Attraction in every sense
How looks, voice, movement and scent draw us to future lovers and friends
Bibliographic Data
What makes someone attractive has been examined for faces, in terms of common preferences, and for opposite-sex interactions. We expanded on this by considering also other non-verbal modalities, personal preferences and same-sex interactions. We presented the face, body motion, voice and body odour from 61 non-verbal agents (34 women) as stimuli in an attractiveness rating to 71 perceivers (37 women). Our results showed that the modalities were differently attractive and that some correlated more than others. Specifically, body odours were least and audio-video stimuli most attractive. Voice/looks as well as body odour/movement showed fairly robust positive associations. Both common and personal preferences accounted for variance in the data. Most effects compared between opposite- and same-sex ratings, with only a few exceptions, including that only same-sex ratings showed a clear dominance of personal over common preferences. We conclude that the different non-verbal modalities are equally relevant for attraction but differ in absolute attractiveness and redundancy, likely due to their different suitability for communicating stable (e.g. genetic) versus variable (e.g. hormonal) person characteristics. Beauty excites agreement and disagreement; it matters not only in encounters with the other sex but in social interactions more broadly
Attraction · Attractiveness · Beauty · Cognitive psychology · Courtship · Developmental psychology · Dominance (genetics) · Interpersonal attraction · Modalities · Nonverbal communication · Perception · Physical attractiveness · Stimulus modality · Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification · Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior · Olfactory and Sensory Function Studies · Psychology · Social Psychology
Symmetry and Human Facial Attractiveness
Facial attractiveness
Attractive Faces Are Only Average
Manipulations of fundamental and formant frequencies influence the attractiveness of human male voices
First Impressions
Tend and Befriend
Facial sexual dimorphism, developmental stability, and susceptibility to disease in men and women
A Brief Social-Belonging Intervention Improves Academic and Health Outcomes of Minority Students
Social relationships and physiological determinants of longevity across the human life span
Social Components of Fitness in Primate Groups
Model Selection and Multimodel Inference
Emotion Perception from Dynamic and Static Body Expressions in Point-Light and Full-Light Displays
Social Relationships and Mortality Risk
Examining the “attractiveness halo effect” across cultures
Human Male Body Size Predicts Increased Knockout Power, Which Is Accurately Tracked by Conspecific Judgments of Male Dominance
Composite Portraits, Made by Combining Those of Many Different Persons Into a Single Resultant Figure
Maxims or myths of beauty? A meta-analytic and theoretical review
Face, body and speech cues independently predict judgments of attractiveness
Interpersonal Competition in Friendships
The Role of Sexual and Romantic Attraction in Human Mate Preferences
The unique contributions of perceiver and target characteristics in person perception
Body Odor Quality Predicts Behavioral Attractiveness in Humans
Perceptions of Human Attractiveness Comprising Face and Voice Cues
What do women want? Facialmetric assessment of multiple motives in the perception of male facial physical attractiveness
Relational mate value
Measuring the physical in physical attractiveness
Consensus in personality judgments at zero acquaintance
What is beautiful is good
Importance of physical attractiveness in dating behavior
Human facial beauty
Personality similarity and friendship
What sounds beautiful looks beautiful stereotype
Is actual similarity necessary for attraction? A meta-analysis of actual and perceived similarity
The Evolution of Human Physical Attractiveness
| Unique citing works | 1 |
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| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |