That Frustratingly Good-Looking Person

Are some people better looking than they think?  How does their attractiveness change their own behavior?  Are hot people actually more socially competent than others?  How old are we when we first start noticing attractiveness?  

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

It's That Popular Podcast. Mitch Princetine is a psychology professor at UNC Chapel Hill and the former Chief Science Officer at the American Psychological Association. Aaron Keck is a political scientist and award-winning radio host. Together, they discuss the popular and not so popular quirks of human behavior. Welcome into That Popular Podcast. Now, here's Mitch and Aaron.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Hi, welcome into our latest episode of the podcast. Mitch, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 0:28

I'm doing okay, I think. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Uh good, but now I'm concerned and apprehensive at the fact that you've just delivered the I'm doing fine response to that question, which is like, I'm not actually doing fine.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

Alright, you know, I'm not fine. I'm actually I'm pretty I'm I'm a little thrown. I am okay.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Something happened. What happened?

SPEAKER_02 0:52

So all right, so I'm at Harris Teeter.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

All right.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

Right. So that's our local grocery store. And I don't know, I'm I don't remember what I'm picking up, but I there must have been some alcohol.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

So this is already going real well.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

I'm not I'm not drinking it in the aisle. I'll just know that which you know. So but what was it? It was like Thursday, it was maybe like two o'clock, something like that. So I get to the register and I get carded. So okay. Okay, that's nice. I don't see how anyone could possibly think that I'm under 21, but sure, fine. Love getting carded. So I give this kid my license and he looks at it and he's like, Oh, yeah, okay. And I joke with him, I'm like, Oh, but just made it, you know. Right. And he's like, Yeah. And he hands me back my license and he pauses and then he looks back at me and he says, Um sir, are you eligible for any Thursday discounts? And I was like, Oh my God, do not tell me that it's like a senior citizen discount.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

I think it might have been a senior citizen discount.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

He turned eight shades of red and just like continue to check out my groceries. I was like, what the hell? Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

That's it. It's all downhill from here.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

It is what's going on? I can't believe first of all, I was like, okay, like, like maybe if I was rolled through here in a coffin, you could ask that. But like, short of that, what the oh my god, I've never been asked this before.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Well, how much of a discount is it? Like, are you right?

SPEAKER_02 2:29

I mean, no, I mean, I can't believe it. And then I like I had to think it through like, wait a minute, it's not like I bought like prune juice, depends, and a condolences card for my hip. Like it was what the like what? And then I'm like, well, am I I'm buying alcohol Thursday at a two o'clock?

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Is that like maybe, maybe also could depend on what kind of alcohol you're buying. Like, there's definitely the type of beer that young people buy and the type of beer that older people buy.

SPEAKER_02 2:58

It was Blue Moon. I think that's a a reasonably lame beer that anyone would buy.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

Yeah, that transcends generations, I think.

SPEAKER_02 3:05

I think that's cross-generational. Yeah. So I'm not I'm not feeling so great. That's that's to tell you. Like I am a walking uh display of decay and degeneration, apparently.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

Yeah. I did have this moment recently. I got my haircut, and that same day I shaved, and I was looking at myself in the mirror, like all coiffed and nice looking. Yeah. I was like, man, I am to the point now where I I think everyone has, and it's it's different for different people when in their life cycle they peak in terms of physical attractiveness. Like there are some people who peak when they're like in high school, and then you see them 30 years later, and it's like, I can see how you might have been attractive when you were a teenager, but your face just got like you grew weird in in the facial area. And then there are other people who peak much later in life. Like I know a guy who was not that attractive looking a guy until he was in his 50s, and then like he started to figure it out, and he just kind of grew into this like gray god kind of kind of person. And most people are somewhere in the middle. I think I peaked when I was like late 20s, early 30s. So I'm looking at myself in the mirror, and I'm well past then now. Like, man, this is like I look really good right now. Like, this is my peak, like as good as I can possibly look. And I peaked a long time ago. So looking at myself in the mirror right now is as good as I'm ever gonna look for the entire rest of my life, and it's all downhill from here. I was waiting for my peak. I've never had it.

SPEAKER_02 4:42

So apparently it's never coming.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

We gotta look at pictures of you over the course of over the course of your life and figure out.

SPEAKER_02 4:48

I have a face for radio. So I'm glad we're doing this without a video component, yeah, because oh my God.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

Well You look great.

