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When you first meet a potential partner, you are overwhelmed by all the information you have to process at once. In just a few seconds, you form an image of someone, which is called a ‘first impression‘. But that image goes beyond just physical attractiveness.
To determine whether someone is suitable for you as a partner or not, you look at more than just their appearance – also at their voice and smell. And that was not yet enough research, according to a number of researchers from Leiden University.
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Seeing, hearing and smelling
In order to investigate the role of senses other than sight – that which we see – the researchers thought it would be interesting to test it. And so they did by comparing the attractiveness of three senses in a speed dating event: sight, hearing and smell.
The study, published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior , shows that we are primarily concerned with appearance. How someone looks appears to be the most important factor of the three. A person’s scent and the sound of their voice are not decisive factors on a first date.
In the study, 67 young adults were invited to participate in a speed dating event in which they rated the attractiveness of potential opposite-sex partners. They rated the photos, audio recordings, and scents of these participants. And then they were allowed to actually go on a date with them in a face-to-face conversation that lasted 4 minutes.
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‘Seeing’ determines the outcome
The researchers found that the attractiveness of what they see, hear, and smell is slightly related. The participants who rated someone as visually attractive were slightly more likely to also rate that person as having an attractive voice and smell. And what they also found was that there was a strong relationship between how attractive someone looks and their willingness to date that person again.
“It seems that people are initially very focused on visual attractiveness,” author Tom S. Roth tells PsyPost . “People who previously rated a photo of their date as attractive were also very likely to go on a second date with them. However, we didn’t find such a strong effect for vocal and olfactory attractiveness.”
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