Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Sign Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. I'm
Speaker 1: More Him, and today we're diving into the science of beauty.
Speaker 1: What makes someone beautiful, what's going on in our brains
Speaker 1: when we see a beautiful thing? And is it possible
Speaker 1: to be addicted to beauty? We're going to talk to
Speaker 1: a couple of beauty experts, including an evolutionary biologist who
Speaker 1: has a brand new theory about what beauty is. So
Speaker 1: get ready with me as we explore what makes something beautiful?
Speaker 1: I promise the answers our real beauty. Enjoy. Hey everyone, Okay,
Speaker 1: here are some interesting facts about beauty. Babies as young
Speaker 1: as two months old can tell the difference between someone
Speaker 1: who's supposed to be attractive and someone who's not. In
Speaker 1: a famous nineteen eighty seven study, scientists showed a bunch
Speaker 1: of babies photos of women that were rated by adults
Speaker 1: to be attractive or not, and then they measured which
Speaker 1: photos to babies would stare at more. They found that
Speaker 1: babies would look at the faces of women who were
Speaker 1: rated to be attractive more than the faces of women
Speaker 1: rated to be less attractive. Other studies and beauty have
Speaker 1: found that people who are considered beautiful are also more
Speaker 1: likely to be thought of as being smarter, more trustworthy,
Speaker 1: and confident. They get hired more for jobs, and they
Speaker 1: are more likely to get paid more and get more promotions.
Speaker 1: Studies have even found that being beautiful or attractive will
Speaker 1: make you less likely to be found guilty if you're
Speaker 1: ever accused of a crime. Clearly it helps to be beautiful.
Speaker 1: So the first thing I did was try to see
Speaker 1: how I could be more beautiful, and to do that,
Speaker 1: I reached out to a plastic surgeon. Well, thank you,
Speaker 1: doctor Sadegi for talking with us.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you very much for inviting me to your studio.
Speaker 1: I called up doctor Piem Sadegi. Doctor Sadeghi was a
Speaker 1: plastic surgeon in his home country of Iran and did
Speaker 1: his medical fellowship in plastic surgery at the Cleveland Clinic
Speaker 1: in Ohio. Currently, he's the resident in pathology at Eastern
Speaker 1: Carolina University. I wanted to ask doctor Sadeghi what he
Speaker 1: would do to make me more beautiful, but apparently that's
Speaker 1: not how it works.
Speaker 2: A doctor's job and responsibility is first to listen to
Speaker 2: the patient to know what exactly the definition of beauty
Speaker 2: of that patient is and what it means to them.
Speaker 2: So that's very important to first understand the beauty standards.
Speaker 2: A doctor should spend a great time dealing with the
Speaker 2: patient to be able to understand those standards.
Speaker 1: Okay, According to doctor Sadegi, a plastic surgeon's job is
Speaker 1: to quote promote a patient beauty standards unquote, which means
Speaker 1: it all depends on what the patient considers to be beautiful.
Speaker 1: But that's kind of the question I wanted to know now.
Speaker 1: The reason I reached out to doctor Sadeghi in particular
Speaker 1: is that he's written several academic papers on plastic surgery procedures,
Speaker 1: and specifically, he and his colleagues at the Cleveland Clinic
Speaker 1: published the paper titled what is Beauty? So I asked
Speaker 1: him to tell us, how do you define beauty?
Speaker 2: That's a great question and a simple question, but a
Speaker 2: very sophisticated answer. I want to answer your question with this.
Speaker 2: Beauty is a multi dimensional concept that has intrigued philosophers, artists, scientists,
Speaker 2: and surgeons for centuries. Cannot be fully defined, as Plato
Speaker 2: suggests it, Beauty is not just what appears pleasing. It
Speaker 2: often harbors a deeper meaning or essence, inviting us to
Speaker 2: contemplate beyond the surface. From both philosophical and neurobiological perspectives,
Speaker 2: beauty engages not only our senses, but also our emotions
Speaker 2: and memory, evoking a powerful, often mysterious response. So good
Speaker 2: luck with that. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1: We're trying. Yeah, thanks a lot, doctor said, Diggy. It's
Speaker 1: a tricky concept, so I asked him if he could
Speaker 1: be more specific. For example, what makes a human phase
Speaker 1: or body appear more beautiful?