SPEAKER_02 4:57

It's apparently all downhill uh at this point. So, you know, and what's so depressing about this is that, you know, as a psychologist, I know how much physical attractiveness ends up playing such a huge role in our social relationships. I mean, it's crazy. Did you did you know that that infants, literally like three-month-old infants, are able to like tell who's more attractive than they spend they behave differently and they spend more time looking at more attractive people.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 5:30

It's it's kind of crazy that like there is some infant in a crib being like, ew, uggo, get out of here. Like, bring back the hot one.

SPEAKER_01 5:39

Like, because Oh man, two babies at the red carpet at the Oscars, just like commentating.

SPEAKER_02 5:45

It's like the it's like the Muppets, the old guys there, but it's like these are infants sitting there, like spitting up at people walking by. Who is she wearing?

SPEAKER_01 5:53

How did they do that test?

SPEAKER_02 5:54

So actually, really interesting. There's there are a couple things they can do. Like, there's all the stuff they do with infants now where you can look at how they are sucking on a past fire and the and they that can be like attached to stuff to see, like, and the more that they habituate to something, they kind of I guess stop sucking on it more or more. They also do eye tracking stuff so you can see where an infant's eyes are looking. And they put up photos on two screens where like the baby's eyes, the baby's like in a little car seat, like all strapped in, you know, and you can see their eyes like either going to the screen on the left or the screen on the right. And you can then measure. And the what they do is they make sure that the experimenters are blind, so they don't know like whether the attractive person's on the left-hand side or the right hand side. All they're doing is coding the eyes, and they later sync it up and they're like, oh, the attractiveness was, you know, they were always looking more often at the attractive photos.

SPEAKER_01 6:46

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 6:47

You know, attractiveness is um symmetry.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:51

So there have been these things where they take like supermodel faces and they computer composite them. And even if you take like a hundred supermodel faces, the composite is more attractive than any of the individual supermodels.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

Because it's extra symmetrical, right?

SPEAKER_02 7:06

It's extra symmetrical. Like that's apparently the thing. And they've done this with celebrities to figure out like who actually has the most symmetrical face and whatever. And and it's interesting, like, why are we so drawn to symmetry? Yeah. You know?

SPEAKER_01 7:20

That said, if I held up a mirror to the middle of my face, it would not work. I don't know why.

SPEAKER_02 7:24

I would look like two totally very like on one side, I would look like I just had a disfiguring accident. On the other side, I would look like me if you had cataracts. And then and then the the Picasso mashup of those two is sadly the thing that I walk around.

SPEAKER_01 7:41

Yeah, pretty much. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:43

So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

Well, uh, it's that high self-esteem that makes you you. Yeah, thanks.

SPEAKER_02 7:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, it works. Um, I I think some people talk about like maybe babies are interested in that that evolutionary fitness and symmetry is somehow kind of demonstrating that this is someone who has good genes. So maybe we're drawn to attractiveness because it tells us something about good genetic traits, you know, for like survival of our species and whatnot.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Right, right. Maybe, maybe.

SPEAKER_02 8:17

There's some of that. There's also, and this is really depressing. There's also all this research that shows that physically attractive people are actually more socially competent.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Right. I mean, I can see that, but the causal arrow goes in reverse, right? It's not it's not like people who are attractive are naturally more socially competent. People who are attractive are more likely to find themselves in situations that are socially easier, so they are used to being sociable, right? I would imagine.

SPEAKER_02 8:46

That may be. That may be. But you know, some people take it even a step further. Like, okay, so there's this thing called the transactional model, and it's basically this idea that we are constantly back and forth between what we give out into the world, how people treat us, and how we respond to how we're treated. And it's just like a constant cycle for our entire lives. Right. So there was this really cool study. Uh they went to crazy extremes for the study. There was a there was an attractive lady who was asked to interact with one-year-old research participants, but they wanted for the same lady, without her knowing whether she looked attractive or not, to interact with the kids. They can manipulate the caregivers' attractiveness.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 9:28

Right. So they actually had a Hollywood makeup artist, kind of like in a Mrs. Doubtfire kind of way, like put on a latex mask. And there were two masks. One was her actual face. So basically it felt the same to her. She didn't know which mask was being put on. Right. But it basically was just her own attractive face. But the other one, they made like these subtle tweaks. Like they just made the nose a little bit longer, they made the chin a little bit kind of longer, and they, you know, made less symmetric, like a little bit of the eyes. Really, not like horror show, right. Kind of Halloween mask, but like just tiny little changes, you know?

SPEAKER_01 10:04

Yep, yep.

SPEAKER_02 10:05

And they actually went around the lab and they covered all reflective surfaces. So once she was wearing this mask, she had no idea which one she was in.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 10:13

Then they brought in a bunch of babies over the course of, you know, they did this experiment for months, of course. And they would she spent hours in makeup and whatever.

