Gender Agreement Attraction in Russian: Production and Comprehension Evidence.

PubMed

Slioussar, Natalia; Malko, Anton

2016-01-01

Agreement attraction errors (such as the number error in the example "The key to the cabinets are rusty") have been the object of many studies in the last 20 years. So far, almost all production experiments and all comprehension experiments looked at binary features (primarily at number in Germanic, Romance, and some other languages, in several cases at gender in Romance languages). Among other things, it was noted that both in production and in comprehension, attraction effects are much stronger for some feature combinations than for the others: they can be observed in the sentences with singular heads and plural dependent nouns (e.g.,"The key to the cabinets…"), but not in the sentences with plural heads and singular dependent nouns (e.g., "The keys to the cabinet…"). Almost all proposed explanations of this asymmetry appeal to feature markedness, but existing findings do not allow teasing different approaches to markedness apart. We report the results of four experiments (one on production and three on comprehension) studying subject-verb gender agreement in Russian, a language with three genders. Firstly, we found attraction effects both in production and in comprehension, but, unlike in the case of number agreement, they were not parallel (in production, feminine gender triggered strongest effects, while neuter triggered weakest effects, while in comprehension, masculine triggered weakest effects). Secondly, in the comprehension experiments attraction was observed for all dependent noun genders, but only for a subset of head noun genders. This goes against the traditional assumption that the features of the dependent noun are crucial for attraction, showing the features of the head are more important. We demonstrate that this approach can be extended to previous findings on attraction and that there exists other evidence for it. In total, these findings let us reconsider the question which properties of features are crucial for agreement attraction in

The Effects of Physical Attractiveness and Anxiety on Heterosexual Attraction Over a Series of Five Encounters

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mathes, Eugene W.

1975-01-01

The "information availability model" of heterosexual attraction was tested by having subjects go on a series of five encounters. It was found that both physical attractiveness and the personality variable, anxiety, had early and continuous effects on liking. It was concluded the model is an inadequate explanation of heterosexual…

The Effect of Expected Value on Attraction Effect Preference Reversals

PubMed Central

Warren, Paul A.; El‐Deredy, Wael; Howes, Andrew

2016-01-01

Abstract The attraction effect shows that adding a third alternative to a choice set can alter preference between the original two options. For over 30 years, this simple demonstration of context dependence has been taken as strong evidence against a class of parsimonious value‐maximising models that evaluate alternatives independently from one another. Significantly, however, in previous demonstrations of the attraction effect alternatives are approximately equally valuable, so there was little consequence to the decision maker irrespective of which alternative was selected. Here we vary the difference in expected value between alternatives and provide the first demonstration that, although extinguished with large differences, this theoretically important effect persists when choice between alternatives has a consequence. We use this result to clarify the implications of the attraction effect, arguing that although it robustly violates the assumptions of value‐maximising models, it does not eliminate the possibility that human decision making is optimal. © 2016 The Authors Journal of Behavioral Decision Making Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. PMID:29081595

The Effects of Attractiveness and Status on Personality Evaluation

PubMed Central

Tartaglia, Stefano; Rollero, Chiara

2015-01-01

Research on personality has shown that perceiving a person as attractive fosters positive expectations about his/her personal characteristics. Literature has also demonstrated a significant link between personality traits and occupational achievement. Present research examines the combined effects of attractiveness, occupational status, and gender on the evaluation of others’ personality, according to the Big Five model. The study consisted of a 2 (Attractiveness: High vs. Low) x 2 (occupational Status: High vs. Low) x 2 (Target gender: Male vs. Female) between-subjects experimental design (N = 476). Results showed that attractive targets were considered more positively than unattractive targets, and this effect was even stronger for male targets. Occupational status influenced perceived agreeableness (lower for high-status targets) and perceived conscientiousness (higher for high-status targets). PMID:27247685

Number Attraction Effects in Near-Native Spanish Sentence Comprehension

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jegerski, Jill

2016-01-01

Grammatical agreement phenomena such as verbal number have long been of fundamental interest in the study of second language (L2) acquisition. Previous research from the perspective of sentence processing has documented nativelike behavior among nonnative participants but has also relied almost exclusively on grammar violation paradigms. The…

Task-dependency and structure-dependency in number interference effects in sentence comprehension

PubMed Central

Franck, Julie; Colonna, Saveria; Rizzi, Luigi

2015-01-01

We report three experiments on French that explore number mismatch effects in intervention configurations in the comprehension of object A’-dependencies, relative clauses and questions. The study capitalizes on the finding of object attraction in sentence production, in which speakers sometimes erroneously produce a verb that agrees in number with a plural object in object relative clauses. Evidence points to the role of three critical constructs from formal syntax: intervention, intermediate traces and c-command (Franck et al., 2010). Experiment 1, using a self-paced reading procedure on these grammatical structures with an agreement error on the verb, shows an enhancing effect of number mismatch in intervention configurations, with faster reading times with plural (mismatching) objects. Experiment 2, using an on-line grammaticality judgment task on the ungrammatical versions of these structures, shows an interference effect in the form of attraction, with slower response times with plural objects. Experiment 3 with a similar grammaticality judgment task shows stronger attraction from c-commanding than from preceding interveners. Overall, the data suggest that syntactic computations in performance refer to the same syntactic representations in production and comprehension, but that different tasks tap into different processes involved in parsing: whereas performance in self-paced reading reflects the intervention of the subject in the process of building an object A’-dependency, performance in grammaticality judgment reflects intervention of the object on the computation of the subject-verb agreement dependency. The latter shows the hallmarks of structure-dependent attraction effects in sentence production, in particular, a sensitivity to specific characteristics of hierarchical representations. PMID:25914652

The effect of physical attractiveness of models on advertising effectiveness for male and female adolescents.

PubMed

Tsai, Chia-Ching; Chang, Chih-Hsiang

2007-01-01

This study investigates the effect of advertising with physically attractive models on male and female adolescents. The findings suggest that highly attractive models are less effective than those who are normally attractive. Implications of social comparison are discussed.

The Effect of Physical Attractiveness of Models on Advertising Effectiveness for Male and Female Adolescents

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tsai, Chia-Ching; Chang, Chih-Hsiang

2007-01-01

This study investigates the effect of advertising with physically attractive models on male and female adolescents. The findings suggest that highly attractive models are less effective than those who are normally attractive. Implications of social comparison are discussed.

Beyond initial attraction: physical attractiveness in newlywed marriage.

PubMed

McNulty, James K; Neff, Lisa A; Karney, Benjamin R

2008-02-01

Physical appearance plays a crucial role in shaping new relationships, but does it continue to affect established relationships, such as marriage? In the current study, the authors examined how observer ratings of each spouse's facial attractiveness and the difference between those ratings were associated with (a) observations of social support behavior and (b) reports of marital satisfaction. In contrast to the robust and almost universally positive effects of levels of attractiveness on new relationships, the only association between levels of attractiveness and the outcomes of these marriages was that attractive husbands were less satisfied. Further, in contrast to the importance of matched attractiveness to new relationships, similarity in attractiveness was unrelated to spouses' satisfaction and behavior. Instead, the relative difference between partners' levels of attractiveness appeared to be most important in predicting marital behavior, such that both spouses behaved more positively in relationships in which wives were more attractive than their husbands, but they behaved more negatively in relationships in which husbands were more attractive than their wives. These results highlight the importance of dyadic examinations of the effects of spouses' qualities on their marriages.

Effects of Instructor Attractiveness on Learning.

PubMed

Westfall, Richard; Millar, Murray; Walsh, Mandy

2016-01-01

Although a considerable body of research has examined the impact of student attractiveness on instructors, little attention has been given to the influence of instructor attractiveness on students. This study tested the hypothesis that persons would perform significantly better on a learning task when they perceived their instructor to be high in physical attractiveness. To test the hypothesis, participants listened to an audio lecture while viewing a photograph of instructor. The photograph depicted either a physically attractive instructor or a less attractive instructor. Following the lecture, participants completed a forced choice recognition task covering material from the lecture. Consistent with the predictions; attractive instructors were associated with more learning. Finally, we replicated previous findings demonstrating the role attractiveness plays in person perception.

Gender Agreement Attraction in Russian: Production and Comprehension Evidence

PubMed Central

Slioussar, Natalia; Malko, Anton

2016-01-01

Agreement attraction errors (such as the number error in the example “The key to the cabinets are rusty”) have been the object of many studies in the last 20 years. So far, almost all production experiments and all comprehension experiments looked at binary features (primarily at number in Germanic, Romance, and some other languages, in several cases at gender in Romance languages). Among other things, it was noted that both in production and in comprehension, attraction effects are much stronger for some feature combinations than for the others: they can be observed in the sentences with singular heads and plural dependent nouns (e.g.,“The key to the cabinets…”), but not in the sentences with plural heads and singular dependent nouns (e.g., “The keys to the cabinet…”). Almost all proposed explanations of this asymmetry appeal to feature markedness, but existing findings do not allow teasing different approaches to markedness apart. We report the results of four experiments (one on production and three on comprehension) studying subject-verb gender agreement in Russian, a language with three genders. Firstly, we found attraction effects both in production and in comprehension, but, unlike in the case of number agreement, they were not parallel (in production, feminine gender triggered strongest effects, while neuter triggered weakest effects, while in comprehension, masculine triggered weakest effects). Secondly, in the comprehension experiments attraction was observed for all dependent noun genders, but only for a subset of head noun genders. This goes against the traditional assumption that the features of the dependent noun are crucial for attraction, showing the features of the head are more important. We demonstrate that this approach can be extended to previous findings on attraction and that there exists other evidence for it. In total, these findings let us reconsider the question which properties of features are crucial for agreement

The Attraction Effect Modulates Reward Prediction Errors and Intertemporal Choices.

PubMed

Gluth, Sebastian; Hotaling, Jared M; Rieskamp, Jörg

2017-01-11

Classical economic theory contends that the utility of a choice option should be independent of other options. This view is challenged by the attraction effect, in which the relative preference between two options is altered by the addition of a third, asymmetrically dominated option. Here, we leveraged the attraction effect in the context of intertemporal choices to test whether both decisions and reward prediction errors (RPE) in the absence of choice violate the independence of irrelevant alternatives principle. We first demonstrate that intertemporal decision making is prone to the attraction effect in humans. In an independent group of participants, we then investigated how this affects the neural and behavioral valuation of outcomes using a novel intertemporal lottery task and fMRI. Participants' behavioral responses (i.e., satisfaction ratings) were modulated systematically by the attraction effect and this modulation was correlated across participants with the respective change of the RPE signal in the nucleus accumbens. Furthermore, we show that, because exponential and hyperbolic discounting models are unable to account for the attraction effect, recently proposed sequential sampling models might be more appropriate to describe intertemporal choices. Our findings demonstrate for the first time that the attraction effect modulates subjective valuation even in the absence of choice. The findings also challenge the prospect of using neuroscientific methods to measure utility in a context-free manner and have important implications for theories of reinforcement learning and delay discounting. Many theories of value-based decision making assume that people first assess the attractiveness of each option independently of each other and then pick the option with the highest subjective value. The attraction effect, however, shows that adding a new option to a choice set can change the relative value of the existing options, which is a violation of the independence

Effects on eastern larch beetle of its natural attractant and synthetic pheromones in Alaska.

Treesearch

Richard A. Werner; Malcom M. Furniss; Thomas. Ward

1981-01-01

Traps baited with Seudenol + a-pinene caught 87 percent more eastern larch beetles, Dendroctonus simplex LeConte, than did tamarack logs infested with females. Male beetles responded to the synthetic attractant in greater numbers than females. Male beetles were not attracted to frontalin, a principal attractant of the closely related Douglas-fir...

The Putative Son's Attractiveness Alters the Perceived Attractiveness of the Putative Father.

PubMed

Prokop, Pavol

2015-08-01

A body of literature has investigated female mate choice in the pre-mating context (pre-mating sexual selection). Humans, however, are long-living mammals forming pair-bonds which sequentially produce offspring. Post-mating evaluations of a partner's attractiveness may thus significantly influence the reproductive success of men and women. I tested herein the theory that the attractiveness of putative sons provides extra information about the genetic quality of fathers, thereby influencing fathers' attractiveness across three studies. As predicted, facially attractive boys were more frequently attributed to attractive putative fathers and vice versa (Study 1). Furthermore, priming with an attractive putative son increased the attractiveness of the putative father with the reverse being true for unattractive putative sons. When putative fathers were presented as stepfathers, the effect of the boy's attractiveness on the stepfather's attractiveness was lower and less consistent (Study 2). This suggests that the presence of an attractive boy has the strongest effect on the perceived attractiveness of putative fathers rather than on non-fathers. The generalized effect of priming with beautiful non-human objects also exists, but its effect is much weaker compared with the effects of putative biological sons (Study 3). Overall, this study highlighted the importance of post-mating sexual selection in humans and suggests that the heritable attractive traits of men are also evaluated by females after mating and/or may be used by females in mate poaching.

Effective sampling range of food-based attractants for female Anastrepha suspensa (Diptera: Tephritidae).

PubMed

Kendra, Paul E; Epsky, Nancy D; Heath, Robert R

2010-04-01

Release-recapture studies were conducted with both feral and sterile females of the Caribbean fruit fly, Anastrepha suspensa (Loew) (Diptera: Tephritidae), to determine sampling range for a liquid protein bait (torula yeast/borax) and for a two-component synthetic lure (ammonium acetate and putrescine). Tests were done in a guava, Psidium guajava L., grove and involved releasing flies at a central point and recording the numbers captured after 7 h and 1, 2, 3, and 6 d in an array of 25 Multilure traps located 9-46 m from the release point. In all tests, highest rate of recapture occurred within the first day of release, so estimations of sampling range were based on a 24-h period. Trap distances were grouped into four categories (<10, 10-20, 20-30, and >30 m from release point) and relative trapping efficiency (percentage of capture) was determined for each distance group. Effective sampling range was defined as the maximum distance at which relative trapping efficiency was > or = 25%. This corresponded to the area in which 90% of the recaptures occured. Contour analysis was also performed to document spatial distribution of fly dispersal. In tests with sterile flies, immature females dispersed farther and were recovered in higher numbers than mature females, regardless of attractant, and recapture of both cohorts was higher with torula yeast. For mature feral flies, range of the synthetic lure was determined to be 30 m. With sterile females, effective range of both attractants was 20 m. Contour maps indicated that wind direction had a strong influence on the active space of attractants, as reflected by distribution of captured flies.

Effects of Perceived Attractiveness and Sex-Role Interests on Interpersonal Attraction.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thornton, Billy; Linnstaedter, LaNelle

Subjects (40 male, 40 female) viewed a videotaped "interview" with a competent female stimulus person (SP) who appeared to be sex-role congruent or incongruent and was either physically attractive or unattractive. Interpersonal attraction (Likability) was assessed by objective questionnaires. Subjects' sex and attitudes toward women were included…

Facial Cosmetics and Attractiveness: Comparing the Effect Sizes of Professionally-Applied Cosmetics and Identity.

PubMed

Jones, Alex L; Kramer, Robin S S

2016-01-01

Forms of body decoration exist in all human cultures. However, in Western societies, women are more likely to engage in appearance modification, especially through the use of facial cosmetics. How effective are cosmetics at altering attractiveness? Previous research has hinted that the effect is not large, especially when compared to the variation in attractiveness observed between individuals due to differences in identity. In order to build a fuller understanding of how cosmetics and identity affect attractiveness, here we examine how professionally-applied cosmetics alter attractiveness and compare this effect with the variation in attractiveness observed between individuals. In Study 1, 33 YouTube models were rated for attractiveness before and after the application of professionally-applied cosmetics. Cosmetics explained a larger proportion of the variation in attractiveness compared with previous studies, but this effect remained smaller than variation caused by differences in attractiveness between individuals. Study 2 replicated the results of the first study with a sample of 45 supermodels, with the aim of examining the effect of cosmetics in a sample of faces with low variation in attractiveness between individuals. While the effect size of cosmetics was generally large, between-person variability due to identity remained larger. Both studies also found interactions between cosmetics and identity-more attractive models received smaller increases when cosmetics were worn. Overall, we show that professionally-applied cosmetics produce a larger effect than self-applied cosmetics, an important theoretical consideration for the field. However, the effect of individual differences in facial appearance is ultimately more important in perceptions of attractiveness.

Facial Cosmetics and Attractiveness: Comparing the Effect Sizes of Professionally-Applied Cosmetics and Identity

PubMed Central

Kramer, Robin S. S.