Speaker 2: So promasurgical and scientific perspective, Symmetry, proportion, and harmony are
Speaker 2: key elements of facial and bodily beauty. For the phase,
Speaker 2: features such as balance, third and fifth symmetry, and the
Speaker 2: proportions like the golden ratio play important roles. Similarly, for
Speaker 2: the body, of characteristics like waste to heat ratios in
Speaker 2: women or muscle or symmetry in men are often perceived
Speaker 2: as attractive.
Speaker 1: You mentioned proportions. Can you explain what that means?
Speaker 2: So the proportions of the elements in the face are
Speaker 2: like different in different people and in different cultures.
Speaker 1: Meaning some people might have larger eyes.
Speaker 2: Correct, like the distances between the eyes the nose. The
Speaker 2: nose with the lips, the length of their lips, the
Speaker 2: proportion of the upper lip to the lower lip.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's our first clue about what makes something beautiful,
Speaker 1: and this is the idea that it's related to ratios
Speaker 1: or proportions, for example, the ratio between the waist and
Speaker 1: the hip in women, or the shoulders and the waist
Speaker 1: in men, or for faces, how symmetric you're is, or
Speaker 1: what the relative distances are between your eyes and nose
Speaker 1: and ears and mouth and cheeks are. But searching the
Speaker 1: scientific literature on this, it's hard to find a study
Speaker 1: that conclusively proves there's a perfect face or an ideal
Speaker 1: set of ratios that people find beautiful. Some studies find
Speaker 1: that symmetry is important, some don't. Scientists have tried to
Speaker 1: look for common features and the proportions of faces that
Speaker 1: are ranked by test subjects to be beautiful, and it
Speaker 1: seems there are none. It's like, we can all tell
Speaker 1: if a face looks beautiful to us, but trying to
Speaker 1: say why that face is beautiful is hard. In one
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight study, researchers at Google and tele
Speaker 1: Abeef University had to use ninety eight variables about the
Speaker 1: face to get a computer program to predict how human
Speaker 1: judges would rate faces to be beautiful. In other words,
Speaker 1: when we're looking at a face and judging whether we
Speaker 1: find it handsome, pretty or not, we might be juggling
Speaker 1: as many as ninety eight variables in our heads. And
Speaker 1: there are several ideas that make this even more complicated.
Speaker 1: So there is sort of like a general idealized face
Speaker 1: and body for men and women. But I imagine that
Speaker 1: it can vary depending on the person and the culture.
Speaker 2: Right correct. For example, in Asia, the curvedness in the
Speaker 2: forehead and also the ratio of forehead between like the
Speaker 2: hairline and the eyebrows is different.
Speaker 1: Oh, how is it different? So in Asia prefer.
Speaker 2: What not to be like totally flat, let's say, And
Speaker 2: that is more correlated in Asian cultures, So we need
Speaker 2: to also consider that. For example, if you want to
Speaker 2: practice in Asian countries, you might get more requests from
Speaker 2: the patient who want to do these types of procedures
Speaker 2: rather than the others.
Speaker 1: Yes, as you can imagine, beauty standards vary with culture.
Speaker 1: What's considered beautiful in one culture might be different to
Speaker 1: what's considered beautiful in another culture. Beauty standards can also
Speaker 1: change over time within a culture.
Speaker 2: These standards of beauty have evolved dramatically across time and cultures.
Speaker 2: In ancient Greece, proportion and mathematical harmony were central. During
Speaker 2: the Renaissance, fuller figures were admired as symbols of fertility
Speaker 2: and wealth. Today, especially in Western media, beauty often favors thinness, youth,
Speaker 2: and flawlessness, though this is now being increasingly challenged by
Speaker 2: more inclusive ideals that celebrate diverse body types, ages, and
Speaker 2: skin conditions. Importantly, each culture defines beauty in its own way.
Speaker 2: This emphasizes that beauty is not only in the eye
Speaker 2: of the beholder, but also shaped by the society and
Speaker 2: time in which we leave.
Speaker 1: Okay, how do we make sense of all of this?
