
Is Kindness Physically Attractive? - pmcpinto
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/2014/10/09/is-kindness-physically-attractive/
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christoph
Seriously, i'm kind of surprised at the article and the comments. It all seems
so intrinsically obvious to me.

Ever met a seriously hot girl, who then opens her mouth and suddenly you lose
interest? Who wants to listen to a girl witter on about herself and her
problems within the first two minutes of meeting?

Then you meet a girl, who's not quite so attractive but suddenly sparks
creativity in you, inspires you, makes you laugh, makes you feel young
again...

Obviously there is more to attraction than "looks".

This isn't a sexist comment. It goes both ways, and it is
gender/race/age/religion unrelated.

The fact it even needs to be debated is scary and highlights how deeply most
people have got hung up on physical beauty while ignoring the fundamental
things that actually matter.

Looks fade, personality, generally does not.

~~~
davmre
For what it's worth, I'm sure you didn't mean this to be sexist, since the
phenomenon does exist in both directions. But your comment nonetheless reads
unpleasantly, because the question "ever met a seriously hot girl?" assumes
that the reader is a (straight) male, or, conceivably, a lesbian. That's the
sort of wording that makes women feel unwelcome in communities like HN; it's
essentially equivalent to having a discussion with a male and female colleague
in which you address all of your comments to the man and ignore the woman. In
general, you'll likely get a better response, and be able to avoid the "not
sexist" disclaimers, if you write as if you were speaking to a mixed-gender
audience (which you are!). In this case that could be as simple as
s/girl/person/.

~~~
coldtea
> _But your comment nonetheless reads unpleasantly, because the question "ever
> met a seriously hot girl?" assumes that the reader is a (straight) male, or,
> conceivably, a lesbian._

Yeah, and so? He perhaps wanted to address this part of HN, which is the most
populous anyway.

~~~
PeterWhittaker
And this comment is at the heart of the issue. It would have taken minimal
extra effort with negligible effect on the intent of the OP to simply say:
Have you ever met someone seriously hot? I mean, so seriously hot? Then they
open their mouths and go to hell... etc.

Your comment, to whit _address this part of HN_ , IS the problem. The OP could
have addressed everyone - but failed to even bother wanting to try.

Take the extra effort to include all of us, regardless of our genes. Be kind -
we'll think all the more of you.

~~~
coldtea
I think that this "white knight" (as the other commenter put it) "here to help
women" kind of corrective action, actually belittles them.

I mean, women are perfectly capable to understand that the one who wrote the
above happened to be a straight male and so talked from HIS viewpoint.

They can also adapt what he said for their circumstances, as can gay men etc,
and e.g respond with "yeah, I know what you're talking about, had that happen
with a great looking guy that turned out to be totally vacuous", etc.

Speaking like genderless objects addressing other genderless objects with
genderless pronouns and genderless generalizations doesn't really help anyone.

~~~
davmre
> Speaking like genderless objects addressing other genderless objects with
> genderless pronouns and genderless generalizations doesn't really help
> anyone.

If you're speaking in the first person, about your own experiences, it's
totally cool to go wild with gender. Also if you're speaking to a person of a
particular gender, or in the third person about people of a particular gender:
great! No one's saying all speech should be genderless (well, I'm sure someone
somewhere is, but that's nowhere near the position of anyone in this thread.)

The _only_ issue is that if you're speaking in the second person, to a crowd
of people that is in fact mixed-gender, but you speak as if they were all
male, then this can have the effect of making women feel (very slightly)
unwelcome. Yes, women are more than capable of performing the mental
transformation into what you _would_ have said if you were actually addressing
them. But the experience of doing this is a constant, subtle reminder that
they don't belong.

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wwweston
When we're talking about "attractiveness", what we're ultimately getting at is
the entire experience of being with/relating to another person.

How much we like the way they look is one dimension of it -- possibly pretty
hardwired and important, but only one dimension. Seen that way, the idea that
attractiveness goes beyond appearance is more or less tautological.

Nice to have some experiments that seem to support that to talk about, of
course.

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hmsimha
> This woman’s perception of this man’s physical attractiveness remained this
> intense, even after 30 years since last she had seen him!

This just came out of nowhere, without any previous or later mention of the
period the study was conducted over in the article. Was it a typo? It seems
like a lot can change in 30 years and I'm doubtful the subjects would even
retain an association they formed with a person they rated 30 years
previously.

~~~
christoph
There is a body of controversial evidence that suggests a persons personality
is formed within their first three years of life and doesn't generally
significantly change.