2016-01-01

Forms of body decoration exist in all human cultures. However, in Western societies, women are more likely to engage in appearance modification, especially through the use of facial cosmetics. How effective are cosmetics at altering attractiveness? Previous research has hinted that the effect is not large, especially when compared to the variation in attractiveness observed between individuals due to differences in identity. In order to build a fuller understanding of how cosmetics and identity affect attractiveness, here we examine how professionally-applied cosmetics alter attractiveness and compare this effect with the variation in attractiveness observed between individuals. In Study 1, 33 YouTube models were rated for attractiveness before and after the application of professionally-applied cosmetics. Cosmetics explained a larger proportion of the variation in attractiveness compared with previous studies, but this effect remained smaller than variation caused by differences in attractiveness between individuals. Study 2 replicated the results of the first study with a sample of 45 supermodels, with the aim of examining the effect of cosmetics in a sample of faces with low variation in attractiveness between individuals. While the effect size of cosmetics was generally large, between-person variability due to identity remained larger. Both studies also found interactions between cosmetics and identity–more attractive models received smaller increases when cosmetics were worn. Overall, we show that professionally-applied cosmetics produce a larger effect than self-applied cosmetics, an important theoretical consideration for the field. However, the effect of individual differences in facial appearance is ultimately more important in perceptions of attractiveness. PMID:27727311

Attracting girls to physics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Borg, Anne; Sui, Manling

2013-03-01

Large regional differences remain in the number of girls studying physics and the number of female physicists in academic positions. While many countries struggle with attracting female students to university studies in physics, climbing the academic ladder is the main challenge for these women. Furthermore, for many female physicists the working climate is not very supportive. The workshop Attracting Girls to Physics, organized as part of the 4th IUPAP International Conference on Women in Physics, South Africa 2011, addressed attitudes among education-seeking teenagers and approaches for attracting young girls to physics through successful recruitment plans, including highlighting the broad spectrum of career opportunities for those with physics qualifications. The current paper presents findings, examples of best practices, and recommendations resulting from this workshop.

The effects of facial adiposity on attractiveness and perceived leadership ability.

PubMed

Re, Daniel E; Perrett, David I

2014-01-01

Facial attractiveness has a positive influence on electoral success both in experimental paradigms and in the real world. One parameter that influences facial attractiveness and social judgements is facial adiposity (a facial correlate to body mass index, BMI). Overweight people have high facial adiposity and are perceived to be less attractive and lower in leadership ability. Here, we used an interactive design in order to assess whether the most attractive level of facial adiposity is also perceived as most leader-like. We found that participants reduced facial adiposity more to maximize attractiveness than to maximize perceived leadership ability. These results indicate that facial appearance impacts leadership judgements beyond the effects of attractiveness. We suggest that the disparity between optimal facial adiposity in attractiveness and leadership judgements stems from social trends that have produced thin ideals for attractiveness, while leadership judgements are associated with perception of physical dominance.

Effects of attractiveness and gender on the perception of achievement-related variables.

PubMed

Chia, R C; Allred, L J; Grossnickle, W F; Lee, G W

1998-08-01

The present study was an examination of the effects of physical attractiveness and gender on perceptions of academic success, achievement-related traits, intelligence, initiative, and attributions of ability and effort in relation to academic success. It was hypothesized that attractive persons and men would be rated more favorably along these dimensions than would unattractive persons and women. The participants were 144 U.S. undergraduates who observed photographs of attractive and unattractive men and women and then rated the persons in the photographs on the aforementioned dimensions. Physical attractiveness had a differential effect on the dimensions within achievement. Also, being perceived as physically attractive created positive impressions of achievement-related traits for men but negative impressions for women.

The Perceived Relationship between Physical Attractiveness and Social Influence Effectiveness.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Longo, Laura C.; Ashmore, Richard D.

The power of beauty has been contemplated by writers, poets, and philosophers for centuries. The link between the target physical attractiveness and perceived social influence effectiveness has not been directly and systematically investigated. The goal of this study was to assess whether physically attractive (versus unattractive) individuals are…

Adaptation effects to attractiveness of face photographs and art portraits are domain-specific

PubMed Central

Hayn-Leichsenring, Gregor U.; Kloth, Nadine; Schweinberger, Stefan R.; Redies, Christoph

2013-01-01

We studied the neural coding of facial attractiveness by investigating effects of adaptation to attractive and unattractive human faces on the perceived attractiveness of veridical human face pictures (Experiment 1) and art portraits (Experiment 2). Experiment 1 revealed a clear pattern of contrastive aftereffects. Relative to a pre-adaptation baseline, the perceived attractiveness of faces was increased after adaptation to unattractive faces, and was decreased after adaptation to attractive faces. Experiment 2 revealed similar aftereffects when art portraits rather than face photographs were used as adaptors and test stimuli, suggesting that effects of adaptation to attractiveness are not restricted to facial photographs. Additionally, we found similar aftereffects in art portraits for beauty, another aesthetic feature that, unlike attractiveness, relates to the properties of the image (rather than to the face displayed). Importantly, Experiment 3 showed that aftereffects were abolished when adaptors were art portraits and face photographs were test stimuli. These results suggest that adaptation to facial attractiveness elicits aftereffects in the perception of subsequently presented faces, for both face photographs and art portraits, and that these effects do not cross image domains. PMID:24349690

Estimating the Sex-Specific Effects of Genes on Facial Attractiveness and Sexual Dimorphism

PubMed Central

Purkey, Alicia M.; Grebe, Nicholas M.; Carey, Gregory; Garver-Apgar, Christine E.; Bates, Timothy C.; Arden, Rosalind; Hewitt, John K.; Medland, Sarah E.; Martin, Nicholas G.; Zietsch, Brendan P.; Keller, Matthew C.

2014-01-01

Human facial attractiveness and facial sexual dimorphism (masculinity–femininity) are important facets of mate choice and are hypothesized to honestly advertise genetic quality. However, it is unclear whether genes influencing facial attractiveness and masculinity–femininity have similar, opposing, or independent effects across sex, and the heritability of these phenotypes is poorly characterized. To investigate these issues, we assessed facial attractiveness and facial masculinity–femininity in the largest genetically informative sample (n = 1,580 same- and opposite-sex twin pairs and siblings) to assess these questions to date. The heritability was ~0.50–0.70 for attractiveness and ~0.40–0.50 for facial masculinity– femininity, indicating that, despite ostensible selection on genes influencing these traits, substantial genetic variation persists in both. Importantly, we found evidence for intralocus sexual conflict, whereby alleles that increase masculinity in males have the same effect in females. Additionally, genetic influences on attractiveness were shared across the sexes, suggesting that attractive fathers tend to have attractive daughters and attractive mothers tend to have attractive sons. PMID:24213680

Effects of malocclusions on facial attractiveness and their correlations with the divine proportion.

PubMed

Akan, Seden; Torgut, Ayse Gul; Oktay, Hüsamettin

2017-09-01

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of malocclusions on facial attractiveness and to determine if it was correlated with the divine proportion. Standard frontal facial photos were taken from 335 subjects in natural head position. Facial attractiveness of the subjects was evaluated by 10 dental students using a 10-point visual analog scale (VAS). All of the evaluations were arranged in order, and 30 attractive subjects with the highest score and 30 nonattractive subjects having the lowest score were chosen. On the frontal photos of these subjects, 13 landmarks were determined and 12 ratios were measured. Two way ANOVA was used to determine the effects of malocclusions on facial attractiveness, Student's t test was used to compare the facial proportions of the attractive and nonattractive subjects, and one sample t test was used to define the relationships between the divine proportion and facial ratios. No statistically significant difference was found between malocclusion groups in terms of facial attractiveness. Of the 12 facial ratios, significant differences were found between attractive and nonattractive subjects regarding trichion-menton/nasion-menton, subnasale-menton/stomion-menton, nasion-subnasale/stomion-menton, nasion-subnasale/nasal width, and trichion-menton/right-left frontotemporale ratios. All of the ratios except nasion-subnasale/stomion-menton in the attractive group and subnasale-menton/stomion-menton and nasion-menton/nasion-trichion in the nonattractive group were found to be different from the divine proportion. Sagittal skeletal malocclusions evaluated by ANB angle are not effective on facial attractiveness. Facial ratios used in this study have little effect on attractiveness, and are different from the divine proportion.

Physical attractiveness, issue agreement, and assimilation effects in candidate appraisal.

PubMed

Schubert, James N; Curran, Margaret Ann; Strungaru, Carmen

2011-01-01

This study examines the cognitive and affective factors of candidate appraisal by manipulating candidate attractiveness and levels of issue agreement with voters. Drawing upon research in evolutionary psychology and cognitive neuroscience, this analysis proposes that automatic processing of physical appearance predisposes affective disposition toward more attractive candidates, thereby influencing cognitive processing of issue information. An experimental design presented attractive and unattractive candidates who were either liberal or conservative in a mock primary election. The data show strong partial effects for appearance on vote intention, an interaction between appearance and issue agreement, and a tendency for voters to assimilate the dissimilar views of attractive candidates. We argue that physical appearance is important in primary elections when the differences in issue positions and ideology between candidates is small.

Attractive but guilty: deliberation and the physical attractiveness bias.

PubMed

Patry, Marc W

2008-06-01

The current study examined the effect of jury deliberation on the tendency for mock jurors to find attractive defendants guilty less often. It was expected that there would be an interaction between group deliberation (yes or no) and defendant's appearance (plain-looking or attractive). It was hypothesized that mock jurors who did not deliberate would be more likely to find a plain-looking defendant guilty and that deliberation would mitigate this effect. The study was a 2 x 2 between-subjects factorial design. Participants were assigned randomly to one of four conditions: attractive defendant/deliberation, attractive defendant/no deliberation, plain-looking defendant/deliberation, and plain-looking defendant/no deliberation. A total of 172 undergraduates from a small, rural college in Vermont contributed to this study: mock jurors were 70 men and 52 women, ages ranged from 18 to 52 years (M=20.5, SD=4.9). The hypothesis was supported. Mock jurors who did not deliberate were more likely to find the plain-looking defendant guilty, whereas mock jurors who deliberated were more likely to find the attractive defendant guilty.

Relationship between Physical Attractiveness, Physical Effectiveness, and Self-Esteem: A Cross-Sectional Analysis among Adolescents.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thornton, Bill; Ryckman, Richard M.

1991-01-01

Examined contributions of physical attractiveness and physical effectiveness to self-esteem among adolescents in grades 7, 9, and 11, and college freshmen. Both attractiveness and effectiveness were significantly related to self-esteem of males and females. Attractiveness and effectiveness did not appear to be differentially important to…

Physical Attractiveness: Interactive Effects of Counselor and Client on Counseling Processes.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vargas, Alice M.; Borkowski, John G.

1983-01-01

Assessed how the physical attractiveness of counselors and clients interacted to build rapport in two experiments involving college students (N=128 and N=64). Results showed the counselor's physical attractiveness had a major impact on her perceived effectiveness and the client's expectation of success irrespective of the client's attractiveness…

Effects of topology on the adsorption of singly tethered ring polymers to attractive surfaces.

PubMed

Li, Bing; Sun, Zhao-Yan; An, Li-Jia

2015-07-14

We investigate the effect of topology on the equilibrium behavior of singly tethered ring polymers adsorbed on an attractive surface. We focus on the change of square radius of gyration Rg(2), the perpendicular component Rg⊥(2) and the parallel component Rg‖(2) to the adsorbing surface, the mean contacting number of monomers with the surface , and the monomer distribution along z-direction during transition from desorption to adsorption. We find that both of the critical point of adsorption εc and the crossover exponent ϕ depend on the knot type when the chain length of ring ranges from 48 to 400. The behaviors of Rg(2), Rg⊥(2), and Rg‖(2) are found to be dependent on the topology and the monomer-surface attractive strength. At weak adsorption, the polymer chains with more complex topology are more adsorbable than those with simple topology. However, at strong adsorption, the polymer chains with complex topology are less adsorbable. By analyzing the distribution of monomer along z-direction, we give a possible mechanism for the effect of topology on the adsorption behavior.

Unconscious processing of facial attractiveness: invisible attractive faces orient visual attention.

PubMed

Hung, Shao-Min; Nieh, Chih-Hsuan; Hsieh, Po-Jang

2016-11-16

Past research has proven human's extraordinary ability to extract information from a face in the blink of an eye, including its emotion, gaze direction, and attractiveness. However, it remains elusive whether facial attractiveness can be processed and influences our behaviors in the complete absence of conscious awareness. Here we demonstrate unconscious processing of facial attractiveness with three distinct approaches. In Experiment 1, the time taken for faces to break interocular suppression was measured. The results showed that attractive faces enjoyed the privilege of breaking suppression and reaching consciousness earlier. In Experiment 2, we further showed that attractive faces had lower visibility thresholds, again suggesting that facial attractiveness could be processed more easily to reach consciousness. Crucially, in Experiment 3, a significant decrease of accuracy on an orientation discrimination task subsequent to an invisible attractive face showed that attractive faces, albeit suppressed and invisible, still exerted an effect by orienting attention. Taken together, for the first time, we show that facial attractiveness can be processed in the complete absence of consciousness, and an unconscious attractive face is still capable of directing our attention.

Effect of Physical Attractiveness on Therapists' Initial Judgments of a Person's Self-concept

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hobfoll, Stevan E.; Penner, Louis A.

1978-01-01

Investigated effect of a person's physical attractiveness on a therapist's initial judgment of that person's self-concept. Videotapes and audiotapes were made of interviews with attractive and unattractive males and females. Physically attractive persons of both sexes were rated as having better self-concepts than unattractive persons. (Author)

Relationship of Physical Attractiveness to Students' Ratings of Teaching Effectiveness.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

O'Reilly, Maria T.

1987-01-01

A study found that the physical attractiveness of a dental school teacher affected the student's opinion of teaching effectiveness, regardless of the student's sex, with effectiveness ratings correlating with pleasing appearance. (MSE)

Face likeability mediates the memory-enhancing effect of face attractiveness in young but not older adults.

PubMed

Lin, Tian; Lendry, Reesa; Ebner, Natalie C

2016-11-01

Evidence of effects of face attractiveness on memory is mixed and little is known about the underlying mechanisms of this relationship. Previous work suggests a possible mediating role of affective responding to faces (i.e., face likeability) on the relationship between face attractiveness and memory. Age-related change in social motivation may reduce the relevance of face attractiveness in older adults, with downstream effects on memory. In the present study, 50 young and 51 older participants were presented with face-trait pairs. Faces varied in attractiveness. Participants then completed a face-trait associative recognition memory task and provided likeability ratings for each face. There was a memory-enhancing effect of face attractiveness in young (but not older) participants, which was partially mediated by face likeability. In addition, more attractive and less attractive (compared to moderately attractive) faces were more likely remembered by both young and older participants. This quadratic effect of face attractiveness on memory was not mediated by face likeability. Findings are discussed in the context of motivational influences on memory that vary with age.

The Effect of Attractive Interactions and Macromolecular Crowding on Crystallins Association

PubMed Central

Wei, Jiachen; Dobnikar, Jure; Curk, Tine; Song, Fan

2016-01-01

In living systems proteins are typically found in crowded environments where their effective interactions strongly depend on the surrounding medium. Yet, their association and dissociation needs to be robustly controlled in order to enable biological function. Uncontrolled protein aggregation often causes disease. For instance, cataract is caused by the clustering of lens proteins, i.e., crystallins, resulting in enhanced light scattering and impaired vision or blindness. To investigate the molecular origins of cataract formation and to design efficient treatments, a better understanding of crystallin association in macromolecular crowded environment is needed. Here we present a theoretical study of simple coarse grained colloidal models to characterize the general features of how the association equilibrium of proteins depends on the magnitude of intermolecular attraction. By comparing the analytic results to the available experimental data on the osmotic pressure in crystallin solutions, we identify the effective parameters regimes applicable to crystallins. Moreover, the combination of two models allows us to predict that the number of binding sites on crystallin is small, i.e. one to three per protein, which is different from previous estimates. We further observe that the crowding factor is sensitive to the size asymmetry between the reactants and crowding agents, the shape of the protein clusters, and to small variations of intermolecular attraction. Our work may provide general guidelines on how to steer the protein interactions in order to control their association. PMID:26954357

Effects of Associating with Musical Genres on Heterosexual Attraction.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zillman, Dolf; Bhatia, Azra

1989-01-01

Studies the effect of musical preferences on undergraduate students' estimation of numerous behavioral traits and the desirability of a potential heterosexual date. Finds that such disclosure influences attraction, as well as the perception and evaluation of pertinent traits, the effects being a function of genre-specific stereotypes and…

Unconscious processing of facial attractiveness: invisible attractive faces orient visual attention

PubMed Central

Hung, Shao-Min; Nieh, Chih-Hsuan; Hsieh, Po-Jang

2016-01-01

Past research has proven human’s extraordinary ability to extract information from a face in the blink of an eye, including its emotion, gaze direction, and attractiveness. However, it remains elusive whether facial attractiveness can be processed and influences our behaviors in the complete absence of conscious awareness. Here we demonstrate unconscious processing of facial attractiveness with three distinct approaches. In Experiment 1, the time taken for faces to break interocular suppression was measured. The results showed that attractive faces enjoyed the privilege of breaking suppression and reaching consciousness earlier. In Experiment 2, we further showed that attractive faces had lower visibility thresholds, again suggesting that facial attractiveness could be processed more easily to reach consciousness. Crucially, in Experiment 3, a significant decrease of accuracy on an orientation discrimination task subsequent to an invisible attractive face showed that attractive faces, albeit suppressed and invisible, still exerted an effect by orienting attention. Taken together, for the first time, we show that facial attractiveness can be processed in the complete absence of consciousness, and an unconscious attractive face is still capable of directing our attention. PMID:27848992

Effective writing that attracts patients.