Speaker 1: It seems that beauty is definitely a thing. Babies can
Speaker 1: recognize it, which means there's something inherent in our DNA
Speaker 1: about it, and there's also something universal about beauty. No
Speaker 1: matter what culture you're in, people talk about beauty, and
Speaker 1: everyone in the world has opinions about whether something or
Speaker 1: someone is beautiful or not. At the same time, it's
Speaker 1: hard to describe exactly what it is that makes us think,
Speaker 1: ah that's beautiful and what's considered beautiful can be different
Speaker 1: depending on the person, their culture, and it can change
Speaker 1: over time. So to date, there hasn't really been a
Speaker 1: strong scientific theory about what beauty is until now. On
Speaker 1: our next segment, we'll talk to an evolutionary biologist who
Speaker 1: thinks she has a theory of beauty that covers all
Speaker 1: of these aspects of beauty and how it has played
Speaker 1: a role in our evolution. But first, I was curious
Speaker 1: about something doctor Siedeggi brought up. You mentioned that the
Speaker 1: goal is to promote the patient's quality of life. What
Speaker 1: does that mean?
Speaker 2: Right? So, when you think of the beauty concept and
Speaker 2: when you have a beautiful image of yourself in your subconsciousness,
Speaker 2: you think in a positive way. When you think that
Speaker 2: you are the most beautiful person, not comparing to anyone,
Speaker 2: but just you are beautiful, this is a positive statement
Speaker 2: of your mind and this positivity, this mindset, positivity is
Speaker 2: very important in your daily job, in your daily activity
Speaker 2: because it gives a positive energy to your mind, so
Speaker 2: then you can better perform in your daily basics.
Speaker 1: I say, feeling beautiful is part of how we feel
Speaker 1: better about ourselves in general.
Speaker 2: That's right. And also it can affect the others. It
Speaker 2: can be transmitted to coworkers, to friends, to anyone because
Speaker 2: it's a positive energy, and that's why I believe it
Speaker 2: can promote the quality of life.
Speaker 1: All Right, we'll dig into the biology of beauty and
Speaker 1: how it's affected evolution after the break and stay with us.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Welcome back. All right. We talked
Speaker 1: about how beauty is hard to define and how there
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be a standard for what beauty is.
Speaker 1: It can vary from person to person and from culture
Speaker 1: to culture. But does that mean that it's impossible to
Speaker 1: study scientifically? Not necessarily. There's a growing group of scientists
Speaker 1: who think they figured out the right way to define
Speaker 1: beauty and they think it works for humans and possibly
Speaker 1: other animals. To fill us and I talked to one
Speaker 1: of those scientists, doctor Tamra Mendelssohn.
Speaker 3: My name is Tamra Mendelssohn, and I am a professor
Speaker 3: of biological sciences at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Speaker 3: I study evolutionary biology and specifically animal behavior.
Speaker 1: So to start us off, how do scientists define beauty?
Speaker 3: You know, it's hard to pin down, so you might
Speaker 3: get a different definition from every scientist you ask.
Speaker 1: I guess that's kind of the beauty of it.
Speaker 3: Sure, I would say only relatively recently have a critical
Speaker 3: mass of scientists really started to address the question. Philosophers
Speaker 3: have been asking for centuries, and scientists surely ask here
Speaker 3: and there. But I think recently, with the development of
Speaker 3: technology in artificial intelligence and in neuroscience, I think we're
Speaker 3: better able to ask this question from a scientific perspective.
Speaker 1: What do you mean advances in AI and neuroscience, what
Speaker 1: has been happening there?
Speaker 3: Well, we can use neural networks to visualize activity in
Speaker 3: the brain and figure out where in the brain information
Speaker 3: is processed, how it's processed.
Speaker 1: And so way to have those scientists been finding in
Speaker 1: terms of beauty.
Speaker 3: Well, maybe it makes sense to start with our definition
Speaker 3: of beauty and then I can talk about how the
Speaker 3: technology relates to and enforces that definition. We just wrote
Speaker 3: a paper that just came out in Biological Reviews. This
Speaker 3: is with my colleagues Julian Renew from the CNRS in France,
Speaker 3: Dave Schukar from the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland,
Speaker 3: and Gil Rosenthal from the University of Padava in Italy.
Speaker 3: And we are all evolutionary biologists who still the animal communication,
Speaker 3: and we define it beauty then as the pleasure or
Speaker 3: hedonic impact of fluent information processing, independent of the function
Speaker 3: or consummatory reward of that stimulus.
Speaker 1: That's a bit of a mouthful the area, right. Okay.
