So they've conducted another study...

[akujunkan]

...claiming once again that it's biology - this time a woman's estrogen level - that makes a woman attractive, as opposed to sense of humor, liveliness, the interesting things she says, etc. etc. Oh god do I hate these sort of studies.

First, let's take a look at methodology: the '14 men and 15 women' of the (presumably) all-Scottish beauty raters does not a sample make, as any student of Statistics 101 should know. Small sample sizes do not give representative results, ever. I can draw five random cards from a deck and use that 'sample' to show that even numbered playing cards don't exist. Only when sample size begins to approach the population size do representative results emerge.

And for god's sake, why are these studies not conducted on men? I have yet to see a single research project specifically dealing with masculine beauty, let alone one where men are asked to rate one another's attractiveness.

But of course, what if this is just me not wanting to face the truth about such things. After all, while the study itself doesn't touch upon the ways in which personality affects perceptions of beauty, it is true that people's first impressions of attractiveness are based solely on the physical. What if the conception of physical beauty was more fixed than I'd like to believe? I headed over to the New Science blurb on the study and looked at the two composite faces - one created from the women while at the height of their estrogen cycle, the other at the trough.

I had to admit that one of the women was clearly more attractive than the other. It seemed I just didn't want to face the truth.

Until I scrolled down to the bottom of the page to discover that the face I thought was by far the more attractive was the one of the woman at the lowest point in her cycle.

Which just proves what kind of bullshit these 'studies' are.

That will be all.

Comments

[bran420-7.livejournal.com]

How can you ever judge beauty by looks? The whole piont is its subjectivity; I hope noone else looks at my husband the way I do, I'm running out of places to hide bodies!

[akujunkan.livejournal.com]

You used a semicolon correctly. This makes you more beautiful than any physical characteristics ever could.

Now tell that to John/Jack/John and have some wild monkey sex for it!

[metal-dog5.livejournal.com]

But it's on New Scientist, so it must be accurate. I agree the sample size is way too small to give difinitive results, but interestingly I found the higher oestrogen level picture more attractive.

[metal-dog5.livejournal.com]

*definitive. I can spell. Really. ::headdesk::

[akujunkan.livejournal.com]

Interesting, because I still for the life of me can't see how the higher level girl is prettier. (Then again, I wonder why the miniscule sample size included women in the first place - surely female appreciation of female beauty does not increase a woman's chances of successfully procreating..?)