PubMed

Baum, Neil

2015-01-01

Doctors today not only must communicate verbally, they must also realize that the written word is important to their ability to connect with the patients that they already have and also to attract new patients. Doctors will be expected to write blogs, to create content for their Web sites, to write articles for local publications, and even to learn to express themselves in 140 characters or less (i.e., Twitter). This article presents 10 rules for selecting the right words to enhance your communication with existing patients and potentially to attract new patients to your practice.

Effects of shape parameters on the attractiveness of a female body.

PubMed

Fan, J; Dai, W; Qian, X; Chau, K P; Liu, Q

2007-08-01

Various researchers have suggested that certain anthropometric ratios can be used to measure female body attractiveness, including the waist to hip ratio, Body Mass Index (BMI), and the body volume divided by the square of the height (Volume-Height Index). Based on a wide range of female subjects and virtual images of bodies with different ratios, Volume-Height Index was found to provide the best fit with female body attractiveness, and the effect of Volume-Height Index can be fitted with two half bell-shaped exponential curves with an optimal Volume-Height Index at 14.2 liter/m2. It is suggested that the general trend of the effect of Volume-Height Index may be culturally invariant, but the optimal value of Volume-Height Index may vary from culture to culture. In addition to Volume-Height Index, other body parameters or ratios which reflect body proportions and the traits of feminine characteristics had smaller but significant effects on female body attractiveness, and such effects were stronger at optimum Volume-Height Index.

Physical attractiveness and reproductive success in humans: Evidence from the late 20 century United States.

PubMed

Jokela, Markus

2009-09-01

Physical attractiveness has been associated with mating behavior, but its role in reproductive success of contemporary humans has received surprisingly little attention. In the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (1244 women, 997 men born between 1937 and 1940) we examined whether attractiveness assessed from photographs taken at age ~18 predicted the number of biological children at age 53-56. In women, attractiveness predicted higher reproductive success in a nonlinear fashion, so that attractive (second highest quartile) women had 16% and very attractive (highest quartile) women 6% more children than their less attractive counterparts. In men, there was a threshold effect so that men in the lowest attractiveness quartile had 13% fewer children than others who did not differ from each other in the average number of children. These associations were partly but not completely accounted for by attractive participants' increased marriage probability. A linear regression analysis indicated relatively weak directional selection gradient for attractiveness (β=0.06 in women, β=0.07 in men). These findings indicate that physical attractiveness may be associated with reproductive success in humans living in industrialized settings.

Physical attractiveness, cosmetic use and self-perception in the elderly.

PubMed

Graham, J A; Kligman, A M

1985-04-01

Synopsis The relationships between physical attractiveness, cosmetic practices and self-perception were examined in elderly females. Sixteen individuals of high and 16 of low attractiveness were evaluated with regard to 'how they saw themselves'in terms of their behaviour, attitude, appearance, etc., and some aspects of their utilization of cosmetics. The attractive evaluated themselves more highly than the unattractive on an overall measure of self-perception, and they rated themselves more highly on a number of important individual dimensions of self-perception: they perceived themselves as being healthier, with a greater feeling of wellbeing, as having a more positive outlook on life; as being more cheerful/less depressed, and better adjusted; they registered greater satisfaction with their lives; were more socially engaged; and more realistic. Attractiveness did not appear to be correlated with the aspects of cosmetic practices examined. The physically attractive and unattractive did not differ significantly with respect to cosmetic usage (frequency and number of products), attitude towards cosmetics, history of cosmetic care, or difference between their cosmetic and basic attractiveness. Since our previous research(1) on this subject sample has shown that the unattractive elderly benefit from cosmetic therapy more than the attractive - not only in terms of appearance but psychologically - it is suggested that explicit training in effective cosmetic usage as used in cosmetic therapy programmes could help to bridge the psychological gap between the handsome and unhandsome elderly and reduce discrimination against the unhandsome elderly.

Creating beauty: creativity compensates for low physical attractiveness when individuals assess the attractiveness of social and romantic partners.

PubMed

Watkins, Christopher D

2017-04-01

Although creativity is attractive in a potential mate, it is unclear (i) whether the effects of creativity on attractiveness generalize to other social contexts and (ii) whether creativity has equivalent effects on men's and women's attractiveness. As social knowledge of creativity may either enhance or 'offset' the appeal of social partners who differ in physical attractiveness, three repeated measures experiments were conducted to directly address these issues. Here, participants rated a series of face-text pairs for attractiveness on trials that differed in one of four combinations of facial attractiveness (attractive and less attractive) and creativity (creative and less creative), rating story-tellers in two experiments (short interpretations of an identical painting) and creative ideas in a further experiment (alternative uses for an everyday object). Regardless of the sex of the judge, creativity and facial attractiveness had independent effects on men's overall attractiveness (initial experiment) and, in further experiments, more substantial effects on the attractiveness of men with less attractive faces than men with attractive faces (when using a different measure of creativity) and specific effects on the attractiveness of individuals with less attractive faces (when using different face stimuli). Collectively, across three experiments, these findings suggest that creativity may compensate for putative cues to lower biological 'quality' and that the benefits of creativity to social groups more generally enhance attraction to creative men (in two experiments) and creative men and women (one experiment). More broadly, the data suggest that species can integrate knowledge of cognitive intelligence with visual cues to biological 'quality' to facilitate mate and/or ally choice.

Effects of Attractiveness and Gender on the Perception of Achievement-Related Variables.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chia, R. C.; Allred, L. J.; Grossnickle, W. F.; Lee, G. W.

1998-01-01

Examines the effects of physical attractiveness and gender on perceptions of academic success, achievement-related traits, intelligence, initiative, and attributions of ability and effort in relation to academic success. Finds that being perceived as physically attractive created positive impressions of achievement-related traits for men but…

Molecular Theory and the Effects of Solute Attractive Forces on Hydrophobic Interactions.

PubMed

Chaudhari, Mangesh I; Rempe, Susan B; Asthagiri, D; Tan, L; Pratt, L R

2016-03-03

The role of solute attractive forces on hydrophobic interactions is studied by coordinated development of theory and simulation results for Ar atoms in water. We present a concise derivation of the local molecular field (LMF) theory for the effects of solute attractive forces on hydrophobic interactions, a derivation that clarifies the close relation of LMF theory to the EXP approximation applied to this problem long ago. The simulation results show that change from purely repulsive atomic solute interactions to include realistic attractive interactions diminishes the strength of hydrophobic bonds. For the Ar-Ar rdfs considered pointwise, the numerical results for the effects of solute attractive forces on hydrophobic interactions are opposite in sign and larger in magnitude than predicted by LMF theory. That comparison is discussed from the point of view of quasichemical theory, and it is suggested that the first reason for this difference is the incomplete evaluation within LMF theory of the hydration energy of the Ar pair. With a recent suggestion for the system-size extrapolation of the required correlation function integrals, the Ar-Ar rdfs permit evaluation of osmotic second virial coefficients B2. Those B2's also show that incorporation of attractive interactions leads to more positive (repulsive) values. With attractive interactions in play, B2 can change from positive to negative values with increasing temperatures. This is consistent with the puzzling suggestions of decades ago that B2 ≈ 0 for intermediate cases of temperature or solute size. In all cases here, B2 becomes more attractive with increasing temperature.

Face inversion increases attractiveness.

PubMed

Leder, Helmut; Goller, Juergen; Forster, Michael; Schlageter, Lena; Paul, Matthew A

2017-07-01

Assessing facial attractiveness is a ubiquitous, inherent, and hard-wired phenomenon in everyday interactions. As such, it has highly adapted to the default way that faces are typically processed: viewing faces in upright orientation. By inverting faces, we can disrupt this default mode, and study how facial attractiveness is assessed. Faces, rotated at 90 (tilting to either side) and 180°, were rated on attractiveness and distinctiveness scales. For both orientations, we found that faces were rated more attractive and less distinctive than upright faces. Importantly, these effects were more pronounced for faces rated low in upright orientation, and smaller for highly attractive faces. In other words, the less attractive a face was, the more it gained in attractiveness by inversion or rotation. Based on these findings, we argue that facial attractiveness assessments might not rely on the presence of attractive facial characteristics, but on the absence of distinctive, unattractive characteristics. These unattractive characteristics are potentially weighed against an individual, attractive prototype in assessing facial attractiveness. Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Out of Lust or Jealousy: The Effects of Mate-Related Motives on Study-Time Allocation to Faces Varying in Attractiveness.

PubMed

Li, Weijian; Zhang, Yuchi; Li, Fengying; Li, Xinyu; Li, Ping; Jia, Xiaoyu; Chen, Haide; Ji, Haojie

2015-01-01

Although a growing number of empirical studies have revealed that activating mate-related motives might exert a specific set of consequences for human cognition and behaviors, such as attention and memory, little is known about whether mate-related motives affect self-regulated learning. The present study examined the effects of mate-related motives (mate-search and mate-guarding) on study-time allocation to faces varying in attractiveness. In two experiments, participants in mate-related priming conditions (Experiment 1: mate-search; Experiment 2: mate-guarding) or control conditions studied 20 female faces (10 highly attractive, 10 less attractive) during a self-paced study task, and then were given a yes/no face recognition task. The finding of Experiment 1 showed that activating a mate-search motive led the male participants to allocate more time to highly attractive female faces (i.e., perceived potential mates) than to less attractive ones. In Experiment 2, female participants in the mate-guarding priming condition spent more time studying highly attractive female faces (i.e., perceived potential rivals) than less attractive ones, compared to participants in the control condition. These findings illustrate the highly specific consequences of mate-related motives on study-time allocation, and highlight the value of exploring human cognition and motivation within evolutionary and self-regulated learning frameworks.

Effects of Counselor Sex, Student Sex, and Student Attractiveness on Counselors' Judgments.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mercado, Pauline; Atkinson, Donald R.

1982-01-01

Studied the effect of client sex and attractiveness on male and female counselors' judgments about students' educational and career potential. Found male counselors showed sex bias when suggesting occupations. Prediction of higher education and occupational status were not related to counselor or student sex or student attractiveness. (Author/JAC)

Predators Are Attracted to the Olfactory Signals of Prey

PubMed Central

Hughes, Nelika K.; Price, Catherine J.; Banks, Peter B.

2010-01-01

Background Predator attraction to prey social signals can force prey to trade-off the social imperatives to communicate against the profound effect of predation on their future fitness. These tradeoffs underlie theories on the design and evolution of conspecific signalling systems and have received much attention in visual and acoustic signalling modes. Yet while most territorial mammals communicate using olfactory signals and olfactory hunting is widespread in predators, evidence for the attraction of predators to prey olfactory signals under field conditions is lacking. Methodology/Principal Findings To redress this fundamental issue, we examined the attraction of free-roaming predators to discrete patches of scents collected from groups of two and six adult, male house mice, Mus domesticus, which primarily communicate through olfaction. Olfactorily-hunting predators were rapidly attracted to mouse scent signals, visiting mouse scented locations sooner, and in greater number, than control locations. There were no effects of signal concentration on predator attraction to their prey's signals. Conclusions/Significance This implies that communication will be costly if conspecific receivers and eavesdropping predators are simultaneously attracted to a signal. Significantly, our results also suggest that receivers may be at greater risk of predation when communicating than signallers, as receivers must visit risky patches of scent to perform their half of the communication equation, while signallers need not. PMID:20927352

Creating beauty: creativity compensates for low physical attractiveness when individuals assess the attractiveness of social and romantic partners

PubMed Central

2017-01-01

Although creativity is attractive in a potential mate, it is unclear (i) whether the effects of creativity on attractiveness generalize to other social contexts and (ii) whether creativity has equivalent effects on men's and women's attractiveness. As social knowledge of creativity may either enhance or ‘offset’ the appeal of social partners who differ in physical attractiveness, three repeated measures experiments were conducted to directly address these issues. Here, participants rated a series of face–text pairs for attractiveness on trials that differed in one of four combinations of facial attractiveness (attractive and less attractive) and creativity (creative and less creative), rating story-tellers in two experiments (short interpretations of an identical painting) and creative ideas in a further experiment (alternative uses for an everyday object). Regardless of the sex of the judge, creativity and facial attractiveness had independent effects on men's overall attractiveness (initial experiment) and, in further experiments, more substantial effects on the attractiveness of men with less attractive faces than men with attractive faces (when using a different measure of creativity) and specific effects on the attractiveness of individuals with less attractive faces (when using different face stimuli). Collectively, across three experiments, these findings suggest that creativity may compensate for putative cues to lower biological ‘quality’ and that the benefits of creativity to social groups more generally enhance attraction to creative men (in two experiments) and creative men and women (one experiment). More broadly, the data suggest that species can integrate knowledge of cognitive intelligence with visual cues to biological ‘quality’ to facilitate mate and/or ally choice. PMID:28484614

Recruiting nurses through social media: Effects on employer brand and attractiveness.

PubMed

Carpentier, Marieke; Van Hoye, Greet; Stockman, Sara; Schollaert, Eveline; Van Theemsche, Bart; Jacobs, Gerd

2017-11-01

To investigate whether and how nurses' exposure to a hospital's profile on social media affects their perceptions of the hospital's brand and attractiveness as an employer. Since in many places across the globe hospitals are struggling with nursing shortages, competition is rising to be perceived as an attractive employer by this target group. Organizations are increasingly using social media for recruitment, however, little is known about its effects on potential applicants' perceptions of the organization as an employer. We thus examine whether these effects occur and rely on the media richness theory to explain the mechanisms at play. A between-subjects experimental design was applied. Three conditions were used: a control group, one condition that required visiting the Facebook page of a hospital and one condition that required visiting the LinkedIn page. The focal organization was an existing Belgian hospital which had a LinkedIn and a Facebook page. An online questionnaire was sent to nursing students and employed nurses over 5 months in 2015-2016. Nurses' exposure to the hospital's Facebook or LinkedIn page had a significant positive effect on a majority of the employer brand dimensions, both instrumental and symbolic. In addition, nurses who visited the Facebook page felt more attracted to working at the hospital. Most of these effects were mediated by social presence. Nurses' perceptions of employers can be positively influenced by seeing a hospital's social media page. Hospitals can thus employ social media to improve their employer brand image and attractiveness. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Blue and Black Cloth Targets: Effects of Size, Shape, and Color on Stable Fly (Diptera: Muscidae) Attraction.

PubMed

Hogsette, Jerome A; Foil, Lane D

2018-04-02

Stable fly management is challenging because of the fly's dispersal behavior and its tendency to remain on the host only while feeding. Optically attractive traps have been used to survey and sometimes reduce adult populations. Insecticide-treated blue and black cloth targets developed for tsetse fly management in Africa were found to be attractive to stable flies in the United States, and various evaluations were conducted in Louisiana and Florida. Tests using untreated targets were designed to answer questions about configuration, size, and color relative to efficacy and stability in high winds. Studies with electric grid targets and with targets paired with Olson traps showed cloth target color attraction in the following decreasing order: black > blue-black > blue. A solid black target is easier to make than a blue-black target because no sewing is involved. Attraction was not affected when flat 1-m2 targets were formed into cylinders, despite the limited view of the blue and black colors together. There was no reduction in attraction when the 1-m2 cylindrical targets were compared with smaller (63 × 30 cm high) cylindrical targets. In addition, there was no difference in attraction between the small blue-black, blue, and black targets. Significance of findings and implications of potential uses for treated targets are discussed. Target attraction was indicated by the numbers of stable flies captured on an Olson sticky trap placed 30 cm from the target. Although this system is adequate for field research, it greatly underestimates the actual numbers of stable flies attracted to treated targets.

Molecular theory and the effects of solute attractive forces on hydrophobic interactions

DOE PAGES

Chaudhari, Mangesh I.; Rempe, Susan B.; Asthagiri, D.; ...

2015-12-22

The role of solute attractive forces on hydrophobic interactions is studied by coordinated development of theory and simulation results for Ar atoms in water. In this paper, we present a concise derivation of the local molecular field (LMF) theory for the effects of solute attractive forces on hydrophobic interactions, a derivation that clarifies the close relation of LMF theory to the EXP approximation applied to this problem long ago. The simulation results show that change from purely repulsive atomic solute interactions to include realistic attractive interactions diminishes the strength of hydrophobic bonds. For the Ar–Ar rdfs considered pointwise, the numericalmore » results for the effects of solute attractive forces on hydrophobic interactions are opposite in sign and larger in magnitude than predicted by LMF theory. That comparison is discussed from the point of view of quasichemical theory, and it is suggested that the first reason for this difference is the incomplete evaluation within LMF theory of the hydration energy of the Ar pair. With a recent suggestion for the system-size extrapolation of the required correlation function integrals, the Ar–Ar rdfs permit evaluation of osmotic second virial coefficients B 2. Those B 2’s also show that incorporation of attractive interactions leads to more positive (repulsive) values. With attractive interactions in play, B 2 can change from positive to negative values with increasing temperatures. Furthermore, this is consistent with the puzzling suggestions of decades ago that B 2 ≈ 0 for intermediate cases of temperature or solute size. In all cases here, B 2 becomes more attractive with increasing temperature.« less

Language in Online Dating Texts: Trait Identification, Homophily, and their Effect on Attraction.