Speaker 1: What doctor Mendelssohn is doing here is trying to come
Speaker 1: up with a definition of beauty that holds up and
Speaker 1: that is useful to scientists. If a definition is vague
Speaker 1: or can't be tested, then you can't really do science
Speaker 1: with it. Say one more time, what's the definition of beauty.
Speaker 3: The pleasure or hedonic impact of fluent information processing, independent
Speaker 3: of the function or consummatory reward of that stimulus.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I guess we'll start with the first part.
Speaker 1: It's a feeling. Beauty is a feeling.
Speaker 3: Yes, beauty is a feeling. Absolutely, it's the pleasure or
Speaker 3: what psychologists or neuroscientists called hedonic impact.
Speaker 1: What does that mean?
Speaker 3: It feels good. So every animal has some kind of
Speaker 3: a reward system. Vertebrates especially like us and other primates
Speaker 3: and fish, which is what I study, all have What's
Speaker 3: called a mesolympic reward system that generates positive feelings. It
Speaker 3: seems clear from early studies of beauty and philosophy to
Speaker 3: now empirically, it's been shown that beauty is pleasure and
Speaker 3: that at least all vertebrates, if not all animals, should
Speaker 3: have the capacity to experience that.
Speaker 1: To experience pleasure, or to experience the sense of beauty.
Speaker 3: Good question. So let's start with pleasure. You have to
Speaker 3: have that. If other animals are going to experience beauty,
Speaker 3: they must also be able to experience pleasure. That's like
Speaker 3: the first piece.
Speaker 1: So it seems like you're saying that beauty is an
Speaker 1: experience felt by the person looking at something that's quote
Speaker 1: beautiful unquote, meaning that it's not an inherent property of something.
Speaker 3: Very much so, yes, it's an interaction.
Speaker 1: It's the reaction that person or animal has looking at
Speaker 1: this other organism.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly, or listening to a beautiful piece of music
Speaker 3: for example.
Speaker 1: Oh right, right, all right. The first part of doctor
Speaker 1: Mendelssohn's definition of beauty is that it's a feeling felt
Speaker 1: by the person looking at or listening to something. It's
Speaker 1: not inherent in the thing being observed. In other words,
Speaker 1: Beauty really is in the eye or ear of the beholder,
Speaker 1: and it's not just any feeling. It's a feeling of pleasure. Now,
Speaker 1: she mentioned the reward system, and that is the circuit
Speaker 1: in your brain that gets turned on when you feel good.
Speaker 1: If you've heard of dopamine, dopamine is the brain chemical
Speaker 1: that gets released that makes this circuit work. It's also
Speaker 1: the circuit that gets hijacked when you become addicted. We'll
Speaker 1: get to that later, but for now, just remember that
Speaker 1: beauty is a feeling. Okay, So it's a feeling and
Speaker 1: you said it's a feeling that's related to information processing.
Speaker 3: Yes, great, So that's like the next piece, right, and
Speaker 3: it's specifically. The word we use in our definition is
Speaker 3: fluent information processing. I think most people can wrap their
Speaker 3: minds around the concept of fluency, Like when you're fluent
Speaker 3: in a language, it's easy, right, you don't even have
Speaker 3: to think about it. It's easy to speak that language
Speaker 3: you're fluent. So psychologists use fluency as the basis of beauty.
Speaker 3: So beauty is something that is easy, easy to process.
Speaker 3: So in neuroesthetics they model beauty as efficient information processing.
Speaker 3: It's when something is processed at low cost.
Speaker 1: Oh, I guess this is bringing to mind the phrase
Speaker 1: that someone is easy on the eyes? Is that sort
Speaker 1: of what this relates to?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, one hundred percent, that's exactly it.
Speaker 1: Yes, meaning if I look at something and somehow my
Speaker 1: brain doesn't have to think much about it, somehow that's beautiful.
Speaker 3: Yes, that is the core piece of beauty. And so
Speaker 3: we're arguing that not necessarily all efficiently or fluently processed
Speaker 3: information is beautiful, but that all beautiful stimuli have this
Speaker 3: in common of being efficiently or fluently processed.
