Babies born with perception of beauty

I find this to be an interesting article:

So you think beauty is in the eye of the beholder? Think again. According to new research from the University of Exeter in Great Britain, the preference for pretty faces over ugly ones is embedded in our brains from the moment of birth and possibly prior to birth.

Newborn babies come fully equipped with built-in preferences, including a preference for an attractive face, that help them make sense of their new environment, report the BBC News Online and Newsweek magazine. The Exeter researchers showed more than 100 infants two images that were placed side by side. One was of an attractive face, while the other was a less attractive face. The babies, ranging in age from five hours old to two days old, spent about 80 percent of the time looking at the attractive face, while barely glancing at the unattractive face.

"You can show them pair after pair of faces that are matched for everything other than attractiveness. This leads to the conclusion that babies are born with a very detailed representation of the human face," Dr. Alan Slater, a psychologist at Exeter, explained to the BBC News. Why would infants have this capability? "It helps them to recognize familiar faces--particularly that of the mother--and it helps them in learning about the social world. Attractiveness is not simply in the eye of the beholder, it is in the brain of the newborn infant right from the moment of birth and possibly prior to birth," he added.

When those babies grow up, the preference for pretty faces doesn't change. And it crosses all cultures and geography as well. When an insular European is shown the faces of two Africans, the one he chooses as most attractive is also the same one an African chooses. And it works the other way around when an African is shown the faces of two Europeans.

"Although we think that standards of facial beauty vary over time and culture, they don't actually change that much," Slater explained to Newsweek. The evidence indicates that there is a biological and universal standard."

So don't blame a man when he can't help but look at a pretty face! He's biologically programmed that way.

- Netscape News

 

We have a sense of attractive so that when we see it we will fuck it. What is messed up is unrealistic standards on a girls weight, thats messed up. We wernt born expecting 95 Lb to be the average female weight, and its something that needs to change.

 

That last sentence really wasn't necessary. Guess what-women like pretty faces, too!

 

That article goes against similar studies I have learned about in psychology--the conclusion of one study being that babies look at novel and unusual pictures longer than they do familiar ones. So in conclusion, the babies in the study at hand had ugly mothers.

 

LOL, Lace! It is really hard to infer WHY a baby is looking at something. Sometimes it IS because they like it (like that staring at Mama they do starting at birth and persisting for the next 3 months or so) other times they stare at things as if to say "WTF?" My kids, as babies, would stare at unusual looking people, usually someone strange looking, very heavily tattoed, or very dark skinned, and it was a bit embarressing. Of course, they would also stare at womyn with long brown hair, and sometimes they would frown, after a few minutes as if to say, "Hey you ain't my mama!" IN fact, my dd, Moon went through a period where she would cry when my sister picked her up. We look a LOT a like but I think it scared her.

 

I find it to be a poorly designed study, myself. It is, however, interesting in the fact that they may actually use this as documented proof of attraction. "Sad", may be a more appropriate word, rather than interesting, in such an instance.

 

I have read about similar studies on babies, only that it isn't "beauty" they prefer, but round, soft faces. Beauty is much to subjective to say babies prefer it.

 

ARGH they're getting close to figuring out how we brainwash people in utero to accept waiflike blondes as the epitome of beauty!

Gather the male collective! We have more subjugation to do!

 

Considering the fact that what defines, "beauty", differes from one individual to the next, a test based on this study would be inconclusive on either spectrum.

 

babies are born bloody, and covered in a smelly membrane thingie and placenta and poop.

 

I have seen all five of my babies born.There is blood,but it isn't particularly smelly. Most of the time there is no poop,at least not near the end.The mother usually expells most of that from contracting before actual delivery,and we have time to clean up before birth.

 

so babies are hard-wired from birth with their preferences and those preferences are universal. damn, there isint any hope for me after all.

 

UG04 - ignore empirical evidence. The feminist manifesto says beauty standards are male oppression.

So male oppression it is.

Therefore we must, somehow, be manipulating kiddies in utero.

 

hmm... well, $3.75 and a couple pennys says that at the DAWN OF HUMANITY they were poopy.


hey, also, my aunt was a midwife, and she would always talk about how great giving birth in a tub filled with water is, and now that i've learned the joys of birth (with the tearing and the pooping and the mucus plugs and all that other FUN STUFF!!), what happens there? what happens if a lady needs to hurl? are they just sitting there in a pool of their own blood, placenta and poo? or are there people with those little goldfish net thingies cleanging them all out? or something else?

 

Well. Sometimes mamas poop when giving birth, (there is a lot of pushing) but it usually falls to the pad and doesn't get on the baby. But most womyn have the runs during early labor, so there isn't a lot of poop left (a natural cleaning out of the lower digestive tract to facilitate the progress of the infant and to prevent too much bacteria from being present.)

Now, if the baby expelled meconium before the birth (poop the baby makes in the first few days, from swallowing the amniotic fluid, when expelled before or during labor it is often a sign of stress in the infant) then he will be covered with a sticky green-black stool. This can be dangerous, if the baby inhales it, it can coat the inside of the lungs and prevent proper breathing, but a good midwife or doctor can usually prevent problems with it. But it really doesn't smell. Placenta and amniotic fluid have an organic, human smell to them, but it isn't bad.

 

humans smell funny...

 

ick.

 

i learned something about this in an art class once, babies are predisposed to be more attracted to more symetrical faces. like if the eyes, nose, lips, etc. are more symmetrical then the face is more attractive. my roomate told me this was in a psych book


we learn about the ideal canon in drawing and painting and you learn certain tricks about proportions, like from the tip of your nose to your chin is the same distance as from the tip of your nose to your cheekbone and usually the same distance as the edge of your eye to your ear...

 

wonder how it works on autistic babies....

 

yeah that's true, i was checking if anyone mentioned that. they've done studies to show that all humans associate symmetry with attractiveness. which explains why quasimoto wasn't exactly a hit with the ladies.

i just recently saw a study where they took people's faces and morphed them into the opposite gender, then showed the subjects that face along with others of the opposite gender and they almost always chose the face of themselves as the most attractive. thought that was pretty amusing.