PubMed

Fox Hamilton, Nicola; Fullwood, Chris; Kirwan, Grainne

2015-01-01

Research has indicated that online daters may pick up on language cues connected to personality traits in online dating profile texts, and act upon those cues. This research seeks to investigate the level of accuracy of detection of personality in dating profile texts, and the extent to which perceived or actual similarity of personality has an effect on attractiveness of the author. An online survey was conducted collecting the Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) for each participant and text author, a peer-report TIPI score by participants for each text author, and an attractiveness rating on a Likert scale for each author. Participants correctly identified Extraversion, though the effect size was small. Contrary to the hypotheses, participants preferred texts when written by an author with a personality they perceived as dissimilar to their own, specifically in Openness and Conscientiousness, and no relationship was found between actual similarity of personality and attractiveness. Online daters may choose partners with complementary or desirable traits rather than similar traits, or other factors in attraction may be more salient in the initial stages of determining attraction.

Sexual Conflict and Gender Gap Effects: Associations between Social Context and Sex on Rated Attractiveness and Economic Status

PubMed Central

Dixson, Barnaby J.

2016-01-01

Human mate choice research often concerns sex differences in the importance of traits such as physical attractiveness and social status. A growing number of studies indicate that cues to social context, including other people who appear in stimulus photographs, can alter that individual’s attractiveness. Fewer studies, however, consider judgements of traits other than physical attractiveness, such as wealth. Here we manipulate the presence/absence of other people in photographs of target models, and test the effects on judgments of both attractiveness and earnings (a proxy for status). Participants (N = 2044) rated either male or female models for either physical attractiveness or social/economic status when presented alone, with same sex others or with opposite sex others. We collectively refer to this manipulation as ‘social context’. Male and female models received similar responses for physical attractiveness, but social context affected ratings of status differently for women and men. Males presented alongside other men received the highest status ratings while females presented alone were given the highest status ratings. Further, the status of females presented alongside a male was constrained by the rated status of that male. Our results suggests that high status may not directly lead to high attractiveness in men, but that status is more readily attributed to men than to women. This divide in status between the sexes is very clear when men and women are presented together, possibly reflecting one underlying mechanism of the modern day gender gap and sexist attitudes to women’s economic participation. This adds complexity to our understanding of the relationship between attractiveness, status, and sex in the light of parental investment theory, sexual conflict and economic theory. PMID:26731414

Sexual Conflict and Gender Gap Effects: Associations between Social Context and Sex on Rated Attractiveness and Economic Status.

PubMed

Gouda-Vossos, Amany; Dixson, Barnaby J; Brooks, Robert C

2016-01-01

Human mate choice research often concerns sex differences in the importance of traits such as physical attractiveness and social status. A growing number of studies indicate that cues to social context, including other people who appear in stimulus photographs, can alter that individual's attractiveness. Fewer studies, however, consider judgements of traits other than physical attractiveness, such as wealth. Here we manipulate the presence/absence of other people in photographs of target models, and test the effects on judgments of both attractiveness and earnings (a proxy for status). Participants (N = 2044) rated either male or female models for either physical attractiveness or social/economic status when presented alone, with same sex others or with opposite sex others. We collectively refer to this manipulation as 'social context'. Male and female models received similar responses for physical attractiveness, but social context affected ratings of status differently for women and men. Males presented alongside other men received the highest status ratings while females presented alone were given the highest status ratings. Further, the status of females presented alongside a male was constrained by the rated status of that male. Our results suggests that high status may not directly lead to high attractiveness in men, but that status is more readily attributed to men than to women. This divide in status between the sexes is very clear when men and women are presented together, possibly reflecting one underlying mechanism of the modern day gender gap and sexist attitudes to women's economic participation. This adds complexity to our understanding of the relationship between attractiveness, status, and sex in the light of parental investment theory, sexual conflict and economic theory.

Age-Differential Effects of Job Characteristics on Job Attraction: A Policy-Capturing Study

PubMed Central

Zacher, Hannes; Dirkers, Bodil T.; Korek, Sabine; Hughes, Brenda

2017-01-01

Based on an integration of job design and lifespan developmental theories, Truxillo et al. (2012) proposed that job characteristics interact with employee age in predicting important work outcomes. Using an experimental policy-capturing design, we investigated age-differential effects of four core job characteristics (i.e., job autonomy, task variety, task significance, and feedback from the job) on job attraction (i.e., individuals' rating of job attractiveness). Eighty-two employees between 19 and 65 years (Mage = 41, SD = 14) indicated their job attraction for each of 40 hypothetical job descriptions in which the four job characteristics were systematically manipulated (in total, participants provided 3,280 ratings). Results of multilevel analyses showed that the positive effects of task variety, task significance, and feedback from the job were stronger for younger compared to older employees, whereas we did not find significant age-differential effects of job autonomy on job attraction. These findings are only partially consistent with propositions of Truxillo et al.'s (2012) lifespan perspective on job design. PMID:28713322

Age-Differential Effects of Job Characteristics on Job Attraction: A Policy-Capturing Study.

PubMed

Zacher, Hannes; Dirkers, Bodil T; Korek, Sabine; Hughes, Brenda

2017-01-01

Based on an integration of job design and lifespan developmental theories, Truxillo et al. (2012) proposed that job characteristics interact with employee age in predicting important work outcomes. Using an experimental policy-capturing design, we investigated age-differential effects of four core job characteristics (i.e., job autonomy, task variety, task significance, and feedback from the job) on job attraction (i.e., individuals' rating of job attractiveness). Eighty-two employees between 19 and 65 years ( M age = 41, SD = 14) indicated their job attraction for each of 40 hypothetical job descriptions in which the four job characteristics were systematically manipulated (in total, participants provided 3,280 ratings). Results of multilevel analyses showed that the positive effects of task variety, task significance, and feedback from the job were stronger for younger compared to older employees, whereas we did not find significant age-differential effects of job autonomy on job attraction. These findings are only partially consistent with propositions of Truxillo et al.'s (2012) lifespan perspective on job design.

Object attraction effects during subject-verb agreement in Persian.

PubMed

Feiz, Aazam; Cowles, Wind

2018-04-01

Subject-verb agreement provides insight into how grammatical and semantic features interact during sentence production, and prior studies have found attraction errors when an intervening local noun is grammatically part of the subject. Two major types of theories have emerged from these studies: control based and competition-based. The current study used an subject-object-verb language with optional subject-verb agreement, Persian, to test the competition-based hypothesis that intervening object nouns may also cause attraction effects, even though objects are not part of the syntactic relationship between the subject and verb. Our results, which did not require speakers to make grammatical errors, show that objects can be attractors for agreement, but this effect appears to be dependent on the type of plural marker on the object. These results support competition-based theories of agreement production, in which agreement may be influenced by attractors that are outside the scope of the subject-verb relationship.

Out of Lust or Jealousy: The Effects of Mate-Related Motives on Study-Time Allocation to Faces Varying in Attractiveness

PubMed Central

Li, Fengying; Li, Xinyu; Li, Ping; Jia, Xiaoyu; Chen, Haide; Ji, Haojie

2015-01-01

Although a growing number of empirical studies have revealed that activating mate-related motives might exert a specific set of consequences for human cognition and behaviors, such as attention and memory, little is known about whether mate-related motives affect self-regulated learning. The present study examined the effects of mate-related motives (mate-search and mate-guarding) on study-time allocation to faces varying in attractiveness. In two experiments, participants in mate-related priming conditions (Experiment 1: mate-search; Experiment 2: mate-guarding) or control conditions studied 20 female faces (10 highly attractive, 10 less attractive) during a self-paced study task, and then were given a yes/no face recognition task. The finding of Experiment 1 showed that activating a mate-search motive led the male participants to allocate more time to highly attractive female faces (i.e., perceived potential mates) than to less attractive ones. In Experiment 2, female participants in the mate-guarding priming condition spent more time studying highly attractive female faces (i.e., perceived potential rivals) than less attractive ones, compared to participants in the control condition. These findings illustrate the highly specific consequences of mate-related motives on study-time allocation, and highlight the value of exploring human cognition and motivation within evolutionary and self-regulated learning frameworks. PMID:26121131

Social dynamics in emergency evacuations: Disentangling crowd's attraction and repulsion effects

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Haghani, Milad; Sarvi, Majid

2017-06-01

The social dynamics of crowds in emergency escape scenarios have been conventionally modelled as the net effect of virtual forces exerted by the crowd on each individual (as self-driven particles), with the magnitude of the influence formulated as decreasing functions of inter-individual distances and the direction of effect assumed to be transitioning from repulsion to attraction by distance. Here, we revisit this conventional assumption using laboratory experimental data. We show based on robust econometric hypothesis-testing methods that individuals' perception of other escapees differs based on whether those individuals are jamming around exit destinations or are on the move towards the destinations. Also, for moving crowds, it differs based on whether the escape destination chosen by the moving flow is visible or invisible to the individual. The presence of crowd jams around a destination, also the movement of crowd flows towards visible destinations are both perceived on average as repulsion (or disutility) effects (with the former showing significantly larger magnitude than the latter). The movement of crowd flows towards an invisible destination, however, is on average perceived as attraction (or utility) effect. Yet, further hypothesis testing showed that neither of those effects in isolation determines adequately whether an individual would merge with or diverge from the crowd. Rather, the social interaction factors act (at significant levels) in conjunction with the physical factors of the environments (including spatial distances to exit destinations and destinations' visibility). In brief, our finding disentangles the conditions under which individuals are more likely to show mass behaviour from the situations where they are more likely to break from the herd. It identifies two factors that moderate the perception of social interactions, ;crowds' jam/movement status; and ;environmental setup;. Our results particularly challenge the taxonomy of

Ailing Voters Advance Attractive Congressional Candidates

PubMed Central

Franklin, Robert G.; Palumbo, Rocco

2015-01-01

Among many benefits of facial attractiveness, there is evidence that more attractive politicians are more likely to be elected. Recent research found this effect to be most pronounced in congressional districts with high disease threat—a result attributed to an adaptive disease avoidance mechanism, whereby the association of low attractiveness with poor health is particularly worrisome to voters who feel vulnerable to disease. We provided a more direct test of this explanation by examining the effects of individuals’ own health and age. Supporting a disease avoidance mechanism, less healthy participants showed a stronger preference for more attractive contenders in U.S. Senate races than their healthier peers, and this effect was stronger for older participants, who were generally less healthy than younger participants. Stronger effects of health for older participants partly reflected the absence of positive bias toward attractive candidates among the healthiest, suggesting that healthy older adults may be unconcerned about disease threat or sufficiently wise to ignore attractiveness. PMID:25562113

Ailing voters advance attractive congressional candidates.

PubMed

Zebrowitz, Leslie A; Franklin, Robert G; Palumbo, Rocco

2015-01-06

Among many benefits of facial attractiveness, there is evidence that more attractive politicians are more likely to be elected. Recent research found this effect to be most pronounced in congressional districts with high disease threat-a result attributed to an adaptive disease avoidance mechanism, whereby the association of low attractiveness with poor health is particularly worrisome to voters who feel vulnerable to disease. We provided a more direct test of this explanation by examining the effects of individuals' own health and age. Supporting a disease avoidance mechanism, less healthy participants showed a stronger preference for more attractive contenders in U.S. Senate races than their healthier peers, and this effect was stronger for older participants, who were generally less healthy than younger participants. Stronger effects of health for older participants partly reflected the absence of positive bias toward attractive candidates among the healthiest, suggesting that healthy older adults may be unconcerned about disease threat or sufficiently wise to ignore attractiveness.

Asian Americans and standards of attractiveness: what's in the eye of the beholder?

PubMed

Mok, T A

1998-01-01

This article attempts to address standards of physical attractiveness in the United States and the effects these standards have on Asian Americans. In the U.S., attractiveness appears to be defined overwhelmingly by White criteria, and people of color are often neglected or overlooked. There appears to be convergence from a number of fields (i.e., ethnic studies, film studies, and literature, in addition to experts in the field of ethnic minority mental health) that White standards of attractiveness exert a deleterious effect on Asian Americans. This article will discuss the limited mental health research that does exist in this area and make suggestions for further research in this field. Discussion will center around acculturation and ethnic identity as possible mediating factors that may influence reactions to standards of attractiveness.

Effects of sexual dimorphism on facial attractiveness.

PubMed

Perrett, D I; Lee, K J; Penton-Voak, I; Rowland, D; Yoshikawa, S; Burt, D M; Henzi, S P; Castles, D L; Akamatsu, S

1998-08-27

Testosterone-dependent secondary sexual characteristics in males may signal immunological competence and are sexually selected for in several species. In humans, oestrogen-dependent characteristics of the female body correlate with health and reproductive fitness and are found attractive. Enhancing the sexual dimorphism of human faces should raise attractiveness by enhancing sex-hormone-related cues to youth and fertility in females, and to dominance and immunocompetence in males. Here we report the results of asking subjects to choose the most attractive faces from continua that enhanced or diminished differences between the average shape of female and male faces. As predicted, subjects preferred feminized to average shapes of a female face. This preference applied across UK and Japanese populations but was stronger for within-population judgements, which indicates that attractiveness cues are learned. Subjects preferred feminized to average or masculinized shapes of a male face. Enhancing masculine facial characteristics increased both perceived dominance and negative attributions (for example, coldness or dishonesty) relevant to relationships and paternal investment. These results indicate a selection pressure that limits sexual dimorphism and encourages neoteny in humans.

Tooth color: effects on judgments of attractiveness and age.

PubMed

Grosofsky, Alexis; Adkins, Sarah; Bastholm, Robert; Meyer, Leif; Krueger, Lisa; Meyer, Joshua; Torma, Peter

2003-02-01

Tooth whitening has become a very popular procedure. Advertisements for whitening products imply that whiter teeth are more attractive than yellower teeth. We tested this idea empirically by manipulating the tooth color of pictures of male and female targets. Participants' ratings of attractiveness were not influenced by tooth color. Exp. 2 yielded a negative correlation between attractiveness and age ratings: targets judged to be older were rated as less attractive. Unless whiter teeth help in some other way, e.g., improved self-esteem or confidence, it seems that tooth whitening procedures or products are not associated with increased attractiveness to others.

The role of atomic level steric effects and attractive forces in protein folding.

PubMed

Lammert, Heiko; Wolynes, Peter G; Onuchic, José N

2012-02-01

Protein folding into tertiary structures is controlled by an interplay of attractive contact interactions and steric effects. We investigate the balance between these contributions using structure-based models using an all-atom representation of the structure combined with a coarse-grained contact potential. Tertiary contact interactions between atoms are collected into a single broad attractive well between the C(β) atoms between each residue pair in a native contact. Through the width of these contact potentials we control their tolerance for deviations from the ideal structure and the spatial range of attractive interactions. In the compact native state dominant packing constraints limit the effects of a coarse-grained contact potential. During folding, however, the broad attractive potentials allow an early collapse that starts before the native local structure is completely adopted. As a consequence the folding transition is broadened and the free energy barrier is decreased. Eventually two-state folding behavior is lost completely for systems with very broad attractive potentials. The stabilization of native-like residue interactions in non-perfect geometries early in the folding process frequently leads to structural traps. Global mirror images are a notable example. These traps are penalized by the details of the repulsive interactions only after further collapse. Successful folding to the native state requires simultaneous guidance from both attractive and repulsive interactions. Copyright © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Physical attractiveness biases in ratings of employment suitability: tracking down the "beauty is beastly" effect.

PubMed

Johnson, Stefanie K; Podratz, Kenneth E; Dipboye, Robert L; Gibbons, Ellie

2010-01-01

The "what is beautiful is good" heuristic suggests that physically attractive persons benefit from their attractiveness in a large range of situations, including perceptions of employment suitability. Conversely, the "beauty is beastly" effect suggests that attractiveness can be detrimental to women in certain employment contexts, although these findings have been less consistent than those for the "what is beautiful is good" effect. The current research seeks to uncover situations in which beauty might be detrimental for female applicants. In two studies, we found that attractiveness can be detrimental for women applying for masculine sex-typed jobs for which physical appearance is perceived as unimportant.

The effect of meat consumption on body odor attractiveness.

PubMed

Havlicek, Jan; Lenochova, Pavlina

2006-10-01

Axillary body odor is individually specific and potentially a rich source of information about its producer. Odor individuality partly results from genetic individuality, but the influence of ecological factors such as eating habits are another main source of odor variability. However, we know very little about how particular dietary components shape our body odor. Here we tested the effect of red meat consumption on body odor attractiveness. We used a balanced within-subject experimental design. Seventeen male odor donors were on "meat" or "nonmeat" diet for 2 weeks wearing axillary pads to collect body odor during the final 24 h of the diet. Fresh odor samples were assessed for their pleasantness, attractiveness, masculinity, and intensity by 30 women not using hormonal contraceptives. We repeated the same procedure a month later with the same odor donors, each on the opposite diet than before. Results of repeated measures analysis of variance showed that the odor of donors when on the nonmeat diet was judged as significantly more attractive, more pleasant, and less intense. This suggests that red meat consumption has a negative impact on perceived body odor hedonicity.