Speaker 1: Okay, this gets a little bit technical, but the main
Speaker 1: point is that, according to doctor Mendelssohn, a key part
Speaker 1: of something being beautiful is that it gives us information,
Speaker 1: and that it gives us that information in a way
Speaker 1: that's easy for our brain to process. For example, you
Speaker 1: might apply that to a face. If face has balanced proportions,
Speaker 1: maybe that's easier for our brain to process that it's
Speaker 1: a face, and because it's easy, our brain goes, ooh,
Speaker 1: that was easy, and it gives us a little pang
Speaker 1: of pleasure. And that experience of pleasure, doctor Mendelssohn and
Speaker 1: her colleagues argue is what beauty is it makes me
Speaker 1: notice that you're using the word efficiency, meaning that it's
Speaker 1: not how much information is being given to my brain,
Speaker 1: it's how easily my brain can process it.
Speaker 3: That's right. Efficiently processed information isn't necessarily simple. It can
Speaker 3: be complex. But if that complex information is processed efficiently
Speaker 3: at low cost, then that is pleasurable.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess what would be the opposite of that?
Speaker 1: Does that mean that's something that's not beautiful or ugly?
Speaker 1: Would you say something that's not beautiful? Would you use
Speaker 1: the word ugly?
Speaker 3: I think that possibly this concept of ugly might have
Speaker 3: more cognitive connotations, so it may remind us of something gross.
Speaker 3: So ugly isn't necessarily just inefficiently processed information. Inefficiently processed
Speaker 3: information is uncomfortable, for sure, that's been shown. But whether
Speaker 3: it's ugly, I think, is another question.
Speaker 1: It's true some people find ugly things beautiful. Okay, we
Speaker 1: talked about how beauty is a feeling and how it's
Speaker 1: about information being efficient. Now let's talk about what's in
Speaker 1: that information. And do you apply this definition of beauty
Speaker 1: that we have so far to just other organisms or
Speaker 1: does it apply to all things?
Speaker 3: All things?
Speaker 1: So then what sort of information am I getting when
Speaker 1: I look at a beautiful face?
Speaker 3: Well, you're getting a lot of information right at all levels.
Speaker 3: But if we were to judge whether a particular face
Speaker 3: is beautiful or not, then by our definition, we would
Speaker 3: be asking if that face is more efficiently processed than
Speaker 3: other faces. So there are some really basic ways that
Speaker 3: information can be efficiently processed, Like symmetry is efficiently processed,
Speaker 3: because that's basically you're getting two for one, right, So
Speaker 3: that's cheap. Prototypicality when a stimulus is like the best
Speaker 3: representative of a category that is efficiently processed.
Speaker 1: All right, This is kind of interesting. What doctor Mendelsson
Speaker 1: means here when she talks about prototypicality is basically the
Speaker 1: average face in a group of people. And this is
Speaker 1: something that was found in some of the studies I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier. If you take a bunch of photos of
Speaker 1: people's faces and you add all those faces together to
Speaker 1: get kind of the average face of that group, test
Speaker 1: subjects will generally think that face is more beautiful than
Speaker 1: any one of the other faces in the group, especially
Speaker 1: for women's faces. In other words, part of having a
Speaker 1: beautiful face is having features that don't stand out very much.
Speaker 1: And doctor Mendelssohn argues that face is beautiful because it's
Speaker 1: easy for our brains to process since the average is
Speaker 1: kind of what our brains are expecting. So you're saying
Speaker 1: that our brains are sort of tuned to recognize some
Speaker 1: certain things or like certain things, and so when something
Speaker 1: satisfies that tuning in a really easy and efficient way,
Speaker 1: then we think, oh, that's beautiful.
Speaker 3: Yes, I mean, arguably there's potentially more to it than that,
Speaker 3: but that's necessary but potentially insufficient component of beauty.
Speaker 1: I see you said that there was another component, which
Speaker 1: was its independent what it's independent of.
Speaker 3: It's independent according to the definition of the function or
Speaker 3: consummatory reward provided by the stimulus. So this goes back
Speaker 3: to Kant and his idea of disinterestedness, that beauty. Beauty
Speaker 3: is a self sufficient source of pleasure that we don't
Speaker 3: necessarily want to own it. That beauty then is liking
Speaker 3: without wanting, and the only wanting maybe you feel towards
Speaker 3: something that's beautiful is you just want to keep processing it.
