We all know the types of behavior, character traits or physical traits that make people appealing to us. However, while in many cases it is easy to say why we find someone attractive, we often find it hard to understand what things offend and even repel us. Many studies have dealt with this question and tried to examine which things influence attraction between people and whether they can be changed. These are the 9 things that have been found that may make people less attractive, and there is no doubt that these are particularly interesting findings...
Did you think that the only effect of sleep deprivation is fatigue? You may be surprised to find that this is a habit that affects the degree to which others may be attracted to you. In a 2010 study, researchers photographed people who slept for 8 hours a night, compared to people who did not sleep for 31 hours. Participants were asked to rate the subjects in different areas, and the results revealed that those who slept less were rated as less healthy, sadder, and especially less attractive. Because sleep deprivation effects are cumulative over time, even when you sleep only an hour or two less, it can affect how others see at you.
In many cases we find that honest and nice people achieve less than cunning and unpleasant people, but when it comes to attraction, it turns out that not only do most of us prefer nice people, but we are also deterred by people who hold characteristics attributed to improper behavior, even if we don’t know them at all. In a study conducted by Chinese researchers in 2014, participants were given pictures of men and women who looked at the camera with a neutral look and asked them to rate them according to their level of attraction. Some of the pictures were accompanied by "nice" or "reliable", others were "sly" and "dishonest", and some had no caption attached. The pictures, which included captions of the second type, were at the bottom of the list. This is despite the fact that the interviewees were asked to rely solely on external appearance.
Standing in different positions can make us feel differently about ourselves. Have you ever stood up straight and automatically felt more confident? In a 2016 study, the researchers created profiles for men and women on two dating apps. For the first app, the men and women were photographed standing with their arms crossed, while for the other they were photographed with their arms stretched out as if they were trying to grab something. The results showed that the pictures on the second app received more feedback than the pictures on the first app.
In a 2013 study, in which men were required to rate the attractiveness of a number of women, those with high levels of cortisol were perceived by men as less attractive than women who were not stressed. The researchers note that the reason for this is probably because low cortisol levels indicate health and fertility, traits that attract people looking for a partner. In some cases, stress may not have been due to status, but from events that occurred in women's lives earlier in the day.
Can happiness or self-confidence be negative? In a 2011 study of more than 1,000 subjects, the researchers presented images of the opposite sex and asked to rate their levels of attraction. While optimism and joy are two attractive qualities, it is found that women prefer men who don’t look too happy, because they then translate it to smugness, whereas men prefer women who do not seem overly self-confident, because they then interpret it as arrogance.
A sense of humor is a quality that is important to many looking for potential partners, but is it really a measure that influences our attraction to others to a significant degree? This is the question they attempted to answer in a 2009 study, in which the researchers analyzed respondents' answers to the degree of attraction towards men and women presented to them, as well as whether they thought they were people with whom they would want to be in a relationship. The answers were unequivocal: the men and women who were asked to show a sense of humor were perceived by participants as much more attractive than those who were successful in many other areas but were not perceived as funny.
Researchers who sought to examine how laziness affects our attraction to others over time asked students in a six-week course to rank each other on different measures, one of which was attraction, at the beginning and end of the course. When they analyzed the results, it was found that those who were perceived as attractive at the beginning of the course but did not help in group work or were late in submitting assignments, lost their rank over time and ranked as less attractive at the end.
Smells affect us quite a lot, and researchers assume that people are interested in partners who are not genetically similar to them, but also not too different, with scent being one of the measures that influence us when we make this decision. In various studies, it was found that people are less attracted to partners whose scent is too different from theirs, but it turns out that even when the scent is too similar, the results are negative. In a 2006 study, researchers asked several couples questions about how attracted they were to each other, how often they had sex and how they felt about their partners' scent. At the same time, DNA samples were collected from the couples and brought to a lab to check for genetic similarities. It was found that partners who showed similar body odor and were genetically similar were less attracted to each other and even admitted that they had affairs.