Colors of attraction: Modeling insect flight to light behavior.

PubMed

Donners, Maurice; van Grunsven, Roy H A; Groenendijk, Dick; van Langevelde, Frank; Bikker, Jan Willem; Longcore, Travis; Veenendaal, Elmar

2018-06-26

Light sources attract nocturnal flying insects, but some lamps attract more insects than others. The relation between the properties of a light source and the number of attracted insects is, however, poorly understood. We developed a model to quantify the attractiveness of light sources based on the spectral output. This model is fitted using data from field experiments that compare a large number of different light sources. We validated this model using two additional datasets, one for all insects and one excluding the numerous Diptera. Our model facilitates the development and application of light sources that attract fewer insects without the need for extensive field tests and it can be used to correct for spectral composition when formulating hypotheses on the ecological impact of artificial light. In addition, we present a tool allowing the conversion of the spectral output of light sources to their relative insect attraction based on this model. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Interactions among the effects of head orientation, emotional expression, and physical attractiveness on face preferences.

PubMed

Main, Julie C; DeBruine, Lisa M; Little, Anthony C; Jones, Benedict C

2010-01-01

Previous studies have shown that preferences for direct versus averted gaze are modulated by emotional expressions and physical attractiveness. For example, preferences for direct gaze are stronger when judging happy or physically attractive faces than when judging disgusted or physically unattractive faces. Here we show that preferences for front versus three-quarter views of faces, in which gaze direction was always congruent with head orientation, are also modulated by emotional expressions and physical attractiveness; participants demonstrated preferences for front views of faces over three-quarter views of faces when judging the attractiveness of happy, physically attractive individuals, but not when judging the attractiveness of relatively unattractive individuals or those with disgusted expressions. Moreover, further analyses indicated that these interactions did not simply reflect differential perceptions of the intensity of the emotional expressions shown in each condition. Collectively, these findings present novel evidence that the effect of the direction of the attention of others on attractiveness judgments is modulated by cues to the physical attractiveness and emotional state of the depicted individual, potentially reflecting psychological adaptations for efficient allocation of social effort. These data also present the first behavioural evidence that the effect of the direction of the attention of others on attractiveness judgments reflects viewer-referenced, rather than face-referenced, coding and/or processing of gaze direction.

Physical Attractiveness and Counseling Skills.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vargas, Alice M.; Borkowski, John G.

1982-01-01

Searched for interaction between quality of counseling skills (presence or absence of empathy, genuineness, and positive regard) and physical attractiveness as determinants of counseling effectiveness. Attractiveness influenced perceived effectiveness of counselor's skill. Analyses of expectancy data revealed that only with good skills did…

Evaluation of low density polyethylene and nylon for delivery of synthetic mosquito attractants

PubMed Central

2012-01-01

Background Synthetic odour baits present an unexploited potential for sampling, surveillance and control of malaria and other mosquito vectors. However, application of such baits is impeded by the unavailability of robust odour delivery devices that perform reliably under field conditions. In the present study the suitability of low density polyethylene (LDPE) and nylon strips for dispensing synthetic attractants of host-seeking Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes was evaluated. Methods Baseline experiments assessed the numbers of An. gambiae mosquitoes caught in response to low density polyethylene (LDPE) sachets filled with attractants, attractant-treated nylon strips, control LDPE sachets, and control nylon strips placed in separate MM-X traps. Residual attraction of An. gambiae to attractant-treated nylon strips was determined subsequently. The effects of sheet thickness and surface area on numbers of mosquitoes caught in MM-X traps containing the synthetic kairomone blend dispensed from LDPE sachets and nylon strips were also evaluated. Various treatments were tested through randomized 4 × 4 Latin Square experimental designs under semi-field conditions in western Kenya. Results Attractant-treated nylon strips collected 5.6 times more An. gambiae mosquitoes than LDPE sachets filled with the same attractants. The attractant-impregnated nylon strips were consistently more attractive (76.95%; n = 9,120) than sachets containing the same attractants (18.59%; n = 2,203), control nylon strips (2.17%; n = 257) and control LDPE sachets (2.29%; n = 271) up to 40 days post-treatment (P < 0.001). The higher catches of mosquitoes achieved with nylon strips were unrelated to differences in surface area between nylon strips and LDPE sachets. The proportion of mosquitoes trapped when individual components of the attractant were dispensed in LDPE sachets of optimized sheet thicknesses was significantly higher than when 0.03 mm-sachets were used (P < 0

Evaluation of low density polyethylene and nylon for delivery of synthetic mosquito attractants.

PubMed

Mukabana, Wolfgang R; Mweresa, Collins K; Omusula, Philemon; Orindi, Benedict O; Smallegange, Renate C; van Loon, Joop Ja; Takken, Willem

2012-09-19

Synthetic odour baits present an unexploited potential for sampling, surveillance and control of malaria and other mosquito vectors. However, application of such baits is impeded by the unavailability of robust odour delivery devices that perform reliably under field conditions. In the present study the suitability of low density polyethylene (LDPE) and nylon strips for dispensing synthetic attractants of host-seeking Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes was evaluated. Baseline experiments assessed the numbers of An. gambiae mosquitoes caught in response to low density polyethylene (LDPE) sachets filled with attractants, attractant-treated nylon strips, control LDPE sachets, and control nylon strips placed in separate MM-X traps. Residual attraction of An. gambiae to attractant-treated nylon strips was determined subsequently. The effects of sheet thickness and surface area on numbers of mosquitoes caught in MM-X traps containing the synthetic kairomone blend dispensed from LDPE sachets and nylon strips were also evaluated. Various treatments were tested through randomized 4 × 4 Latin Square experimental designs under semi-field conditions in western Kenya. Attractant-treated nylon strips collected 5.6 times more An. gambiae mosquitoes than LDPE sachets filled with the same attractants. The attractant-impregnated nylon strips were consistently more attractive (76.95%; n = 9,120) than sachets containing the same attractants (18.59%; n = 2,203), control nylon strips (2.17%; n = 257) and control LDPE sachets (2.29%; n = 271) up to 40 days post-treatment (P < 0.001). The higher catches of mosquitoes achieved with nylon strips were unrelated to differences in surface area between nylon strips and LDPE sachets. The proportion of mosquitoes trapped when individual components of the attractant were dispensed in LDPE sachets of optimized sheet thicknesses was significantly higher than when 0.03 mm-sachets were used (P < 0.001). Nylon strips

The time-course of feature interference in agreement comprehension: Multiple mechanisms and asymmetrical attraction

PubMed Central

Tanner, Darren; Nicol, Janet; Brehm, Laurel

2014-01-01

Attraction interference in language comprehension and production may be as a result of common or different processes. In the present paper, we investigate attraction interference during language comprehension, focusing on the contexts in which interference arises and the time-course of these effects. Using evidence from event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and sentence judgment times, we show that agreement attraction in comprehension is best explained as morphosyntactic interference during memory retrieval. This stands in contrast to attraction as a message-level process involving the representation of the subject NP's number features, which is a strong contributor to attraction in production. We thus argue that the cognitive antecedents of agreement attraction in comprehension are non-identical with those of attraction in production, and moreover, that attraction in comprehension is primarily a consequence of similarity-based interference in cue-based memory retrieval processes. We suggest that mechanisms responsible for attraction during language comprehension are a subset of those involved in language production. PMID:25258471

The time-course of feature interference in agreement comprehension: Multiple mechanisms and asymmetrical attraction.

PubMed

Tanner, Darren; Nicol, Janet; Brehm, Laurel

2014-10-01

Attraction interference in language comprehension and production may be as a result of common or different processes. In the present paper, we investigate attraction interference during language comprehension, focusing on the contexts in which interference arises and the time-course of these effects. Using evidence from event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and sentence judgment times, we show that agreement attraction in comprehension is best explained as morphosyntactic interference during memory retrieval. This stands in contrast to attraction as a message-level process involving the representation of the subject NP's number features, which is a strong contributor to attraction in production. We thus argue that the cognitive antecedents of agreement attraction in comprehension are non-identical with those of attraction in production, and moreover, that attraction in comprehension is primarily a consequence of similarity-based interference in cue-based memory retrieval processes. We suggest that mechanisms responsible for attraction during language comprehension are a subset of those involved in language production.

Acoustic Attraction

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Oviatt, Eric; Patsiaouris, Konstantinos; Denardo, Bruce

2009-11-01

A sound source of finite size produces a diverging traveling wave in an unbounded fluid. A rigid body that is small compared to the wavelength experiences an attractive radiation force (toward the source). An attractive force is also exerted on the fluid itself. The effect can be demonstrated with a styrofoam ball suspended near a loudspeaker that is producing sound of high amplitude and low frequency (for example, 100 Hz). The behavior can be understood and roughly calculated as a time-averaged Bernoulli effect. A rigorous scattering calculation yields a radiation force that is within a factor of two of the Bernoulli result. For a spherical wave, the force decreases as the inverse fifth power of the distance from the source. Applications of the phenomenon include ultrasonic filtration of liquids and the growth of supermassive black holes that emit sound waves in a surrounding plasma. An experiment is being conducted in an anechoic chamber with a 1-inch diameter aluminum ball that is suspended from an analytical balance. Directly below the ball is a baffled loudspeaker that exerts an attractive force that is measured by the balance.

Effects of Certain Counselor Behaviors on Perceived Expertness and Attractiveness.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barak, Azy; And Others

1982-01-01

Examined effects and relative contribution of three counselor behaviors (nonverbal behavior, jargon, and attire) on perceived expertise and attractiveness. Results revealed that all three independent variables significantly affected the two rated dimensions. Nonverbal behavior accounted for most of the variance and differentially affected ratings…

Experimental Effects and Individual Differences in Linear Mixed Models: Estimating the Relationship between Spatial, Object, and Attraction Effects in Visual Attention

PubMed Central

Kliegl, Reinhold; Wei, Ping; Dambacher, Michael; Yan, Ming; Zhou, Xiaolin

2011-01-01

Linear mixed models (LMMs) provide a still underused methodological perspective on combining experimental and individual-differences research. Here we illustrate this approach with two-rectangle cueing in visual attention (Egly et al., 1994). We replicated previous experimental cue-validity effects relating to a spatial shift of attention within an object (spatial effect), to attention switch between objects (object effect), and to the attraction of attention toward the display centroid (attraction effect), also taking into account the design-inherent imbalance of valid and other trials. We simultaneously estimated variance/covariance components of subject-related random effects for these spatial, object, and attraction effects in addition to their mean reaction times (RTs). The spatial effect showed a strong positive correlation with mean RT and a strong negative correlation with the attraction effect. The analysis of individual differences suggests that slow subjects engage attention more strongly at the cued location than fast subjects. We compare this joint LMM analysis of experimental effects and associated subject-related variances and correlations with two frequently used alternative statistical procedures. PMID:21833292

Liquid drops attract or repel by the inverted Cheerios effect.

PubMed

Karpitschka, Stefan; Pandey, Anupam; Lubbers, Luuk A; Weijs, Joost H; Botto, Lorenzo; Das, Siddhartha; Andreotti, Bruno; Snoeijer, Jacco H

2016-07-05

Solid particles floating at a liquid interface exhibit a long-ranged attraction mediated by surface tension. In the absence of bulk elasticity, this is the dominant lateral interaction of mechanical origin. Here, we show that an analogous long-range interaction occurs between adjacent droplets on solid substrates, which crucially relies on a combination of capillarity and bulk elasticity. We experimentally observe the interaction between droplets on soft gels and provide a theoretical framework that quantitatively predicts the interaction force between the droplets. Remarkably, we find that, although on thick substrates the interaction is purely attractive and leads to drop-drop coalescence, for relatively thin substrates a short-range repulsion occurs, which prevents the two drops from coming into direct contact. This versatile interaction is the liquid-on-solid analog of the "Cheerios effect." The effect will strongly influence the condensation and coarsening of drops on soft polymer films, and has potential implications for colloidal assembly and mechanobiology.

Creating kampong as tourist attractions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sari, N.; Utama, R.; Hidayat, A. R. T.; Zamrony, A. B.

2017-06-01

Tourism attractions become one of the main components and they drive the tourism activity in a region. The quality of tourism attractions would affect tourists’ visits. Tourism power can basically be built on any conditions which can attract people to visit. Towns is full of activities which include their economic, social, cultural and physical features, if they are presented properly, they can be a tourist attraction. Kampung City, as a form of urban settlement, has the potential to be developed as a tourism attraction. Kampung is not only a physical area of housing but it has also productive activities. Even the city’s economic activities are also influenced by the productive activities of its Kampung. The shape of Kampung which varies in physical, social, economic and cultural raises special characteristics of each Kampung. When it is linked with the city’s tourism activities, these special characteristics of course could be one of the attractions to attract tourists. This paper studies about one of Kampung in the Malang City. Administratively located in the Penanggungan Village Lowokwaru District, but the potential will just be focused on RW 4. Main productive activities of this village are pottery. In contrast to ceramics, pottery is made from clay and its uniqueness in color and shape. Based on the history of pottery in the Malang, it is concentrated in Penanggungan Village. But along with its development, pottery is decreasingly in demand and number of craftsmen is dwindling. Based on these circumstances, a concept is prepared to raise the image of the region as the Kampung of pottery and to repack it as a tourism attraction of the city.

Digit ratio (2D:4D) and male facial attractiveness: new data and a meta-analysis.

PubMed

Hönekopp, Johannes

2013-10-01

Digit ratio (2D:4D) appears to correlate negatively with prenatal testosterone (T) effects in humans. As T probably increases facial masculinity, which in turn might be positively related to male facial attractiveness, a number of studies have looked into the relationship between 2D:4D and male facial attractiveness, showing equivocal results. Here, I present the largest and third largest samples so far, which investigate the relationship between 2D:4D and male facial attractiveness in adolescents (n = 115) and young men (n = 80). I then present random-effects meta-analyses of the available data (seven to eight samples, overall n = 362 to 469). These showed small (r ≈ -.09), statistically non-significant relationships between 2D:4D measures and male facial attractiveness. Thus, 2D:4D studies offer no convincing evidence at present that prenatal T has a positive effect on male facial attractiveness. However, a consideration of confidence intervals shows that, at present, a theoretically meaningful relationship between 2D:4D and male facial attractiveness cannot be ruled out either.

Sweet attraction: sugarcane pollen-associated volatiles attract gravid Anopheles arabiensis.

PubMed

Wondwosen, Betelehem; Birgersson, Göran; Tekie, Habte; Torto, Baldwyn; Ignell, Rickard; Hill, Sharon R

2018-02-21

Anopheles arabiensis is a key vector for the transmission of human malaria in sub-Saharan Africa. Over the past 10,000 years, humans have successfully cultivated grasses and altered the landscape, creating An. arabiensis favourable environments that contain excellent habitats for both larvae and adults. Sugarcane is the most expanding agricultural system in sub-Saharan Africa, and is linked to the increased threat of malaria in rural communities. The prolific production and wind dispersal of sugarcane pollen, together with standing pools of water, often provide, as a result of irrigation, a nutrient-rich environment for the offspring of gravid malaria mosquitoes. In the present study, sugarcane pollen-associated volatiles from two cultivars are shown to attract gravid An. arabiensis in a still air two-port olfactometer and stimulate egg laying in an oviposition bioassay. Through combined gas chromatography and electroantennographic detection, as well as combined gas chromatography and mass spectrometric analyses, we identified the bioactive volatiles and generated a synthetic blend that reproduced the full behavioural repertoire of gravid mosquitoes in the Y-tube assay. Two subtractive odour blends, when compared with the full blend, were significantly more attractive. These three and four-component subtractive blends share the compounds (1R)-(+)-α-pinene, nonanal and benzaldehyde, of which, (1R)-(+)-α-pinene and nonanal are found in the attractive odour blends from rice plants and maize pollen. In pairwise comparisons, the rice synthetic odour blend was more attractive to gravid mosquitoes than either of the pollen blends, whereas the pollen blends did not differ in attraction. The attraction of gravid females to sugarcane pollen volatiles demonstrated in this study, together with the previously found grass-associated volatiles, raise the potential of developing a bioactive chimeric blend to attract gravid malaria mosquitoes. This is discussed in relation to

Measuring the operational efficiency of individual theme park attractions.

PubMed

Kim, Changhee; Kim, Soowook

2016-01-01

This study assesses the operation efficiency of theme park attractions using the data envelopment analysis, utilizing actual data on 15 attractions at Samsung Everland located in Yongin-si, Republic of Korea. In particular, this study identifies crowding and waiting time as one of the main causes of visitor's satisfaction, and analyzes the efficiency of individual attractions in terms of waiting time. The installation area, installation cost, and annual repair cost are set as input factors and the number of annual users and customer satisfaction as output factors. The results show that the roller coaster-type attractions were less efficient than other types of attractions while rotating-type attractions were relatively more efficient. However, an importance performance analysis on individual attraction's efficiency and satisfaction showed that operational efficiency should not be the sole consideration in attraction installation. In addition, the projection points for input factors for efficient use of attractions and the appropriate reference set for benchmarking are provided as guideline for attraction efficiency management.

