Snap. Patti Wood

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СКАЧАТЬ by drawing a line down the center; the right half will be a mirror image of the left half. Scientists believe symmetry is seen as an indicator of a person’s freedom from disease and of worthiness for mating and reproduction. Other researchers hypothesize that a face or body that is bilaterally symmetrical is easier for us to read.

      A lack of symmetry is uncomfortable for us to view; it can alert the central nervous system that there is something amiss. When I teach deception detection, I show what a lack of facial symmetry looks like: Simon Cowell’s mouth twisted into a one-sided smirk as he judges a performer, or a twitch lowering one side of the mouth of a sports star as he says he never used steroids. When the right and left sides of the upper and lower halves of someone’s face are asymmetrical, or the sides of the body are asymmetrical, as when, say, someone stands with one hand on her hip or leans to one side, we see the incongruence. It indicates that the person is confused or puzzled, doesn’t understand something, is unhappy, or is in one of a long list of other uncomfortable states.

      Between the Sexes

      I am at my favorite restaurant, sitting outside with two of my girlfriends. Three slender girls in pretty summer dresses walk in and sit at the bar. Within twenty minutes, eight men, puffing up their chests, surround them and lean in to get closer. As my friends and I watch, the men compete to see who can pull out a credit card faster to pay for the girls’ drinks. My friends and I smile, watching men in the pursuit of their idea of beauty as we order another round of mojitos, one dessert, and three forks.

      There is a stronger consensus among men regarding which traits are attractive than there is among women, according to a study published by a Wake Forest University psychologist.¹⁰ More than four thousand study participants rated photos of young people (age eighteen to twenty-five) for attractiveness, using a ten-point scale that ranged from “not at all attractive” to “very attractive.” But before the participants rated the photos, members of the research team went through the photos and judged the essential characteristics of the people depicted in them — qualities like “seductive,” “confident,” “thin,” “stylish,” “sensitive,” “well-groomed,” “classy,” and so on. Breaking out these factors helped the researchers determine which common characteristics appealed most to men and women.

      Perhaps not surprisingly, the men’s ratings of women’s attractiveness centered primarily on physical characteristics. They rated most highly those women who were deemed to be “thin” and “seductive,” although many men also favored “confident” women.

      On the other hand, there was little consensus among the women as to which subjects were attractive. As a group, they tended to favor “muscular” men, but some women gave high attractiveness ratings to men that other women said were not attractive at all. Women seem to be programmed to find all sorts of men attractive, perhaps so that they do not all compete for the same Tarzan-like he-man. In fact, while most men have the same standard as other men when deciding what is attractive, women tend to be more individual, having a standard of attractiveness that is eerily similar to the man they are in a relationship with, or have recently been in a relationship with. Women find men who look like their current boyfriend or current mate the most attractive, and, as they change love interests, they change what they find attractive.

      Attraction and the Halo Effect

      Research shows that we believe what is beautiful is good. We favor facial symmetry and we like a balanced body silhouette. When we meet someone we find attractive, our snap impression of that person is generally much more positive than our snaps of those we find unattractive. Research shows that the positive and more lasting impressions created by attractive people affect how they are treated by teachers, juries, college admissions committees, managers, and job interviewers.

      The good news for women — and men — is that you can affect your attractiveness by feeling more confident. Most of the men in the Wake Forest University study rated women who looked confident as more attractive. My roommate in college had a great way of creating a likable, confident first impression. It sounds odd when described, but it worked. She would pause at the entrance as she walked into any room, her shoulders back, her chin slightly raised, her arms slightly extended, and her hands open, as if she were offering the room at large a hug and waiting for the men to notice her and come into her arms. They did.

      Most of us would claim not to be so shallow as to judge people on their looks, but research indicates that we do judge others in that way. For example, an attractive boss is liked more and generally perceived more positively than an unattractive boss. In an online survey of 61,647 people (a very large subject pool) by Elle magazine and MSNBC in 2007, “good-looking bosses were found to be more competent, collaborative and better delegators than their less attractive counterparts.”¹¹ This is another example of the halo effect. When we see outstanding positive characteristics in individuals, we assign them other positive qualities as well.

      And in a 2008 study at Tufts University in Medford, Maine, psychologists Nicholas Rule and Nalini Ambady asked students to rate faces according to their perceptions of the competence, dominance, likability, facial maturity, and trustworthiness of the faces’ owners. The students did not know they were judging pictures of the CEOs of the highest- and lowest-ranked Fortune 1000 companies. The students’ ratings of each CEO closely corresponded to the CEO’s company’s profits.¹²

      What Can We Do about “Lookism”?

      When the actual personality and character traits of individuals have been studied, stereotypes about attractiveness have proven false. Good looks don’t make an individual particularly “good” in other ways.¹³ Next time you get a warm, fuzzy feeling about someone you’ve just met, ask yourself if this is based on superficial good looks.

      Still, we all want to feel good about how we look to others, and there are things we can do to boost our attractiveness quotient and improve the impression we create. Remember the disheveled me who was mortified to find herself surrounded by future audience members on the bus? In that moment, I couldn’t change my appearance, but I could change how I felt about myself and how I behaved in order to help people feel more comfortable with the sweatshirted me.

      I began to walk up and down the aisle of the bus, stopping to say hello and introducing myself. I joked that I could use a refresher course in the first-impressions training I’d later be giving all of them! Instead of cringing and cowering, I assumed an air of confidence. My comfort, my going toward rather than away from them, my warm laughter-filled voice and handshakes made it easier for people to look past my appearance and, I hoped, trust and like me more than they would have if I had schlepped to the back of the bus and hid (as my embarrassment would have otherwise led me to do). I was pleased to see the smiles as people leaned in to greet me warmly.

      There may be times when you need to go “outside-in” and fake it till you make it. Keep in mind that, however you hold your body, it begins to chemically influence how you feel in as little as one-fortieth of a second. Briefly taking on confident, charismatic, likable behaviors until your body chemistry catches up makes you feel confident inside.

      One of my clients who has participated in my body language programs had a brain tumor removed and is paralyzed on one side of his face. He has been struggling because people are not comfortable around him. I’ve been helping him in oneon-one coaching do things nonverbally to help people cope with his appearance and lack of facial symmetry.

      We can all make simple, small changes in our body language, voices, and approach to others to improve our attractiveness. Remember that, while we find attractive people more likable, we also find likable people more attractive. So incorporate behaviors discussed in the “What’s to Like?” section earlier in this chapter to create a more attractive snap impression.

      Power

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