[1] -
[http://www.rc.usf.edu/~jdorio/Personality/PERSONALITY%20CONT...](http://www.rc.usf.edu/~jdorio/Personality/PERSONALITY%20CONTINUITY%20AND%20CHANGE%20ACROSS%20THE%20LIFE%20COURSE.pdf)
[2] -
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_development](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_development)

~~~
hmsimha
Did you read the article? This is regarding an association formed by
experiment subjects towards people shown to them in photographs. My quote from
the article seems to be the only reference to a 30-year-later follow-up
wherein subjects were again asked to rate the same people (and supposedly
retained the same negative/positive association)

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RV86
Per the read, I didn't find that Kindness had been isolated as a variable.

From an anthropological standpoint, one could argue that someone kind or
charitable would be attractive -- not necessarily because we prize virtue --
but because we assume that person has resources to spare.

~~~
flocial
I totally agree. This title is misleading. All the examples indicate people
who "contribute social value" such as hard work, harmony with others, etc.
None of these are dependent on kindness. I think the submitter is confounding
it with the popular "nice guys finish last" conception.

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narfquat
I think it might be more reasonable to say that unkindness is repulsive.

~~~
taskstrike
I don't think it's that simple. I actually think a lot of women are also
attracted to unkindness, it's the "bad boy" effect. In pickup culture, the
well known "neg" is also a manifestation of this.

I think it has a lot to do with a women's personal goals, whether they want to
casually date for fun or settle down.

I would really like to see a study of the unkindness and it's effect on women
in terms of attraction.

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mareofnight
Probably halo effects have something to do with it?

I do think that personality and behavior can influence attraction really,
really strongly. And I suspect that how much each factor matters, and what
kind of personalities and behavior are attractive, would vary a lot from
person to person (given the variety of reasons why friends have said they're
attracted to people). But I also think intense attraction to personality is
something that wouldn't show up on a test like this. Personality doesn't
really come to life just from a description, and for most people who've told
me about being really strongly attracted to a personality, it was something
kinda unusual, or that would require really getting to know the person before
it was visible. Then again, I also wouldn't be surprised if my friends' ways
of being attracted to people aren't a representative sample.

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swayvil
A kind person is more attractive than an unkind person the way a living person
is more attractive than a corpse.

Ya, I can say that. It's definitely like a next level of aliveness, or
awareness or consciousness or something like that.

The whole crass cold cerebral thing may be cute on tv but in real life is is
not attractive

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twirlip
It is very simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is
invisible to the eye. ("Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur.
L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.") The Little Prince by Antoine de
Saint Exupéry.

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AznHisoka
No, but seeing someone over and over in the same place, who acts kind to you
can make you "fall" for them. IE the 5-6 receptionist who always smiles at you
everyday can become a 7-8.

~~~
hawkice
I'm going to say this whole line of thinking (maybe this entire story/link)
should be marked with the dual "has potential to very easily become offensive
for little purpose" and "probably not actually interesting to hackers"
asterisks.

This comment seems like it will inevitably spark conversation of low value.

~~~
twirlip
Oh, I don't know that at all. Hacking humans -- our perceptions, our behaviors
-- is interesting. While pretending to be kind to increase one's
attractiveness is deplorable, there is a silver lining in that the world could
use more kindness, motives aside. To paraphrase Edmund Burke, I believe one
who repeatedly acts kindly will find himself or herself transformed to a kind
person.

~~~
hawkice
My more specific concerns were twofold:

(1) Discussions of numeric ranking systems for attractiveness, which are (I
hope) strictly out of scope for HN, to say the least.

(2) Insinuations of intra-workplace attractions being directed -- not towards
coworkers per se -- but towards receptionists. So, I don't want to discuss the
actual merits of this, but suffice it to say, I predicted that people would
comment along both these lines: "That comment reflects actual gender bias (and
possibly sexism) in the field" AND "That comment may encourage workplace
frustrations of professional women by implying they cannot escape the sexual
interest of their male coworkers".

I find those thoughts to be not particularly interesting, at the very least
because they are not related to the article that was linked to.

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a3voices
No, and the real issue is that people can't accurately answer simple
questions.

~~~
kazinator
Bingo! Attractiveness can't be determined from what people _say_ they are
attracted to. People say what they are expected to say or socially conditioned
to say.

~~~
danieltillett
It is almost as though people tell a social scientist what they think the
social scientist wants to hear. It is a good thing this is not true or else
social science would just be pseudo-science pushing a political agenda.

