Delicious LiveJournal Links for 2-11-2010

[andrewducker]

• How Goldman Sachs Helped Greece to Mask its True Debt
  (tags: greece debt economy)
• Averaged faces are sexier because they're smooth, not because they're average...
  (tags: beauty attraction psychology face)
• Everyone should have a sign - a webcomic
  (tags: comic funny sad)
• Zombie anthology pulled due to homophobia - by writers working for the same publisher!
  (tags: writing homosexuality)
• Want Passionate Kids? Leave 'em Alone
  Nice distinction between passion and obsession
  (tags: children creativity parenting kids psychology)
• Diagnosis: Broken-Heart Syndrome
  (tags: medicine emotion)
• Babies not as innocent as they pretend
  They start lying at about 6 months old...
  (tags: babies children development)
• Ladies face 'glass cliff' after breaking 'glass ceiling'
  Don't be reading the comments...
  (tags: gender sexism)
• Six year old learns the wisdom of Caesar
  (tags: empire rome war funny)
• Fabricated quote used to discredit climate scientist
  (tags: climatechange science)
• Decade of spending on health messages has had little effect
  Professor Sanders said: "All the sucecssful nutrition interventions have always been about modifying the food supply rather than changing individual's behaviour."
  (tags: behaviour communication health behavior)

Comments

[marrog.livejournal.com]

In a world in which this perfectly ordinary face:



is considered to be a prototypically "unattractive female face", what chance do any of us have?

[andrewducker]

Well, judging by your success, quite a lot :->

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Despite being, by the standards of this study, fugly - since I basically have very similar features to that face, only less regular, fatter, and less smooth.

So what, in an anecdotal fashion, does that say about what people rate as attractive in a study vs what they're actually attracted to in real life?

[andrewducker]

Well, having overheard discussions by people with no likelyhood of having sex with _anyone_ declaring that they wouldn't have sex with particular supermodels due to perceived lack of beauty, I'd say it says quite a lot :->

[marrog.livejournal.com]

That being said, nobody wants to sleep with supermodels.

It's when they say they'd kick, I dunno, Kate Winslet or Cameron Diaz or somesuch out of bed that they've started lying for effect.

[iainjcoleman.livejournal.com]

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Slightly less anecdotal data comes from this analysis by dating site OkCupid. (Which, from its blog, clearly employs a serious stats nerd, although I suppose this is hardly surprising.) In a nutshell, it seems that among their users, women are far harsher at rating men than men are at rating women, although in both cases being a bit above the mean gets you most expressions of interest. In effect, being well into the upper quartile of appearance is what seems to be important, more than absolute level of perceived attractiveness.

(This particular userpic because it's the one of mine that is probably closest to being a picture of me.)

[marrog.livejournal.com]

In a nutshell, it seems that among their users, women are far harsher at rating men than men are at rating women.

Which is interesting in and of itself because in my real life experience women are much more likely to date men less attractive than them than the other way around. I guess maybe online girls get their own back? Or maybe the way they rate men and the ones they'll actually date are two very different things...

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Good grief. And if this is the 'prototypically unattractive male face'...



...then no wonder I'm not getting anywhere with dating sites!

[cdave]

Urgh. Something about the walls of handwritten text on those comix makes them unreadable to me. Not enough whitespace round the letters I think. Which is a pit because I like his humour.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

The glass cliff could have something to do with how Obama got elected.