Floral traits influencing plant attractiveness to three bee species: Consequences for plant reproductive success.

PubMed

Bauer, Austin A; Clayton, Murray K; Brunet, Johanne

2017-05-01

The ability to attract pollinators is crucial to plants that rely on insects for pollination. We contrasted the roles of floral display size and flower color in attracting three bee species and determined the relationships between plant attractiveness (number of pollinator visits) and seed set for each bee species. We recorded pollinator visits to plants, measured plant traits, and quantified plant reproductive success. A zero-inflated Poisson regression model indicated plant traits associated with pollinator attraction. It identified traits that increased the number of bee visits and traits that increased the probability of a plant not receiving any visits. Different components of floral display size were examined and two models of flower color contrasted. Relationships between plant attractiveness and seed set were determined using regression analyses. Plants with more racemes received more bee visits from all three bee species. Plants with few racemes were more likely not to receive any bee visits. The role of flower color varied with bee species and was influenced by the choice of the flower color model. Increasing bee visits increased seed set for all three bee species, with the steepest slope for leafcutting bees, followed by bumble bees, and finally honey bees. Floral display size influenced pollinator attraction more consistently than flower color. The same plant traits affected the probability of not being visited and the number of pollinator visits received. The impact of plant attractiveness on female reproductive success varied, together with pollinator effectiveness, by pollinator species. © 2017 Bauer et al. Published by the Botanical Society of America. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons public domain license (CC0 1.0).

Response of Tabanidae (Diptera) to different natural attractants.

PubMed

Krcmar, Stjepan; Mikuska, Alma; Merdić, Enrih

2006-12-01

The response of female tabanids to natural attractants was studied in the Monjoros Forest along the Nature Park Kopacki rit in eastern Croatia. Tabanids were caught in canopy traps baited with either aged cow, horse, sheep, or pig urine and also in unbaited traps. Tabanids were collected in a significantly higher numbers in traps baited with natural attractants compared to unbaited traps. The number of females of Tabanus bromius, Tabanus maculicornis, Tabanus tergestinus, and Hybomitra bimaculata collected from canopy traps baited with cow urine and traps baited with other natural attractants differed significantly. Females of Haematopota pluvialis were also collected more frequently in canopy traps baited with aged cow urine than in those with aged horse urine, but this difference was not significant. However, the number of females of Haematopota pluvialis collected from canopy traps baited with other natural attractants (sheep and pig urine) differed significantly when compared with aged cow urine baited traps. Canopy traps baited with aged cow urine collected significantly more Tabanus sudeticus than did traps baited with aged pig urine. Finally, the aged cow urine baited canopy traps collected 51 times more tabanids than unbaited traps, while aged horse, aged sheep, and aged pig urine baited traps collected 36, 30, and 22 times as many tabanids, respectively, than unbaited traps.

Antipsychotics and physical attractiveness.

PubMed

Seeman, Mary V

2011-10-01

Antipsychotics are effective in treating the symptoms of schizophrenia, but they may induce adverse effects, some of which-those that impact negatively on physical appearance-have not been sufficiently discussed in the psychiatric literature. Through a narrative review, to catalog antipsychotic side effects that interfere with physical attractiveness and to suggest ways of addressing them. PubMed databases were searched for information on the association between "antipsychotic side effects" and "attractiveness" using those two search phrases plus the following terms: "weight," "teeth," "skin," "hair," "eyes," "gait," "voice," "odor." Data from relevant qualitative and quantitative articles were considered, contextualized, and summarized. Antipsychotics, as a group, increase weight and may lead to dry mouth and bad breath, cataracts, hirsutism, acne, and voice changes; they may disturb symmetry of gait and heighten the risk for tics and spasms and incontinence, potentially undermining a person's attractiveness. Clinicians need to be aware of the impact of therapeutic drugs on appearance and how important this issue is to patients. Early in treatment, they need to plan preventive and therapeutic strategies.

Electrostatic attraction of coupled Wigner crystals: finite temperature effects.

PubMed

Lau, A W; Pincus, P; Levine, D; Fertig, H A

2001-05-01

In this paper we present a unified physical picture for the electrostatic attraction between two coupled planar Wigner crystals at finite temperature. This model may facilitate our conceptual understanding of counterion-mediated attractions between (highly) similarly charged planes. By adopting an elastic theory, we show that the total attractive force between them can be (approximately) decomposed into a short-ranged and a long-ranged component. They are evaluated below the melting temperature of the Wigner crystals. In particular, we analyze the temperature dependence of the short-ranged attraction, arising from ground-state configuration, and we argue that thermal fluctuations may drastically reduce its strength. Also, the long-range force agrees exactly with that based on the charge-fluctuation approach. Furthermore, we take quantum contributions to the long-ranged (fluctuation-induced) attraction into account and show how the fractional power law, which scales as d(-7/2) for large interplanar distance d at zero temperature, crosses over to the classical regime d(-3) via an intermediate regime of d(-2).

Synthetic sex pheromone attracts the leishmaniasis vector Lutzomyia longipalpis to experimental chicken sheds treated with insecticide

PubMed Central

2010-01-01

Background Current strategies for controlling American visceral leishmaniasis (AVL) have been unable to prevent the spread of the disease across Brazil. With no effective vaccine and culling of infected dogs an unpopular and unsuccessful alternative, new tools are urgently needed to manage populations of the sand fly vector, Lutzomyia longipalpis Lutz and Neiva (Diptera: Psychodidae). Here, we test two potential strategies for improving L. longipalpis control using the synthetic sand fly pheromone (±)-9-methylgermacrene-B: the first in conjunction with spraying of animal houses with insecticide, the second using coloured sticky traps. Results Addition of synthetic pheromone resulted in greater numbers of male and female sand flies being caught and killed at experimental chicken sheds sprayed with insecticide, compared to pheromone-less controls. Furthermore, a ten-fold increase in the amount of sex pheromone released from test sheds increased the number of females attracted and subsequently killed. Treating sheds with insecticide alone resulted in a significant decrease in numbers of males attracted to sheds (compared to pre-spraying levels), and a near significant decrease in numbers of females. However, this effect was reversed through addition of synthetic pheromone at the time of insecticide spraying, leading to an increase in number of flies attracted post-treatment. In field trials of commercially available different coloured sticky traps, yellow traps caught more males than blue traps when placed in chicken sheds. In addition, yellow traps fitted with 10 pheromone lures caught significantly more males than pheromone-less controls. However, while female sand flies showed a preference for both blue and yellow pheromone traps sticky traps over white traps in the laboratory, neither colour caught significant numbers of females in chicken sheds, either with or without pheromone. Conclusions We conclude that synthetic pheromone could currently be most effectively

Sex differences in attraction to familiar and unfamiliar opposite-sex faces: men prefer novelty and women prefer familiarity.

PubMed

Little, Anthony C; DeBruine, Lisa M; Jones, Benedict C

2014-07-01

Familiarity is attractive in many types of stimuli and exposure generally increases feelings of liking. However, men desire a greater number of sexual partners than women, suggesting a preference for novelty. We examined sex differences in preferences for familiarity. In Study 1 (N = 83 women, 63 men), we exposed individuals to faces twice and found that faces were judged as more attractive on the second rating, reflecting attraction to familiar faces, with the exception that men's ratings of female faces decreased on the second rating, demonstrating attraction to novelty. In Studies 2 (N = 42 women, 28 men) and 3 (N = 51 women, 25 men), exposure particularly decreased men's ratings of women's attractiveness for short-term relationships and their sexiness. In Study 4 (N = 64 women, 50 men), women's attraction to faces was positively related to self-rated similarity to their current partner's face, while the effect was significantly weaker for men. Potentially, men's attraction to novelty may reflect an adaptation promoting the acquisition of a high number of sexual partners.

Serial dependence in the perception of attractiveness.

PubMed

Xia, Ye; Leib, Allison Yamanashi; Whitney, David

2016-12-01

The perception of attractiveness is essential for choices of food, object, and mate preference. Like perception of other visual features, perception of attractiveness is stable despite constant changes of image properties due to factors like occlusion, visual noise, and eye movements. Recent results demonstrate that perception of low-level stimulus features and even more complex attributes like human identity are biased towards recent percepts. This effect is often called serial dependence. Some recent studies have suggested that serial dependence also exists for perceived facial attractiveness, though there is also concern that the reported effects are due to response bias. Here we used an attractiveness-rating task to test the existence of serial dependence in perceived facial attractiveness. Our results demonstrate that perceived face attractiveness was pulled by the attractiveness level of facial images encountered up to 6 s prior. This effect was not due to response bias and did not rely on the previous motor response. This perceptual pull increased as the difference in attractiveness between previous and current stimuli increased. Our results reconcile previously conflicting findings and extend previous work, demonstrating that sequential dependence in perception operates across different levels of visual analysis, even at the highest levels of perceptual interpretation.

Is Beauty Talent? Sex Interaction in the Attractiveness Halo Effect.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kaplan, Robert M.

Male and female subjects judged an essay purportedly written by an attractive or an unattractive female author. The attractive author was rated as significantly more talented by male judges. Female judges rated the attractive author less talented although this difference was not statistically significant. A second experiment concerned ratings by…

Effect of Leg-to-Body Ratio on Body Shape Attractiveness.

PubMed

Kiire, Satoru

2016-05-01

Recent studies have examined various aspects of human physical attractiveness. Attractiveness is considered an evolved psychological mechanism acquired via natural selection because an attractive body reflects an individual's health and fertility. The length of the legs is an often-emphasized aspect of attractiveness and has been investigated using the leg-to-body ratio (LBR), which reflects nutritional status of the infant, health status, fecundity, and other factors that are predictive of physical fitness. However, previous studies of leg length and physical fitness have produced mixed results. The present study investigated the relationship between LBR, defined as the height to perineum divided by total height, and perceived attractiveness. Three-dimensional stimuli (11 male and 11 female) were constructed with various LBR features. Each stimulus was rated by 40 women and 40 men in Japan on a 7-point scale. The results showed that the values closest to the average LBRs were rated as the most attractive. Furthermore, by fitting a quadratic curve on the relationship between attractiveness and LBR, an inverted U-shaped curve with the peak located at the average LBR was observed. In addition, high LBR values were rated as more attractive in females, whereas the opposite was true for males. These results suggest that average LBR is indicative of good health and good reproductive potential, whereas more extreme values are avoided because they could be indicative of diseases and other maladaptive conditions.

The effect of the buccal corridor and tooth display on smile attractiveness.

PubMed

Niaki, Esfandiar Akhavan; Arab, Sepideh; Shamshiri, Ahmadreza; Imani, Mohammad Moslem

2015-11-01

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the lay perception of the effect of the buccal corridor and amount of tooth-gingival display on the attractiveness of a smile in different facial types. Using Adobe Photoshop CS3 software, frontal facial images of two smiling Iranian female subjects (one short-faced and one long-faced) were altered to create different magnitudes of buccal corridor display (5, 10, 15, 20 and 25%) and tooth-gingival display (2 mm central incisor show, 6 mm central incisor show, total central incisor show, total tooth show with 2 mm gingival show and total tooth show with 4 mm gingival show). Sixty Iranians (30 males and 30 females) rated the attractiveness of the pictures on a 1-5 point scale. Narrower smiles were preferred in long-faced subjects compared with short-faced subjects. Minimal tooth show was more attractive than excessive gingival display in short-faced subjects. There were no gender specific, statistically significant differences found in the ratings given by the lay assessors. Harmonious geometry of the smile and face in both the vertical and transverse dimensions influences smile attractiveness and this should be considered in orthodontic treatment planning.

Personality Mediators of Interpersonal Attraction.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Johnson, Charles D.; And Others

The current study was an examination of the effect of personality variables on the relationship between attitude disagreement and attraction. Attraction was measured in a neutral situation, designed to maximize any existing affective predispositions toward attitude agreement-disagreements. Subjects were placed in an ambiguous face-to-face…

Visual perception of male body attractiveness.

PubMed

Fan, J; Dai, W; Liu, F; Wu, J

2005-02-07

Based on 69 scanned Chinese male subjects and 25 Caucasian male subjects, the present study showed that the volume height index (VHI) is the most important visual cue to male body attractiveness of young Chinese viewers among the many body parameters examined in the study. VHI alone can explain ca. 73% of the variance of male body attractiveness ratings. The effect of VHI can be fitted with two half bell-shaped exponential curves with an optimal VHI at 17.6 l m(-2) and 18.0 l m(-2) for female raters and male raters, respectively. In addition to VHI, other body parameters or ratios can have small, but significant effects on male body attractiveness. Body proportions associated with fitness will enhance male body attractiveness. It was also found that there is an optimal waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) at 0.8 and deviations from this optimal WHR reduce male body attractiveness.

The Attractiveness Halo Effect and the Babyface Stereotype in Older and Younger Adults: Similarities, Own-Age Accentuation, and OA Positivity Effects

PubMed Central

Zebrowitz, Leslie A; Franklin, Robert G.

2014-01-01

Background Two well-documented phenomena in person perception are the attractiveness halo effect (more positive impressions of more attractive people), and the babyface stereotype (more childlike impressions of more babyfaced people), shown by children, young adults (YA) and people from diverse cultures. This is the first study to systematically investigate these face stereotypes in older adults (OA) and to compare effects for younger and older adult faces. Method YA and OA judges rated competence, health, hostility, untrustworthiness, attractiveness, and babyfaceness of older and younger neutral expression faces. Multilevel modeling assessed effects of rater age and face age on appearance stereotypes. Results Like YA, OA showed both the attractiveness halo effect and the babyface stereotype. However, OA showed weaker effects of attractiveness on impressions of untrustworthiness, and only OA associated higher babyfaceness with greater competence. There also was own-age accentuation, with both OA and YA showing stronger face stereotypes for faces closer to their own age. Age differences in the strength of the stereotypes reflected an OA positivity effect shown in more influence of positive facial qualities on impressions or less influence of negative ones, rather than vice versa. Conclusions OA own-age biases, previously shown in emotion, age, and identity recognition, and OA positivity effects, previously revealed in attention, memory, and social judgments, also influence age differences in the strength and content of appearance stereotypes. Future research should assess implications of these results for age-related differences in susceptibility to appearance biases that YA have shown in socially significant domains, such as judicial and personnel decisions. PMID:24785596

Effects of Objective 3-Dimensional Measures of Facial Shape and Symmetry on Perceptions of Facial Attractiveness.

PubMed

Hatch, Cory D; Wehby, George L; Nidey, Nichole L; Moreno Uribe, Lina M

2017-09-01

Meeting patient desires for enhanced facial esthetics requires that providers have standardized and objective methods to measure esthetics. The authors evaluated the effects of objective 3-dimensional (3D) facial shape and asymmetry measurements derived from 3D facial images on perceptions of facial attractiveness. The 3D facial images of 313 adults in Iowa were digitized with 32 landmarks, and objective 3D facial measurements capturing symmetric and asymmetric components of shape variation, centroid size, and fluctuating asymmetry were obtained from the 3D coordinate data using geo-morphometric analyses. Frontal and profile images of study participants were rated for facial attractiveness by 10 volunteers (5 women and 5 men) on a 5-point Likert scale and a visual analog scale. Multivariate regression was used to identify the effects of the objective 3D facial measurements on attractiveness ratings. Several objective 3D facial measurements had marked effects on attractiveness ratings. Shorter facial heights with protrusive chins, midface retrusion, faces with protrusive noses and thin lips, flat mandibular planes with deep labiomental folds, any cants of the lip commissures and floor of the nose, larger faces overall, and increased fluctuating asymmetry were rated as significantly (P < .001) less attractive. Perceptions of facial attractiveness can be explained by specific 3D measurements of facial shapes and fluctuating asymmetry, which have important implications for clinical practice and research. Copyright © 2017 American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Attraction of subterranean termites (Isoptera) to carbon dioxide.

PubMed

Bernklau, Elisa Jo; Fromm, Erich A; Judd, Timothy M; Bjostad, Louis B

2005-04-01

Subterranean termites, Reticulitermes spp., were attracted to carbon dioxide (CO2) in laboratory and field tests. In behavioral bioassays, Reticulitermes flavipes (Kollar), Reticulitermes tibialis Banks, and Reticulitermes virginicus Banks were attracted to CO2 concentrations between 5 and 50 mmol/mol. In further bioassays, R. tibialis and R. virginicus were attracted to the headspace from polyisocyanurate construction foam that contained 10-12 mmol/mol CO2. In soil bioassays in the laboratory, more termites foraged in chambers containing CO2-generating formulations than in unbaited control chambers. In field tests, stations containing CO2-generating baits attracted R. tibialis away from wooden fence posts at rangeland sites in Colorado. For all of the CO2 formulations tested, termites foraged in significantly more bait stations at treatment fenceposts than in bait stations at the control fenceposts. By the end of the 8-wk study, the number of bait stations located by termites at treatment fenceposts ranged from 40 to 90%. At control fenceposts, termites foraged in only a single station and the one positive station was not located by termites until week 5 of the study. At treatment fenceposts, termites foraged equally in active stations (containing a CO2-generating bait) and passive stations (with no CO2-generating bait), indicating that bait stations may benefit passively from a proximal CO2 source in the soil. CO2 used as an attractant in current baiting systems could improve their effectiveness by allowing earlier exposure of termites to an insecticide.

