Is it really natural for us to assume good things about other people? New research put this idea to the test, literally, with some fascinating results.
The human mind is shockingly good at filling in the gaps of perception. It's how we perceive movement from a series of cascading images, and how we can see three-dimensional objects on two-dimensional surfaces.
But what about when it comes to person perception? What types of"tricks" do our minds play on us to help us gauge the physical appearance of others?suggests that our minds instinctively err on the side of beauty. Specifically, a team of psychologists led by Diana Orghian of the University of Lisbon found that incomplete photographs were judged to be significantly more attractive than complete photographs.
"Attractive people are perceived to be healthier, wealthier, and more sociable," state the authors of the research. "Yet, people often judge theof others based on incomplete and inaccurate facial information. Here, we test the hypothesis that people fill in the missing information with positive inferences when judging others’ facial beauty. [...] Our data shows that—relative to complete photographs—participants judge faces in incomplete photographs as physically more attractive.
To arrive at this conclusion, the researchers asked 420 participants to evaluate a series of facial photographs. For each photograph, participants rated facial attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 10 . The catch was this: some of the faces were displayed in full-resolution, some were blurred, and others were cropped so that only one-third of the face appeared in the picture .
In other words, the old adage about only seeing the best in people might be true after all. The authors conclude, “Being positively biased about the attractiveness of strangers might have been a mechanism evolutionarily selected, as it might have facilitated social and reproductive events.”Orghian, D., & Hidalgo, C. A. . Humans judge faces in incomplete photographs as physically more attractive. Scientific Reports, 10, 1-12.
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