Beauty: Eye of the Beholder, or Groupthink?
Thursday, January 15th, 2009
They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but recent studies using brain imaging suggest that beauty is defined by the collective.
Well, more broadly, research has suggested for decades that individuals tend to go along with the majority view, even when they don’t believe it or know it to be incorrect. Studies using brain imaging now support that theory.
A new study in the journal Neuron shows when people hold an opinion differing from others in a group, their brains produce an error signal. A zone of the brain popularly called the “oops area” becomes extra active, while the “reward area” slows down, making us think we are too different.
What is even more interesting, though, is the construct of one of the studies. Female participants are asked to rate the beauty of faces, and then compare their ratings to the average.
Participants, all female, had to rate 222 faces based on physical beauty on a scale from 1 to 8. Afterwards, researchers told each participant either that the average score was higher or that it was lower than her rating. Some participants were told the average rating was equal to her rating. The researchers then chatted with the participant before suddenly asking the participant to do the rating again. Most subjects changed their opinion toward the average.
Well, if we didn’t have enough working against us in the beauty and attraction department, now we learn that our brains are revolting, too. The implication of this is that if what we’re attracted to isn’t found in glossy magazine pages that many drool over, our brains will send an error message if we get an excited flutter at the sight of a BBW or a scrawny man.
Maybe it isn’t all that dire or that simple, but it does give some evidence as to why marketing is so easy. Or why it’s so hard to go home with that dorky guy that makes you laugh when your friends think he resembles an anorexic Big Bird. Perhaps, as the researchers suggest, belonging to the group is an adaptive feature; if so, let’s hope it’s going the way of the pinky.
