What makes a person desirable

In their new book The Psychology of Physical Attraction, psychologists Viren Swami and Adrian Furnham claim, at last, to have unlocked the secrets of attraction. Esther Walker explains what they discovered Are looks everything?

YES. Sadly, it seems, we really are as superficial as we seem. "Study after study shows that people think that what is beautiful is good," says Adrian Furnham, co-author of The Psychology of Physical Attraction. (Routledge) The more attractive you are, the more likely you are to get jobs and have people be nice to you. "It’s a slightly shocking finding," Furnham says. However, you may find solace in the fact that the likes of Marilyn Monroe don’t always get ahead. Studies have found that attractive women are more likely to be discriminated against when they apply for managerial positions, but not if they apply for more junior roles.

Although the most fashionable silhouette in recent years has been an extremely slender one, being skinny can have undesirable consequences.

Studies have shown that people favour those who are of normal weight, and that people caught up in an accident are far more likely to be rescued if they are of a normal weight than their underweight – or overweight – peers.

Of course, slenderness (as exemplified by Audrey Hepburn) is still seen as a cultural preference. In poorer cultures, being portly can be a sign of wealth, and therefore desirability. In richer cultures, being thin demonstrates that you can afford a good plastic surgeon. People value thinness more "as you move up the social and economic scale". That aside, Furnham and his co-author Viren Swami found that body size matters very little in the grand scheme of things. Being a fairly superficial lot, what we really care about is people’s faces and how attractive they are.

Marilyn Monroe, the Venus de Milo, Sophia Loren, Scarlett Johansson – at different times, these women have all been considered among the most desirable on earth. What is it about them that makes men go weak at the knees? Quite apart from their beautiful faces, they are united by the fact that they all boast, or boasted, a low waist/hip ratio.

Used by our hunter-gatherer forefathers to judge the health and fecundity of women, the WHR is one of the best measures of a woman’s attractiveness to men. It explains why men find more curvy (but not necessarily overweight) figures attractive.

To work out WHR, the waist measurement is divided by the hip measurement. "Young women can be chubby but still have a low WHR," say the authors of The Psychology of Physical Attraction. "As women get older, their waists thicken and their fertility goes down in proportion to their age – that explains why a slim waist, a signal of fertility, is attractive."

Almost. A study measuring 300 ancient sculptures from India, Greece and some African tribes found that a low WHR was idealised. The authors point out, however, that a Tanzanian tribe, the Hadza, who subsist by foraging for wild foods, are unaffected by the female WHR. Another isolated tribe, the Matsigenka of southern Peru, were also unimpressed by a low WHR, simply preferring the larger lady.

It’s all because of what we perceive as healthy. When resources were scarce, being overweight – hence well fed – was good.

Physical attraction is, pleasingly, not racist. Not taking into account personal prejudices and cultural pressures, all races can appeal to all other races – because what’s more important than skin colour to attractiveness is the symmetry of a person’s facial features and body. Evolutionary psychologists argue that only the healthiest people are able to develop symmetry in their faces and bodies, which is why people find Will Smith or Brad Pitt attractive. It’s not just humans: a study of barn swallows found that the females would rather mate with males whose tails were symmetrical, while peahens prefer peacocks with symmetrical tail spots.

Women are always looking for someone tall, dark and handsome, right? No one specifies "short, mousy and ugly" in a personal ad.

But how much does a man’s height really matter? It was the psychologist Alfred Adler who coined the phrase "Napoleon complex" to describe shorter-than-average men who overcompensated for lack of height by being overaggressive and wanting to rule the world. It has been proven that taller men have more children than their averagely tall counterparts, and that taller men receive more replies to personal ads. Many studies show that men of average height are more attractive and likeable than very tall men and some research suggests that above-average height can indicate poor health.

In personal and "lonely hearts" adverts, men usually emphasise what they are looking for in a woman physically, whereas women typically look for wealth and status. It’s not that looks don’t matter to women; they simply matter less than other things, in particular, signals of money and security. There’s also some confusion as to exactly what women look for in a man. Excessive "masculinity" in men’s faces – a lantern jaw, a large nose, a strong brow – can actually be seen by women as unattractive, as men with very masculine features have been found to be less resistant to disease and parasites. Women often find feminine features attractive on a man. Brad Pitt, continually cited as a paragon of male loveliness, has plump lips and large eyes that wouldn’t look out of place on a woman. This is because women look for a trade-off between good mates and good fathers, and a couple of feminine features on a man suggests to women that they have better fathering skills.

A physical characteristic that is vital to male attractiveness is most women prefer men with broad shoulders and a narrower waist. Upper-body strength would have signalled that a man was better at fighting and hunting.

In most pre-industrial societies, having a tan was an indicator that the woman or man in question worked outdoors, probably as a manual labourer, and had a low social status and income. Historically, pale skin like Nicole Kidman’s, has been revered as beautiful. In the 20th century, having a tan (especially when the weather in your own country isn’t great) became a sign that you were rich enough to fly off to Jamaica in December, and became very desirable. This has been complicated recently by the rise of budget airlines and tanning booths; an all-year tan no longer equals wealth.

The bottom line is that when a skin tone – either light or dark – becomes associated with low economic or social status, it ceases to be attractive.

By arrangement with The Independent

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