Whether you think it’s fair or not, people are making snap assumptions about you all the time. And they’ll do this even without letting you speak. What’s worse is that even after they meet you, they may still go on to make further evaluations based on that previous ill-formed assumption. And chances are, you’ve done the same thing to others a few times too.
Coupled with our unfair tendency to make snap evaluations about others, most people shoot themselves in the foot before they get a chance to even introduce themselves. With these wrong habits and routines, most people have destroyed their social interactions before it started.
The relationship between sleep and looks
In an interesting study published in the Royal Society Open Science, it was found that having nights of bad sleep consecutively, besides making you less healthy, can make you appear significantly less attractive to others.
In the study, the Karolinska Institute Stockholm sent 25 university students home with a kit to measure their night-time movement. The students were asked by the researchers to get a good night’s sleep for two nights in a row, after which they were photographed by the researchers.
One week after, the students restricted their sleep to four hours, and they were photographed by the researchers again. The researchers then took the two sets of photographs into the streets and showed them to 122 strangers.
Interestingly, they found that the strangers kept rating the faces with deprived sleep as less attractive. On the other hand, photographs of the same people, but with quality sleep were found to be very pleasing and attractive to look at.
Understand that your sleep corresponds with your cortisol level. A loss of sleep today will result in an elevation of cortisol the next evening. And since cortisol is the stress hormone built in the body to respond to stressful situations, things quickly go downhill from here. Most poor habits arise at this point because when we are stressed up, we are more likely to find desperate ways to decompress.
Besides the fact that cortisol puts your body in a more stressful state, cortisol can mess up your circadian rhythm, preventing you from going into complete rest when you do sleep. Meaning, if you’re not sleeping well, your body isn’t regenerating to the point where it should be. And what this means for your body is wrinkles, acne, and many other conditions caused by stress. Plus, you’ll also look tired and exhausted to people.
Why over smiling makes you less attractive as a man
In a study that involved over 1000 participants, male and female aged between seventeen to forty-nine years. 52% were Asian, and 48% were Caucasian, participants were shown photos of a male and female displaying four emotions: Happiness, pride, shame, and neutrality. The participants were then asked to rate the person’s attractiveness on a scale of one to nine, nine being the most attractive.
What they found was that women rated men as less attractive when they smiled. Men, on the other hand, ranked women as very attractive when they smiled, and less attractive if they looked prideful and serious.
But why is this the case?
Well, as Jesica Tracey, the leader of the research explained, by smiling more, men appear feminine, which means less dominant, less masculine, and more desperate for sex. Furthermore, a man smiling too much can be perceived by women as a sign of availability and agreeableness (aka a “nice guy”). Hence, smiling just works better for women than men.
However, this study is purely based on the first eye attractiveness of a person. The participants rendered their opinions without knowing the men in the pictures. It wasn’t done with a long-term relationship in mind. Meaning, even though women find a serious and proud look attractive at first sight, it doesn’t mean that’s how they want a guy to always be around them.
When it comes to building great relationships, there’s a lot more that goes into consideration.
Stress makes you ugly, according to research
Elevated cortisol levels can do a number of bad things to our bodies ranging from suppressing the immune system to gaining weight and increasing blood pressure. In a study led by Dr. Pheona Moore, researchers measured people’s cortisol levels and took their pictures. Her observation, as she put it in her words quoted by Dailymail,
“We found that the faces of men and women who had high cortisol in their saliva were rated as less attractive… Although we haven’t yet identified specific cues, it seems to come down to simply how healthy someone looks.”
Even though the rise in cortisol was happening within, as in the other studies, people easily noticed when someone doesn’t look healthy as a result of stress.
Lacking a skincare routine
This is a bad habit that most guys are likely to fall short on because a lot of guys assume having a skincare routine is girly.
Do you know what happens when you don’t deliberately take action to take care of your skin? Well, according to the National Institute on Aging, “Dry skin and itching, bruises, age spots and skin tags, sometimes skin cancer”. Not taking care of your skin accelerates the aging process, making you look older than you should be.
Besides, no matter where you go or what you do, you’ll always have to take your face with you. Why not make it look as good as possible?
The way you treat service staffs
“How people treat waiters should be considered when choosing a future partner,” advised Dr. Frederic Neuman on Psychology Today.
If the president of your country offers to come to visit you at your home, it doesn’t matter how disrespectful, untidy, or careless you are. You’ll get yourself together and put on a facade of kindness, respect, and integrity. Why?
Humans are consummate actors. We are weird to act in certain ways around certain people either because we want something from them, or because we know that certain behaviors are just what’s required of us socially.
For instance, a guy might act politely to a woman because he wants to take her out on a date and probably get a chance to have sex with her in the end. A lady might be extremely polite to her boss either because she doesn’t want to get fired or because she knows that’s one of the ways you get a raise. In a nutshell, our kind gestures towards people usually have ulterior motives.
Hence, one of the ways we can really understand the true character of a person is how they treat those who are beneath them. The waiter or doorman doesn’t appear to be in a position to have anything to offer you either today or in any foreseeable future.
Therefore, treating them with respect shows true character. It means you’re kind to them because that’s who you are, not because you care too much about what they’ll think of you if you don’t.
Lacking a sense of purpose
There’s an underlying reason why people refuse to do basic things they know to be good for them. Helpful habits like skincare, exercising, eating good food, spending time with the right company, or reading a good book, should come naturally to those who sincerely care for themselves. But it doesn’t for most people. Why?
Well, for the most part, some people have no motivation to make anything good of themselves. And this complacence reflects in everything concerning them, including how people perceive them. And according to studies, we don’t like lazy and unmotivated people that much. And it’s no wonder why.
Humans are emotional creatures. We can’t just command ourselves to do things. Will power can only do so much. The most important part about living a good life is having a worthwhile reason to get out of bed every day despite the hardship that plagues us all from time to time.
Of course, no one expects you to be in your final form, but they expect you to be working towards it. People with no goals, ambition or drive are liabilities to themselves and to those around them. We all need that feeling of meaning that comes with making progress towards a goal. If you don’t have a why, it becomes very easy to become angry, resentful, and envious of those who do.
Our level of attractiveness is something we are all conscious of almost all the time. Luckily for all of us, being attractive is less dependent on genetics and more on our character. Most times it’s the little things that have nothing to do with your looks that will determine how people see you the most. Get rid of these six habits and boost your level of attractiveness.