Speaker 3: You want to keep listening, or you want to keep looking,
Speaker 3: but you don't want to have it. You don't want
Speaker 3: to eat it, you don't want to mate with it.
Speaker 1: Okay. The last part of this definition of beauty is
Speaker 1: that we should like beauty for beauty's sake. In other words,
Speaker 1: part of the definition of beauty is that it's addictive.
Speaker 1: We want it just for the pleasure of experiencing it. Okay.
Speaker 1: When we come back, we're going to talk about how
Speaker 1: beauty could have affected our evolution and whether it's possible
Speaker 1: for an animal like a dog or cat or fish
Speaker 1: to experience beauty. Stay with us. You're listening to science
Speaker 1: stuff and we're back, all right. Cool. So we have
Speaker 1: a definition of beauty, and then how does that apply
Speaker 1: to evolution and our biology and why we are all here? Great?
Speaker 3: I love that question. So the way we came at this,
Speaker 3: my colleagues and I, is because we study animal behavior
Speaker 3: and we're interested in how animals choose their mates. I
Speaker 3: study fish that are stunningly beautiful? Are they beautiful to
Speaker 3: other fish? Are our peacock's beautiful to pea hens? What
Speaker 3: is the experience that those animals have? What are they feeling?
Speaker 1: Meaning? Is it a coincidence that we find a peacock
Speaker 1: still beautiful and that it's also something phans find attractive.
Speaker 1: Is there a connection there that's kind of what you're asking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then key, if animals experience it as beautiful,
Speaker 3: how does that affect their decision to choose or not
Speaker 3: choose that other individual that has this ornament as a mate?
Speaker 1: Meaning is a peacock's tail beautiful to a phn correct? Okay,
Speaker 1: The last question we're asking here today is what is
Speaker 1: the role of beauty in nature? If animals and our
Speaker 1: ancestors could experience beauty, how did it shape evolution? And
Speaker 1: here doctor Mendelson doesn't have a lot of answers. Like
Speaker 1: I mentioned, this theory is still pretty new, which is exciting.
Speaker 1: If you've never talked to a scientist while they're still
Speaker 1: formulating their hypothesis, it's interesting to hear how they think.
Speaker 1: You know, it seems like we as humans use beauty
Speaker 1: as a factor in our choice of who we want
Speaker 1: to mate with. Is that the same for animals as well?
Speaker 3: Here's an analogy. You would need to buy a new car,
Speaker 3: so you go to the car sales place, or you
Speaker 3: want a candy bar. You have a hankering for something sweet,
Speaker 3: and you go to the grocery store and you look
Speaker 3: at all these candy bars. Which candy bar? To what
Speaker 3: extent does the wrapper influence your decision? You already want
Speaker 3: the candy bar, you already want to mate. What role
Speaker 3: does the beauty play.
Speaker 1: In that process? Yes, do we know? No?
Speaker 3: I don't think we do.
Speaker 1: Okay, what are some of your hypotheses?
Speaker 3: So we argue that this beauty, this experience of beauty,
Speaker 3: encourages proximity. So the idea is that an animal already
Speaker 3: wants to mate, say it's breeding season, they're already looking
Speaker 3: for a mate. Then they see something beautiful that makes
Speaker 3: them feel good and they're attracted to it for that reason,
Speaker 3: so they want to keep processing it. So it just
Speaker 3: encourages proximity, and then once they're physically proximate to that individual,
Speaker 3: then they may So it's just kind of like it's
Speaker 3: a marketplace, and you know, there's a lot to choose from.
Speaker 3: You just don't know which one. And there's something that
Speaker 3: really catches your eye or catches your ear and makes
Speaker 3: you feel good, so that's the one you.
Speaker 1: Go to, all right. Doctor Mendelssoh's hypothesis is that beauty
Speaker 1: evolved as a kind of hack to give animals an
Speaker 1: edge during mate selection. Being beautiful or having features that
Speaker 1: turn on our potential mate's information processing reward system has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with survival, but it does help you
Speaker 1: get attention. So I feel like maybe you're saying that
Speaker 1: beauty is something that has come up even though it's
Speaker 1: not useful for survival, Like, maybe it's just useful for
Speaker 1: choosing a mate.
Speaker 3: Yeah. For sure, our brains tuning to our environment and
Speaker 3: wanting to process information efficiently. So then what's happening is
Speaker 3: that mutations arise that exploit this bias and that make
Speaker 3: themselves attractive because they're efficiently processed.