SPEAKER_01 10:21

And the babies I just appreciate the number of people involved in this experiment who clearly moved to California to go into the movie industry.

SPEAKER_02 10:30

Exactly. And they found themselves instead of working on a Spielberg film, they're doing this psychology experiment. Yeah. This is sad. This is not on their IMDB page. Right, right, right. But but thanks to them, cool psych science. So we we have these babies, and they actually behaved better for the attractive caregiver in that condition.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

Yeah. And then she's acting exactly the same because she doesn't know well, she is, but think about it.

SPEAKER_02 10:59

So if you have a baby that's crying and being fussy, you're acting very differently than if you have a baby that is being really cooperative and cooing and smiling and it's not a good thing. So then her behavior changes. So everything starts on a cycle, and they find that like and there was an episode of 30 Rock about this, which I thought was pretty cool. People who are attractive just, yeah, they naturally have easier social interactions. They're invited into different kinds of social interactions, not just like sexual interactions, but you know, like just generally people want to spend more time with them. They smile at them more. Yeah. They see the world as a place where everything's just kind of going their way. And because they get these extra opportunities, they develop extra social skills because they have more chance to hang out with people in pleasurable, fun uh ways. And then it just cycles.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

I can say that.

SPEAKER_02 11:52

So then you find yourself later with like, wow, this person seems so attractive and they seem so socially comfortable, and they seem to be at at home and all these complex social interactions. And damn it, it's because they're like, they really have found extra opportunity to learn more sophisticated social skills than the rest of us who have like our cat throwing up on us because, oh my God, you know, what we look like. And we just sit and watch TV and like we're not interacting with anybody.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

When we post this thing online, we got to post it with a picture of you so that people can actually look at your face and understand that you're not actually the hideous monster, but you're making yourself out of the way.

SPEAKER_02 12:36

No, did you see me walk through the door and my stomach entered about 20 minutes before the rest of my body?

SPEAKER_01 12:41

What you're talking about. Yeah. But I get that because like I'm thinking back to my own life. Like my ugly phase was in middle school. And everyone's ugly phase is also true. But I I was the ugly kid in middle school among all the other ugly kids. Uh, and I was very socially awkward. And like later, a little bit later in life, like late 20s, early 30s, I looked, I mean, I'm not a supermodel, but I looked better then than I did when I was 12, and I was more socially competent then. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:10

Have you ever known somebody, and maybe this is you, but I think that everyone was awkward in middle school, but they become more attractive later in life, but they still inside think that they look like they looked at 15.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:23

I have talked with a number of people, whether clinically or, you know, undergraduate students, who clearly have come into their own at some point in college, but they walk around insisting and and almost like they just project themselves in this sad sack way of like, oh, I feel terrible about myself. And it's just like this is very confusing because objectively you are not the person that you seem to think you are in your own head.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I know a lot of people like that. I was lucky because I kind of transformed in a very big way between eighth and ninth grade. So it was and that was like the move from middle to high school. So like it was a real sudden shift all around.

SPEAKER_02 14:04

So was this like a whole pubertal development growth spurred?

SPEAKER_01 14:08

It was pubertal development. It was like I there was an incident that summer where I just ditched all of my friends all at once and got new ones as I got into high school. I started doing more extracurricular stuff, and yeah, it was just like complete transition.

SPEAKER_02 14:23

So at my high school graduation, I have a photo of me with my high school friends. I am several inches shorter than them. I am wearing glasses with bifocals. And hey, back in these days, these were like the super cool, like metal glasses with the weird nose garbage. The like obvious, like semi-faces. Right. Exactly. Like so super cool. And I had like blonder hair. Well, I had hair, like um, it was blonder back then. So like you've got hair now on the looking at it. It's it's it's the work of a sorceress who who makes it look like I have hair. And two years later, I'm in Manhattan because when you go to high school in Long Island, there's like a bus that picks you up from college, drives you to the Upper East Side, assigns you an apartment, and everyone from my high school was like between like 75th and 85th on second or third. It was just all this. So we're walking around, and I swear to you, we ran into a few kids from high school that we hadn't seen in at this point, like four or five years.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

Right.

SPEAKER_02 15:24

We're all standing around and the and we're talking, and you know, we must have been talking for 10, 15 minutes. And finally, this guy who is talking, you know, to me and my friends says, By the way, have you ever heard from Mitch Princetine? Like, whatever happened to Mitch? And they're like, he's standing right next to you. And I'm literally standing there, like, what? So apparently I changed so radically that someone I went to school with for 13 years, I was standing next to for 15 minutes talking to them, and they had no idea who I was.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

That is wild.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

That's it's so yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

I ran into a friend from high school last year, and I've not been in high school in, you know, more than a quarter century, and we have not seen each other but once in all of those times, and we recognized each other instantly, yeah, which was very interesting. Although Facebook does help in that regard.

