were in a perfectly
well illuminated room or place where you can properly see him and second is
that you were perfectly sober and can actually have a clear idea of how he
looks like in an unaltered state of consciousness. If those two things were
present then your pondering is a classic case of The Cheerleader Effect!
And yes, it is a thing.
If you
have watched How I Met Your Mother you might have been familiar with this theory
of Barney which states that people are more attractive when they are surrounded
by friends and it turns out through a study that this actually occurs. A new
research conducted by Drew Walker and Edward Vul at the University of
California, San Diego shows that individual faces tend to appear more
attractive when presented in a group than when presented alone which is a
perceptually driven phenomenon. See where I’m getting at?
I’m just saying that these might be the case… but I’m just
exaggerating.
Let us consider a group of
cheerleaders (which this phenomenon is actually named from). To a lot of people, these women are beautiful
and sexy but their perceived beauty is in part a visual illusion, created by
the fact they appear as group rather than solo. Any one of them seems far more
attractive when she is with her group than when she is alone.
To put
your mind at rest, let’s delve deeper regarding the study. Walker and Vu posit
that this effect arises from the interplay of three different visuo-cognitive
processes. First, whenever we view a set of objects like a group of faces, our
visual system automatically computes general information about the entire set,
including average size of group members, their average location, and even the
average emotional expression on faces. Thus although the group contains many
individual items, we naturally perceive those items as a set, and form our
impressions on the basis of the collective whole. Another thing is that the
impression of the group as a whole influences our perception of any one
individual item within it. We tend to view
individual members as being more like the group than they actually are. Thus
when we see a face in a crowd, we tend to perceive that face as similar to the
average of all the faces in that crowd.
Another
important thing to note to actually make you feel that you’re not being
superficial or anything is that we find average faces very attractive. Composite
faces, which are generated by averaging individual faces together, are rated as
significantly more attractive compared to the individual faces used to create
them. According to Walker and Vul, if presenting a face in a group causes us to
perceive that face as more similar to the average, we are likely to find that
face more attractive.
To test
this, they conducted a series of experiments which involved showing people
pictures of other people (male and female; alone and in a group) and they were
ask to rate their attractiveness. Both male and female faces were rated as more
attractive when they appeared as part of a group photo than as a solo portrait.
Another study in the series shows that the effect disappears when the group
array consists of the same face multiple times, suggesting that it is indeed
the averaging of many different faces that produces the effect.
So with
regards to your problem regarding the disparity, it’s pretty clear that there
is no problem. Other than the issue you had I don’t see anything wrong. With
regards to compatibility, I think you guys are pretty fine basing from the fact
that he actually thinks and feels things along your wavelength. With regards to
you making the right choice, follow your heart.
Senserely yours,
V
References
Walker, D.,& Vul, E. (2013). Hierarchical encoding makes individuals in a group seem more attractive.Psychological Science, doi: 10.1177/0956797613497969
Langlois, J. H., & Roggman, L. A. (1990). Attractive faces are only average. Psychological Science, 1, 115–121. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.1991.tb00113
Photo credits
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anthropology-in-practice/files/2012/01/Cup.jpg
http://bhanks.encblogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/090409-usc-cheerleaders.jpg
http://static2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120317234714/himym/images/f/fd/Tumblr_l0qe0krcHt1qze70ro1_500.jpg
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