Active space of pheromone plume and its relationship to effective attraction radius in applied models.

PubMed

Byers, John A

2008-09-01

The release rate of a semiochemical lure that attracts flying insects has a specific effective attraction radius (EAR) that corresponds to the lure's orientation response strength. EAR is defined as the radius of a passive sphere that intercepts the same number of insects as a semiochemical-baited trap. It is estimated by calculating the ratio of trap catches in the field in baited and unbaited traps and the interception area of the unbaited trap. EAR serves as a standardized method for comparing the attractive strengths of lures that is independent of population density. In two-dimensional encounter rate models that are used to describe insect mass trapping and mating disruption, a circular EAR (EAR(c)) describes a key parameter that affects catch or influence by pheromone in the models. However, the spherical EAR, as measured in the field, should be transformed to an EAR(c) for appropriate predictions in such models. The EAR(c) is calculated as (pi/2EAR(2))/F (L), where F (L) is the effective thickness of the flight layer where the insect searches. F (L) was estimated from catches of insects (42 species in the orders Coleoptera, Lepidoptera, Diptera, Hemiptera, and Thysanoptera) on traps at various heights as reported in the literature. The EAR(c) was proposed further as a simple but equivalent alternative to simulations of highly complex active-space plumes with variable response surfaces that have proven exceedingly difficult to quantify in nature. This hypothesis was explored in simulations where flying insects, represented as coordinate points, moved about in a correlated random walk in an area that contained a pheromone plume, represented as a sector of active space composed of a capture probability surface of variable complexity. In this plume model, catch was monitored at a constant density of flying insects and then compared to simulations in which a circular EAR(c) was enlarged until an equivalent rate was caught. This demonstrated that there is a

Romantic attraction and adolescent smoking trajectories.

PubMed

Pollard, Michael S; Tucker, Joan S; Green, Harold D; Kennedy, David P; Go, Myong-Hyun

2011-12-01

Research on sexual orientation and substance use has established that lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals are more likely to smoke than heterosexuals. This analysis furthers the examination of smoking behaviors across sexual orientation groups by describing how same- and opposite-sex romantic attraction, and changes in romantic attraction, are associated with distinct six-year developmental trajectories of smoking. The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health dataset is used to test our hypotheses. Multinomial logistic regressions predicting smoking trajectory membership as a function of romantic attraction were separately estimated for men and women. Romantic attraction effects were found only for women. The change from self-reported heterosexual attraction to lesbian or bisexual attraction was more predictive of higher smoking trajectories than was a consistent lesbian or bisexual attraction, with potentially important differences between the smoking patterns of these two groups. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Effects of Physical Attractiveness on Evaluation of Vocal Performance.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wapnick, Joel; Darrow, Alice Ann; Kovacs, Jolan; Dalrymple, Lucinda

1997-01-01

Studies whether physical attractiveness of singers affects judges' ratings of their vocal performances. Reveals that physical attractiveness does impact evaluation, that male raters were more severe than female raters, and that the rating of undergraduate majors versus graduate students and professors combined were not differently affected by…

The Effect of Romantic Relationships on the Evaluation of the Attractiveness of One's Own Face.

PubMed

Cai, Jiaye; Zheng, Yan; Li, Pei; Ye, Bin; Liu, Hongyan; Ge, Liezhong

2018-01-01

The present study sought to explore the effect of romantic relationships on the attractiveness evaluation of one's own face using two experiments with the probability evaluation and the subjective rating method. Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 enrolled couples and single individuals as participants, respectively. The results of the two experiments indicated that the participants evaluated their own face as significantly more attractive than did others of the same sex. More importantly, the romantic relationship enhanced the positive bias in the evaluation of self-face attractiveness, that is, couple participants showed a stronger positive bias than did single individuals. It was also found that a person in a romantic relationship was prone to overestimating the attractiveness of his or her lover's face, from the perspective of both probability evaluation and rating score. However, the abovementioned overestimation did not surpass the evaluations of the exaggeratedly attractive face. The present results supported the observer hypothesis, demonstrating the romantic relationship to be an important influential factor of facial attractiveness. Our findings have important implications for the research of self-face evaluation.

Solvation effects on like-charge attraction.

PubMed

Ghanbarian, Shahzad; Rottler, Jörg

2013-02-28

We present results of molecular dynamics simulations of the electrostatic interaction between two parallel charged rods in the presence of divalent counterions. Such polyelectrolytes have been considered as a simple model for understanding electrostatic interactions in highly charged biomolecules such as DNA. Since there are correlations between the free charge carriers, the phenomenon of like charge attraction appears for specific parameters. We explore the role of solvation effects and the resulting deviations from Coulomb's law on the nanoscale on this peculiar phenomenon. The behavior of the force between the charged rods in a simulation with atomistic representation of water molecules is completely different from a model in which water is modeled as a continuum dielectric. By calculating counterion-rodion pair correlation functions, we find that the presence of water molecules changes the structure of the counterion cloud and results in both qualitative and quantitative changes of the force between highly charged polyelectrolytes.

Consequences of Beauty: Effects of Rater Sex and Sexual Orientation on the Visual Exploration and Evaluation of Attractiveness in Real World Scenes

PubMed Central

Mitrovic, Aleksandra; Tinio, Pablo P. L.; Leder, Helmut

2016-01-01

One of the key behavioral effects of attractiveness is increased visual attention to attractive people. This effect is often explained in terms of evolutionary adaptations, such as attractiveness being an indicator of good health. Other factors could influence this effect. In the present study, we explored the modulating role of sexual orientation on the effects of attractiveness on exploratory visual behavior. Heterosexual and homosexual men and women viewed natural-looking scenes that depicted either two women or two men who varied systematically in levels of attractiveness (based on a pre-study). Participants’ eye movements and attractiveness ratings toward the faces of the depicted people were recorded. The results showed that although attractiveness had the largest influence on participants’ behaviors, participants’ sexual orientations strongly modulated the effects. With the exception of homosexual women, all participant groups looked longer and more often at attractive faces that corresponded with their sexual orientations. Interestingly, heterosexual and homosexual men and homosexual women looked longer and more often at the less attractive face of their non-preferred sex than the less attractive face of their preferred sex, evidence that less attractive faces of the preferred sex might have an aversive character. These findings provide evidence for the important role that sexual orientation plays in guiding visual exploratory behavior and evaluations of the attractiveness of others. PMID:27047365

Consequences of Beauty: Effects of Rater Sex and Sexual Orientation on the Visual Exploration and Evaluation of Attractiveness in Real World Scenes.

PubMed

Mitrovic, Aleksandra; Tinio, Pablo P L; Leder, Helmut

2016-01-01

One of the key behavioral effects of attractiveness is increased visual attention to attractive people. This effect is often explained in terms of evolutionary adaptations, such as attractiveness being an indicator of good health. Other factors could influence this effect. In the present study, we explored the modulating role of sexual orientation on the effects of attractiveness on exploratory visual behavior. Heterosexual and homosexual men and women viewed natural-looking scenes that depicted either two women or two men who varied systematically in levels of attractiveness (based on a pre-study). Participants' eye movements and attractiveness ratings toward the faces of the depicted people were recorded. The results showed that although attractiveness had the largest influence on participants' behaviors, participants' sexual orientations strongly modulated the effects. With the exception of homosexual women, all participant groups looked longer and more often at attractive faces that corresponded with their sexual orientations. Interestingly, heterosexual and homosexual men and homosexual women looked longer and more often at the less attractive face of their non-preferred sex than the less attractive face of their preferred sex, evidence that less attractive faces of the preferred sex might have an aversive character. These findings provide evidence for the important role that sexual orientation plays in guiding visual exploratory behavior and evaluations of the attractiveness of others.

Attention Alters Perceived Attractiveness.

PubMed

Störmer, Viola S; Alvarez, George A

2016-04-01

Can attention alter the impression of a face? Previous studies showed that attention modulates the appearance of lower-level visual features. For instance, attention can make a simple stimulus appear to have higher contrast than it actually does. We tested whether attention can also alter the perception of a higher-order property-namely, facial attractiveness. We asked participants to judge the relative attractiveness of two faces after summoning their attention to one of the faces using a briefly presented visual cue. Across trials, participants judged the attended face to be more attractive than the same face when it was unattended. This effect was not due to decision or response biases, but rather was due to changes in perceptual processing of the faces. These results show that attention alters perceived facial attractiveness, and broadly demonstrate that attention can influence higher-level perception and may affect people's initial impressions of one another. © The Author(s) 2016.

Effect of attractive interactions between polymers on the effective force acting between colloids immersed in a polymer system: Analytic liquid-state theory.

PubMed

Chervanyov, A I

2016-12-28

By making use of the polymer reference interaction site model, we analytically study the effect of attractive interactions between polymers on the effective forces acting between colloids immersed in a polymer system. The performed theoretical analysis has no restrictions with respect to the polymer density and relative sizes of the colloids and polymers. The polymer mediated (PM) potential acting between colloids is shown to significantly depend on the strength and range of the polymer-polymer interactions. In the nano-particle limit, where the colloid radius is much smaller than the polymer gyration radius, the presence of attractive polymer-polymer interactions causes only quantitative changes to the PM potential. In the opposite limit of relatively large colloids, the polymer-polymer interactions revert the sign of the total effective force acting between colloids so that this force becomes attractive at sufficiently large polymer densities. With the objective to study an intricate interplay between the attractive PM forces and steric repulsion in different polymer density regimes, we calculate the second virial coefficient B of the total effective potential acting between colloids. The dependence of B on the polymer density is discussed in detail, revealing several novel features of the PM interactions caused by the presence of attractive polymer-polymer interactions.

Professional assessment of facial profile attractiveness.

PubMed

Soh, Jen; Chew, Ming Tak; Wong, Hwee Bee

2005-08-01

The aim of this study was to compare the assessments of Chinese facial profile attractiveness by orthodontists and oral surgeons. The sample comprised 31 dental professionals (20 orthodontists, 11 oral surgeons) in an Asian community. Facial profile photographs and lateral cephalometric radiographs of 2 Chinese adults (1 man, 1 woman) with normal profiles, Class I incisor relationships, and Class I skeletal patterns were digitized. The digital images were modified by altering cephalometric skeletal and dental hard tissue Chinese normative values in increments of 2 standard deviations in the anteroposterior plane to obtain 7 facial profiles for each sex. The images were bimaxillary protrusion, protrusive mandible, retrusive mandible, normal profile (Class I incisor with Class I skeletal pattern), retrusive maxilla, protrusive maxilla, and bimaxillary retrusion. The Mann-Whitney U test was used to determine professional differences in assessment. Multiple regression analysis was performed with age, professional status, sex, and number of years in practice as independent variables. A strong correlation was found in the profile assessment between orthodontists and oral surgeons. Normal and bimaxillary retrusive Chinese male and female profiles were judged to be highly attractive by orthodontists and oral surgeons. Chinese male and female profiles with protrusive mandibles were judged the least attractive. There was a difference in professional opinion about the most attractive male profile (P < .05), with orthodontists preferring a flatter profile and oral surgeons preferring a fuller normal Chinese profile. Sex of dental professionals and number of years in clinical practice were found to affect profile rankings.

Attractive celebrity and peer images on Instagram: Effect on women's mood and body image.

PubMed

Brown, Zoe; Tiggemann, Marika

2016-12-01

A large body of research has documented that exposure to images of thin fashion models contributes to women's body dissatisfaction. The present study aimed to experimentally investigate the impact of attractive celebrity and peer images on women's body image. Participants were 138 female undergraduate students who were randomly assigned to view either a set of celebrity images, a set of equally attractive unknown peer images, or a control set of travel images. All images were sourced from public Instagram profiles. Results showed that exposure to celebrity and peer images increased negative mood and body dissatisfaction relative to travel images, with no significant difference between celebrity and peer images. This effect was mediated by state appearance comparison. In addition, celebrity worship moderated an increased effect of celebrity images on body dissatisfaction. It was concluded that exposure to attractive celebrity and peer images can be detrimental to women's body image. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Sterile flowers increase pollinator attraction and promote female success in the Mediterranean herb Leopoldia comosa

PubMed Central

Morales, Carolina L.; Traveset, Anna; Harder, Lawrence D.

2013-01-01

Background and Aims Large floral displays have opposing consequences for animal-pollinated angiosperms: they attract more pollinators but also enable elevated among-flower self-pollination (geitonogamy). The presence of sterile flowers as pollinator signals may enhance attraction while allowing displays of fewer open fertile flowers, limiting geitonogamy. The simultaneous contributions of fertile and non-fertile display components to pollinator attraction and reproductive output remain undetermined. Methods The simultaneous effects of the presence of sterile flowers and fertile-flower display size in two populations of Leopoldia comosa were experimentally assessed. Pollinator behaviour, pollen removal and deposition, and fruit and seed production were compared between intact plants and plants with sterile flowers removed. Key Results The presence of sterile flowers almost tripled pollinator attraction, supplementing the positive effect of the number of fertile flowers on the number of bees approaching inflorescences. Although attracted bees visited more flowers on larger inflorescences, the number visited did not additionally depend on the presence of sterile flowers. The presence of sterile flowers improved all aspects of plant performance, the magnitude of plant benefit being context dependent. During weather favourable to pollinators, the presence of sterile flowers increased pollen deposition on stigmas of young flowers, but this difference was not evident in older flowers, probably because of autonomous self-pollination in poorly visited flowers. Total pollen receipt per stigma decreased with increasing fertile display size. In the population with more pollinators, the presence of sterile flowers increased fruit number but not seed set or mass, whereas in the other population sterile flowers enhanced seeds per fruit, but not fruit production. These contrasts are consistent with dissimilar cross-pollination and autonomous self-pollination, coupled with the

Facial Redness Increases Men's Perceived Healthiness and Attractiveness.

PubMed

Thorstenson, Christopher A; Pazda, Adam D; Elliot, Andrew J; Perrett, David I

2017-06-01

Past research has shown that peripheral and facial redness influences perceptions of attractiveness for men viewing women. The current research investigated whether a parallel effect is present when women rate men with varying facial redness. In four experiments, women judged the attractiveness of men's faces, which were presented with varying degrees of redness. We also examined perceived healthiness and other candidate variables as mediators of the red-attractiveness effect. The results show that facial redness positively influences ratings of men's attractiveness. Additionally, perceived healthiness was documented as a mediator of this effect, independent of other potential mediator variables. The current research emphasizes facial coloration as an important feature of social judgments.

Jamming transitions induced by an attraction in pedestrian flow.

PubMed

Kwak, Jaeyoung; Jo, Hang-Hyun; Luttinen, Tapio; Kosonen, Iisakki

2017-08-01

We numerically study jamming transitions in pedestrian flow interacting with an attraction, mostly based on the social force model for pedestrians who can join the attraction. We formulate the joining probability as a function of social influence from others, reflecting that individual choice behavior is likely influenced by others. By controlling pedestrian influx and the social influence parameter, we identify various pedestrian flow patterns. For the bidirectional flow scenario, we observe a transition from the free flow phase to the freezing phase, in which oppositely walking pedestrians reach a complete stop and block each other. On the other hand, a different transition behavior appears in the unidirectional flow scenario, i.e., from the free flow phase to the localized jam phase and then to the extended jam phase. It is also observed that the extended jam phase can end up in freezing phenomena with a certain probability when pedestrian flux is high with strong social influence. This study highlights that attractive interactions between pedestrians and an attraction can trigger jamming transitions by increasing the number of conflicts among pedestrians near the attraction. In order to avoid excessive pedestrian jams, we suggest suppressing the number of conflicts under a certain level by moderating pedestrian influx especially when the social influence is strong.

Jamming transitions induced by an attraction in pedestrian flow

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kwak, Jaeyoung; Jo, Hang-Hyun; Luttinen, Tapio; Kosonen, Iisakki

2017-08-01

We numerically study jamming transitions in pedestrian flow interacting with an attraction, mostly based on the social force model for pedestrians who can join the attraction. We formulate the joining probability as a function of social influence from others, reflecting that individual choice behavior is likely influenced by others. By controlling pedestrian influx and the social influence parameter, we identify various pedestrian flow patterns. For the bidirectional flow scenario, we observe a transition from the free flow phase to the freezing phase, in which oppositely walking pedestrians reach a complete stop and block each other. On the other hand, a different transition behavior appears in the unidirectional flow scenario, i.e., from the free flow phase to the localized jam phase and then to the extended jam phase. It is also observed that the extended jam phase can end up in freezing phenomena with a certain probability when pedestrian flux is high with strong social influence. This study highlights that attractive interactions between pedestrians and an attraction can trigger jamming transitions by increasing the number of conflicts among pedestrians near the attraction. In order to avoid excessive pedestrian jams, we suggest suppressing the number of conflicts under a certain level by moderating pedestrian influx especially when the social influence is strong.