SPEAKER_02 16:17

Like you see pictures of each other, but yeah, I have been on the law, but yeah, yeah, no, and this was all pre-I know it's crazy, but well, so anyway, did you take that as a compliment or an insult? I don't know. I mean, the fact that I had grown a few inches, I was like, yeah, great, because I was so notoriously like very, very short, but the fact that I was not, I was like, okay, maybe that's it. But then I had other experiences later with people would be like, Who are you? And I don't get it, and I don't, it was just very weird. But sometimes I think we carry around with us that like 14-year-old version of how attractive we were, and then somehow for the rest of our lives, we're like, I've sometimes like seen photos of people, and then like, oh, now that I see this picture of you at 14, I understand you today in your 30s, 40s, 50s, way more than I ever did before. Because this is who you actually have been in every interaction I've had with you, and this makes much more sense now.

SPEAKER_01 17:13

So, what does this mean for us like individually, like going about our daily lives? Like, how do we take this information?

SPEAKER_02 17:24

Clearly, we are afforded numerous lifespan.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

It's not just viral marketing for the plastic surgeon you know who lives next door.

SPEAKER_02 17:31

No, I mean, I do think that, right? I mean, we I think that it's a crazy world with attractiveness. It's, you know, we can't solve that, right? And oh my God. I mean, as two males, we probably deal with this a teeny infinitesimal fraction of how much females have to deal with this all the time. Not to mention facial attractiveness, but body attractiveness. And then if you think now about like built-in beauty filters on social media, God help anyone who is born from 2000 on because it's totally crazy now. But I I do think in a way, like we want to have some grace about what we look like, what we have looked like, what we might look like, and I don't know, just how many people do you know where how attractive they are changes radically after an hour of knowing them? And yeah, the fact is I think we're a lot more interested in each other as human beings, even you know, just shortly after you get past that, yeah. That very temporary first impression.

SPEAKER_01 18:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:37

So I don't know. I think it's a part of it.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

Here's another question, and there's gotta be some research on this in terms of like the way that we interact with each other based on attractiveness levels. Is it a consistent spectrum, or do we are there like jumps in terms of like, oh, you're a one, so I'm gonna treat you like this, you're a four, so I'm gonna treat you like this, you're a 10, so I'm gonna treat you like this, and it's like a a step up instead of like you're slightly more attractive, so I'll treat you slightly better. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 19:05

Yeah, I think I think it is more of these dramatic differences. So I think if you're walking around with a bunch of people who are reasonably kind of taking care of themselves and fine, I don't think this stuff makes any difference really at all. I think it's the difference between someone who might be, you know, very much not following whatever attractiveness trend there may be to someone who's a model. You know, like I think there's bigger changes in that. And I think the smaller your context, the more those things get exaggerated. So if you're in a small office with 20 people, then that one person who's more attractive probably it's a bigger deal. But if you live in Manhattan and you're walking down the street passing, you know, 10,000 people a day, it's a different story. Okay. But it is interesting to think about, and I think where uh we can make uh a change for ourselves and also for our friends and parents is are we accidentally kind of affording different social opportunities to people because they're attractive or not? And believe it or not, research says, and this is controversial, but it's legit, that even parents treat their own kids differently based on the symmetry of their kids' faces. I mean, there's it no one wants to believe that, right? Like, no, I love all my kids the same. But I mean, research that kind of looks at this, and it's somewhat is it because that kid has developed different behaviors because of everyone treating them differently, and we're spending more or less time with them because they're more or less easy to take care of, but it creates the cycle.

SPEAKER_01 20:37

Interesting. So, last question have you been back to that hair seater?

SPEAKER_02 20:43

Yes. And I put on the the teen clothes, I could have pajama bottoms and you know, like Crocs, and I walk through with headphones on, and you know, I bought all the candy. No.

SPEAKER_01 20:55

How do you do, fellow kids?

SPEAKER_02 20:57

I said six seven a lot, you know.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Uh no, I let the record show he kind of did the motion for six seven, but not quite. It's really more of a shoulder shrug than an up and down, but you know.

SPEAKER_02 21:10

I have been back. I will not go back at Thursday at 2 o'clock. I think I'm gonna not go at 2 o'clock ever again on or not Thursdays ever again. That's a dangerous time. If you learn nothing else from this episode, do not go to the grocery on Thursdays if you are in any way wanting to feel young.

SPEAKER_00 21:30

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