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Study: Extremely beautiful get fewer dates than average-looking people

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte has concluded that people who post the most beautiful profile pictures are less likely to receive dates than people with more down-to-Earth looks.

“Attractiveness can convey more power over visible space, but that, in turn, can make others feel they can’t approach that person,” said Dr. Tonya Frevert, who studies the different ways that extreme physical beauty is received in social situations.

Reaction to beauty is considered to be a mixture of biology and our society’s interpretation of that biology. It is the social status given to very attractive people that make the rest of us too nervous to approach them.

So, as you might have guessed, being beautiful is not a passport to certain happiness – though it helps. The researchers are keen to emphasize that like our conceptions of beauty itself, these influences are superficial and by no means deep-rooted in our biology, as some might suggest.

“We have a whole set of cultural ideals about beauty that let us say if someone is attractive – and through those same ideals, we begin to associate it with competence,” says Frevert. In a sense, it’s just a cognitive shortcut for a quick appraisal. “And like many of the shortcuts we use, it’s not very reliable.” And it could be fairly easy to lessen the impact – if human resources departments give more information about a candidate’s achievements before an interview, for example.

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