First glance People decide on attractiveness in milliseconds

Study shows: In less than a second, the decision on attractiveness falls

Although proverbial love is rare at first glance, it often does not take long for us to know if we like each other the first time we meet him or her. How quickly the decision on attractiveness actually falls has now been shown in a neuroscientific study.

The first impression of the opposite

A few years ago, scientists from the renowned Havard University (USA) reported on a study that showed that two questions play a central role, which everyone subconsciously encounters when they meet a previously unknown person for the first time: "How trustworthy is my counterpart ? "And" How can I judge the others competently? "It takes little time to form an initial judgment of the other. Not even a second, as researchers from Germany and Austria now report.

A neuroscientific study has shown that the assessment of attractiveness takes far less than a second. (Image: Katia Fonti /fotolia.com)

Awesome quick assessment of attractiveness

Many people have no problem publishing their portraits on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tinder and other social networks.

The fact that other people also judge the appearance of the person shown is at least accepted, sometimes even deliberately provoked, because one hopes for many clicks or likes.

How exactly it comes to attractiveness ratings and the subsequent Likes, however, is hardly explored.

Psychologists from Bamberg, Munich, Jena, Vienna and Salzburg have now published a new study in the science journal "Neuroscience Letters".

In it, the experts show that the assessment of attractiveness takes far less than a second. Even faster is it estimated what sex a person has.

Neuroscientific experiment with portrait photos

"We only need one second to make a Likes", explained Prof. Dr. med. Claus-Christian Carbon, first author of the study and holder of the chair of general psychology and methodology at the University of Bamberg in a statement.

But how long do people need to classify a person's gender and assess their attractiveness?

According to the university's announcement, 25 subjects in a neuroscience experiment assessed a total of 100 portrait photos in terms of gender and attractiveness.

The depicted persons were half male and female respectively. Meanwhile, the researchers measured the electrical brain waves using an electroencephalography (EEG).

In doing so one attaches electrodes on the scalp and can thus indirectly measure the activity of the brain.

In the EEG experiment, the focus was on the impact of specific presentations of facial images, so that 25 subjects were sufficient to obtain reliable results.

Evaluation of gender and attractiveness nested together

"The special thing about our approach is that we have nested two types of tasks together, namely the evaluation of gender and attractiveness," explained Claus-Christian Carbon.

"This allowed us to analyze so-called inhibition and engine preparation processes." In simple terms, they tested when sexual and gender information in the brain was available for decision.

"In fact, it was shown that facial information was processed far enough after about 200 milliseconds to make a decision about its attractiveness," says neurocognitive psychologist Prof. Dr. med. Florian Hutzler from the University of Salzburg and co-author of the study.

"Gender information is processed even earlier, after about 150 milliseconds. That is, first the sex and then the attractiveness of a face is processed. "

Gender-specific Attractiveness Assessments

"Although we can not prove any causal relationship between the two processes, it is obvious that the early attractiveness assessment builds on the already processed gender information," added Claus-Christian Carbon.

This could also explain why it often comes to gender-specific Attractiveness estimates; Which is why certain characteristics are considered attractive in women, but not in men, and vice versa.

If it comes to the "first look", the "spontaneous favor", then one could assume that people are very strongly guided by gender stereotypes in their attractiveness assessments - possibly a reason that these early judgments to a large extent by different People are shared. (Ad)