Speaker 1: Hmmm.
Speaker 3: It has nothing to do with whether they are more
Speaker 3: fit if you will, or have you know, quote unquote
Speaker 3: better genes.
Speaker 1: Meaning a peacock's tail obviously has nothing to do with
Speaker 1: how it might get food in the wild. But because
Speaker 1: it pickles the peahan's soft spot for information processing, that's
Speaker 1: why peacocks over time evolved these huge, colorful tales.
Speaker 3: Yes, and in fact, arguably this is it's not good
Speaker 3: for them to have these big tails, right, It does
Speaker 3: actually affect their ability to find food in a bad way.
Speaker 3: I saw this great video of a tiger just totally
Speaker 3: nailing a male peacock who is displaying because they're just
Speaker 3: so obvious. Right, tigers can just the right. So and
Speaker 3: Darwin famously said that a peacock's tail, when I look
Speaker 3: at it, it makes me sick, because he had developed
Speaker 3: his whole theory of natural selection and then he looks
Speaker 3: at this tail and he's like, that's ridiculous. That does
Speaker 3: nothing for its survival. So then he publishes his book
Speaker 3: on sexual selection to explain that maybe sometimes traits can
Speaker 3: help you with reproduction, even at a cost to survival.
Speaker 3: And that's where beauty might come in.
Speaker 1: I see, sometimes beauty might be a burden on your survival. Yes,
Speaker 1: but because we have a beauty response, it's there because
Speaker 1: it gives you an advantage in mating. And you're saying,
Speaker 1: we have this beauty response because our brains like information
Speaker 1: that's easy to process.
Speaker 3: Got it, that's it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Apparently Darwin was not a fan of peacocks. Okay.
Speaker 1: The last part of our conversation I want to play
Speaker 1: for you was when we talked about whether we can
Speaker 1: change what we find beautiful if beauty is what our
Speaker 1: brains find easy to process, and if we find easier
Speaker 1: to process things that match what we expect. Does that
Speaker 1: mean changing beauty standards? It's just about changing expectations.
Speaker 3: And then throw another puzzling piece on top of the
Speaker 3: mere exposure effect. So familiarity can make something more beautiful.
Speaker 3: When you have been exposed to something, it becomes more
Speaker 3: beautiful to a certain extent.
Speaker 1: But the more we were exposed to something, the more
Speaker 1: we grow to appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the more we like it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And these are mostly in psychology studies where they flash
Speaker 3: things for people and then they ask them what they like,
Speaker 3: and they've shown that the things that have been flashed,
Speaker 3: that they've been exposed to more are more likely.
Speaker 1: Oh, so we can influence what we find beautiful. I
Speaker 1: just had some interesting thoughts because you know, I also
Speaker 1: produce a television show, and so there's always questions about
Speaker 1: representation and what we portray in the media. And then
Speaker 1: you're seeing that a lot in advertisements today, different body types,
Speaker 1: different skin tones. People are trying to change the standards
Speaker 1: of beauty.
Speaker 3: A lot of beauty is genetic or something that you
Speaker 3: can't really change. But I think a lot of beauty
Speaker 3: is what you can change, right, because it's just all
Speaker 3: about efficiency and our brains are being tuned all the time.
Speaker 1: We're receptive to having standards of beauty change.
Speaker 3: I think so just by mere exposure, you can start
Speaker 3: to influence people's standards of beauty.
Speaker 1: All right, I think that answers our question what makes
Speaker 1: something beautiful? It's not skin deep. It's all in the
Speaker 1: brain of the beholder. To close us off, I'm going
Speaker 1: to let that Razidegi have the last word.
Speaker 2: The majority of the anatomy of human beings is pretty
Speaker 2: much similar. We are all the same. We all have
Speaker 2: the major organs, we all have the liver, we all
Speaker 2: have the lungs. I believe that every person is beautiful.
Speaker 2: We just need to explore it and discover it. And
Speaker 2: that is the beauty of the beauty concept.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. See you next time you've been
Speaker 1: listening to Science Stuff production I heard Ready Bring the
Speaker 1: produced by me or Hm, credited by Rose Seguda, executive
Speaker 1: producer Jerry Rowland, and audio engineer and mixer Kasey Pegram
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