PDF Version. Many people are familiar with the stereotypical expression “what is beautiful is good” (see, for review, Karandashev, 2022; also another article on this below). However, this stereotype in many cultures is less powerful and more context-specific than researchers … Continue reading
What’s an Ideal Age Difference in Dating?
What age of a prospective partner do you consider preferable? Would you prefer a partner of the same age as yours? Or would you prefer a partner with an age difference in dating? According to evolutionary views, men and women … Continue reading
Human Predisposition to Homogamy in Love
PDF Version. Genetic similarity and social homogamy play important roles in our interpersonal attraction and love. As I showed elsewhere, genetic resemblance between individuals predisposes them to fall in love. Partners in a couple share more genetic traits than random … Continue reading
Physical Beauty of Men and Women Across Cultures
PDF Version. Physical beauty characterizes attractive facial features, facial expressions, physical qualities of the body, bodily expressions, and grooming. These are the major groups of appearances that people pay attention to while they are communicating with others. Physical beauty is … Continue reading
Sexual Preferences for Physical Attractiveness
PDF Version. To what extent do men and women place different values on different aspects of physical attractiveness when trying to mate? Evolutionary science gives us important keys for better understanding the mating value of physical attractiveness. However, despite the … Continue reading
Why Do We Love Good-Looking People?
PDF Version. The good-looking people are likable. No doubt. They entice us with their physically attractive appearance. We also tend to fall in love with beautiful women and handsome men. They look cool and perfect in everything. A Stereotype of … Continue reading
The “Mere Exposure Effect” and Love Attraction
PDF Version. Familiarity and similarity are powerful forces in our love attraction that can be influenced by genetic predisposition, imprinting, or by the “mere exposure effect.” They all have the same psychological mechanism of prototypicality. Despite our interest in novelty, … Continue reading
Sexual Imprinting of Attraction and Love
PDF Version. The mechanism of imprinting plays an important role in shaping our sexual attraction and love preferences. I explain what “imprinting” is elsewhere. Early works by Konrad Lorenz (Lorenz, 1935) demonstrated that the early experiences of birds and animals … Continue reading
Imprinting of Love Attachment
PDF Version. We tend to perceive people who look familiar to us as more attractive than those who look unfamiliar. This is the familiarity principle that also guides our mating, sexual preferences, and love. The phenomenon of imprinting is at … Continue reading
Attraction to Familiar Others
PDF Version. Something familiar is frequently attractive to us, despite our interest in novelty. It is a persistent pattern of human perception and behavior, which is called the familiarity principle (Reis & Sprecher, 2009). The principle is rooted in the mere … Continue reading