Dissociating Averageness and Attractiveness: Attractive Faces Are Not Always Average

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

DeBruine, Lisa M.; Jones, Benedict C.; Unger, Layla; Little, Anthony C.; Feinberg, David R.

2007-01-01

Although the averageness hypothesis of facial attractiveness proposes that the attractiveness of faces is mostly a consequence of their averageness, 1 study has shown that caricaturing highly attractive faces makes them mathematically less average but more attractive. Here the authors systematically test the averageness hypothesis in 5 experiments…

Brain potentials indicate the effect of other observers' emotions on perceptions of facial attractiveness.

PubMed

Huang, Yujing; Pan, Xuwei; Mo, Yan; Ma, Qingguo

2016-03-23

Perceptions of facial attractiveness are sensitive to emotional expression of the perceived face. However, little is known about whether the emotional expression on the face of another observer of the perceived face may have an effect on perceptions of facial attractiveness. The present study used event-related potential technique to examine social influence of the emotional expression on the face of another observer of the perceived face on perceptions of facial attractiveness. The experiment consisted of two phases. In the first phase, a neutral target face was paired with two images of individuals gazing at the target face with smiling, fearful or neutral expressions. In the second phase, participants were asked to judge the attractiveness of the target face. We found that a target face was more attractive when other observers positively gazing at the target face in contrast to the condition when other observers were negative. Additionally, the results of brain potentials showed that the visual positive component P3 with peak latency from 270 to 330 ms was larger after participants observed the target face paired with smiling individuals than the target face paired with neutral individuals. These findings suggested that facial attractiveness of an individual may be influenced by the emotional expression on the face of another observer of the perceived face. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.

The value of facial attractiveness for encouraging fruit and vegetable consumption: analyses from a randomized controlled trial.

PubMed

Appleton, Katherine M; McGrath, Alanna J; McKinley, Michelle C; Draffin, Claire R; Hamill, Lesley L; Young, Ian S; Woodside, Jayne V

2018-03-01

An effect of increased fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption on facial attractiveness has been proposed and recommended as a strategy to promote FV intakes, but no studies to date demonstrate a causal link between FV consumption and perceived attractiveness. This study investigated perceptions of attractiveness before and after the supervised consumption of 2, 5 or 8 FV portions/day for 4 weeks in 30 low FV consumers. Potential mechanisms for change via skin colour and perceived skin healthiness were also investigated. Faces were photographed at the start and end of the 4 week intervention in controlled conditions. Seventy-three independent individuals subsequently rated all 60 photographs in a randomized order, for facial attractiveness, facial skin yellowness, redness, healthiness, clarity, and symmetry. Using clustered multiple regression, FV consumption over the previous 4 weeks had no direct effect on attractiveness, but, for female faces, some evidence was found for an indirect impact, via linear and non-linear changes in skin yellowness. Effect sizes, however, were small. No association between FV consumption and skin healthiness was found, but skin healthiness was associated with facial attractiveness. Controlled and objectively measured increases in FV consumption for 4 weeks resulted indirectly in increased attractiveness in females via increases in skin yellowness, but effects are small and gradually taper as FV consumption increases. Based on the effect sizes from this study, we are hesitant to recommend the use of facial attractiveness to encourage increased FV consumption. Clinical trial Registration Number NCT01591057 ( www.clinicaltrials.gov ). Registered: 27th April, 2012.

Association of Frontal and Lateral Facial Attractiveness.

PubMed

Gu, Jeffrey T; Avilla, David; Devcic, Zlatko; Karimi, Koohyar; Wong, Brian J F

2018-01-01

Despite the large number of studies focused on defining frontal or lateral facial attractiveness, no reports have examined whether a significant association between frontal and lateral facial attractiveness exists. To examine the association between frontal and lateral facial attractiveness and to identify anatomical features that may influence discordance between frontal and lateral facial beauty. Paired frontal and lateral facial synthetic images of 240 white women (age range, 18-25 years) were evaluated from September 30, 2004, to September 29, 2008, using an internet-based focus group (n = 600) on an attractiveness Likert scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being least attractive and 10 being most attractive. Data analysis was performed from December 6, 2016, to March 30, 2017. The association between frontal and lateral attractiveness scores was determined using linear regression. Outliers were defined as data outside the 95% individual prediction interval. To identify features that contribute to score discordance between frontal and lateral attractiveness scores, each of these image pairs were scrutinized by an evaluator panel for facial features that were present in the frontal or lateral projections and absent in the other respective facial projections. Attractiveness scores obtained from internet-based focus groups. For the 240 white women studied (mean [SD] age, 21.4 [2.2] years), attractiveness scores ranged from 3.4 to 9.5 for frontal images and 3.3 to 9.4 for lateral images. The mean (SD) frontal attractiveness score was 6.9 (1.4), whereas the mean (SD) lateral attractiveness score was 6.4 (1.3). Simple linear regression of frontal and lateral attractiveness scores resulted in a coefficient of determination of r2 = 0.749. Eight outlier pairs were identified and analyzed by panel evaluation. Panel evaluation revealed no clinically applicable association between frontal and lateral images among outliers; however, contributory facial features were suggested

Effects of Physical Attractiveness, Sex and Sex-Role on Trait Attributions.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Major, Brenda; Deaux, Kay

This research investigates how androgynous men and women are evaluated relative to those who are sex-typed or sex reversed, and also investigates the joint effects of attractiveness and sex-role upon such evaluation. Two studies with replicable results were conducted. In each, approximately 185 male and 185 female undergraduates were asked to rate…

Like-charge attraction in a one-dimensional setting: the importance of being odd

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Trizac, Emmanuel; Téllez, Gabriel

2018-03-01

From cement cohesion to DNA condensation, a proper statistical physics treatment of systems with long-range forces is important for a number of applications in physics, chemistry, and biology. We compute here the effective force between fixed charged macromolecules, screened by oppositely charged mobile ions (counterions). We treat the problem in a one-dimensional configuration that allows for interesting discussion and derivation of exact results, remaining at a level of mathematical difficulty compatible with an undergraduate course. Emphasis is put on the counterintuitive but fundamental phenomenon of like-charge attraction, which our treatment brings for the first time to the level of undergraduate teaching. The parity of the number of counterions is shown to play a prominent role, which sheds light on the binding mechanism at work when like-charge macromolecules do attract.

Assortative Mating: Encounter-Network Topology and the Evolution of Attractiveness

PubMed Central

Dipple, S.; Jia, T.; Caraco, T.; Korniss, G.; Szymanski, B. K.

2017-01-01

We model a social-encounter network where linked nodes match for reproduction in a manner depending probabilistically on each node’s attractiveness. The developed model reveals that increasing either the network’s mean degree or the “choosiness” exercised during pair formation increases the strength of positive assortative mating. That is, we note that attractiveness is correlated among mated nodes. Their total number also increases with mean degree and selectivity during pair formation. By iterating over the model’s mapping of parents onto offspring across generations, we study the evolution of attractiveness. Selection mediated by exclusion from reproduction increases mean attractiveness, but is rapidly balanced by skew in the offspring distribution of highly attractive mated pairs. PMID:28345625

Effective prey attraction in the rare Drosophyllum lusitanicum, a flypaper-trap carnivorous plant.

PubMed

Bertol, Nils; Paniw, Maria; Ojeda, Fernando

2015-05-01

Carnivorous plants have unusually modified leaves to trap insects as an adaptation to low-nutrient environments. Disparate mechanisms have been suggested as luring traits to attract prey insects into their deadly leaves, ranging from very elaborate to none at all. Drosophyllum lusitanicum is a rare carnivorous plant with a common flypaper-trap mechanism. Here we tested whether Drosophyllum plants lure prey insects into their leaves or they act just as passive traps. We compared prey capture between live, potted plants and Drosophyllum-shaped artificial mimics coated with odorless glue. Since this species is insect-pollinated, we also explored the possible existence of a pollinator-prey conflict by quantifying the similarity between the pollination and prey guilds in a natural population. All experiments were done in southern Spain. The sticky leaves of Drosophyllum captured significantly more prey than mimics, particularly small dipterans. Prey attraction, likely exerted by scent or visual cues, seems to be unrelated to pollinator attraction by flowers, as inferred from the low similarity between pollinator and prey insect faunas found in this species. Our results illustrate the effectiveness of this carnivorous species at attracting insects to their flypaper-trap leaves. © 2015 Botanical Society of America, Inc.

Lutzomyia spp. (Diptera: Psychodidae) response to olfactory attractant- and light emitting diode-modified Mosquito Magnet X (MM-X) traps.

PubMed

Mann, Rajinder S; Kaufman, Phillip E; Butler, Jerry F

2009-09-01

Mosquito Magnet-X traps were modified for use with blue, green, red, and blue-green-red light-emitting diodes and olfactory attractants to determine the response of Lutzomyia shannoni (Dyar) and Lutzomyia vexator (Coquillett) (Diptera: Psychodidae) field populations to these attractants. Red and blue-green-red-baited traps captured the highest numbers of Lu. shannoni and Lu. vexator, respectively, although, there were no significant differences between the colors. Baiting the traps with CO, attracted significantly higher numbers of Lu. shannoni but showed no effect on Lu. vexator capture. In comparison with CO, alone, Lu. shannoni preferred 1-octen-3-ol and 1-hexen-3-ol (0.05 g per trap) in combination with CO.

Visual exposure to obesity: Experimental effects on attraction toward overweight men and mate choice in females.

PubMed

Robinson, E; Christiansen, P

2015-09-01

Cultural differences in ideal body weight are well established, but less research has examined attraction toward potential mates of heavier body weights. We examined whether exposure to obesity increases physical attraction toward overweight men. In Studies 1 and 2, we examined the effect that exposure to obese vs healthy weight men had on female attraction toward an overweight man. Study 3 examined whether females who are regularly exposed to males of heavier body weights reported a greater attraction toward overweight men. Study 4 tested whether females in an online dating study were more likely to choose to date an overweight man, after having been exposed to obesity. Exposure to obesity altered visual perceptions of what normal and therefore healthy body weights were and this resulted in greater attraction toward an overweight man (Studies 1 and 2). Females regularly exposed to men of heavier body weight reported a greater attraction toward overweight men (Study 3). After exposure to obesity, females in an online dating study were more likely to choose to date an overweight man ahead of a healthy weight man (Study 4). Exposure to male obesity increases female attraction toward overweight men and may affect mate choice.

Is homophobia associated with an implicit same-sex attraction?

PubMed

Macinnis, Cara C; Hodson, Gordon

2013-01-01

Some theorists propose that homophobia stems from underlying same-sex attraction. A few studies have tested this hypothesis, yet without a clear measure of implicit sexual attraction, producing mixed results. For the first time, we test this attraction-based account of homophobia among both men and women using an implicit measure of sexual attraction. No evidence of an attraction-based account of homophobia emerged. Instead, implicit same-sex attraction was related to positive evaluations of gay men and lesbians among female participants. Even in targeted analyses examining the relation between implicit same-sex attraction and homosexual evaluations among only those theoretically most likely to demonstrate an attraction-based homophobic effect, implicit same-sex attraction was not associated with evaluations of homosexuals or was associated with more positive evaluations of homosexuals. In addition, explicit same-sex attraction was related to positive evaluations of gay men and lesbians for male participants. These results are more in keeping with the attitude-similarity effect (i.e., people like, rather than dislike, similar others).

Tissue-specific insulin signaling mediates female sexual attractiveness

PubMed Central

Arbuthnott, Devin; Rundle, Howard D.; Promislow, Daniel E. L.; Pletcher, Scott D.

2017-01-01

Individuals choose their mates so as to maximize reproductive success, and one important component of this choice is assessment of traits reflecting mate quality. Little is known about why specific traits are used for mate quality assessment nor about how they reflect it. We have previously shown that global manipulation of insulin signaling, a nutrient-sensing pathway governing investment in survival versus reproduction, affects female sexual attractiveness in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. Here we demonstrate that these effects on attractiveness derive from insulin signaling in the fat body and ovarian follicle cells, whose signals are integrated by pheromone-producing cells called oenocytes. Functional ovaries were required for global insulin signaling effects on attractiveness, and manipulations of insulin signaling specifically in late follicle cells recapitulated effects of global manipulations. Interestingly, modulation of insulin signaling in the fat body produced opposite effects on attractiveness, suggesting a competitive relationship with the ovary. Furthermore, all investigated tissue-specific insulin signaling manipulations that changed attractiveness also changed fecundity in the corresponding direction, pointing to insulin pathway activity as a reliable link between fecundity and attractiveness cues. The cues themselves, cuticular hydrocarbons, responded distinctly to fat body and follicle cell manipulations, indicating independent readouts of the pathway activity from these two tissues. Thus, here we describe a system in which female attractiveness results from an apparent connection between attractiveness cues and an organismal state of high fecundity, both of which are created by lowered insulin signaling in the fat body and increased insulin signaling in late follicle cells. PMID:28817572

Tissue-specific insulin signaling mediates female sexual attractiveness.

PubMed

Fedina, Tatyana Y; Arbuthnott, Devin; Rundle, Howard D; Promislow, Daniel E L; Pletcher, Scott D

2017-08-01

Individuals choose their mates so as to maximize reproductive success, and one important component of this choice is assessment of traits reflecting mate quality. Little is known about why specific traits are used for mate quality assessment nor about how they reflect it. We have previously shown that global manipulation of insulin signaling, a nutrient-sensing pathway governing investment in survival versus reproduction, affects female sexual attractiveness in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. Here we demonstrate that these effects on attractiveness derive from insulin signaling in the fat body and ovarian follicle cells, whose signals are integrated by pheromone-producing cells called oenocytes. Functional ovaries were required for global insulin signaling effects on attractiveness, and manipulations of insulin signaling specifically in late follicle cells recapitulated effects of global manipulations. Interestingly, modulation of insulin signaling in the fat body produced opposite effects on attractiveness, suggesting a competitive relationship with the ovary. Furthermore, all investigated tissue-specific insulin signaling manipulations that changed attractiveness also changed fecundity in the corresponding direction, pointing to insulin pathway activity as a reliable link between fecundity and attractiveness cues. The cues themselves, cuticular hydrocarbons, responded distinctly to fat body and follicle cell manipulations, indicating independent readouts of the pathway activity from these two tissues. Thus, here we describe a system in which female attractiveness results from an apparent connection between attractiveness cues and an organismal state of high fecundity, both of which are created by lowered insulin signaling in the fat body and increased insulin signaling in late follicle cells.

Esthetics: patients' perceptions of dental attractiveness.

PubMed

Dunn, W J; Murchison, D F; Broome, J C

1996-09-01

The importance of dentofacial attractiveness to the psychosocial well-being of an individual has been well established. Very little information is available regarding dental patient perceptions of a pleasing esthetic image. The purpose of this study was to identify factors distinctive to attractive smiles versus unattractive smiles, as perceived by patients. Standardized format photographs (5 x 7 in, matte finish, at f-32 and 1:2 magnification) of eight male and eight female smiles, framing only lips and teeth, were viewed by 297 subjects. The smiles exhibited differences in symmetry, tooth shade, number of teeth displayed, and height of maxillary lip line, and included both restored and unrestored teeth. Respondents ranked the photographs in order from most to least appealing appearance. Respondents viewed each series of photographs in a similar lighting and time period. A questionnaire identified the respondent's age, sex, race, education, income, and home town. Twenty-five demographic groups were established from the information in the questionnaire. Data were analyzed using stepwise discriminant analysis to determine the combination of smile characteristics that best predicted the ranking. The same female smile was chosen as the most attractive by 24 of the 25 demographic groups. This smile is characterized by natural teeth having light shade, high lip line, a large display of teeth, and radiating symmetry. Two female smiles typified by darker shade and asymmetry were rated by all groups as being least attractive. Two male smiles were judged equal as the most pleasing esthetically. Respondents favored those smiles characterized by light shade, a moderate display of teeth, moderate lip line, and a symmetrical arrangement of teeth. One male smile characterized by darker shade was rated as least attractive. In all cases, tooth shade was the most important factor, followed in sequence by unrestored natural teeth and number of teeth displayed. No correlation was

The Effect of Romantic Relationships on the Evaluation of the Attractiveness of One’s Own Face

PubMed Central

Cai, Jiaye; Zheng, Yan; Li, Pei; Ye, Bin; Ge, Liezhong

2018-01-01

The present study sought to explore the effect of romantic relationships on the attractiveness evaluation of one’s own face using two experiments with the probability evaluation and the subjective rating method. Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 enrolled couples and single individuals as participants, respectively. The results of the two experiments indicated that the participants evaluated their own face as significantly more attractive than did others of the same sex. More importantly, the romantic relationship enhanced the positive bias in the evaluation of self-face attractiveness, that is, couple participants showed a stronger positive bias than did single individuals. It was also found that a person in a romantic relationship was prone to overestimating the attractiveness of his or her lover’s face, from the perspective of both probability evaluation and rating score. However, the abovementioned overestimation did not surpass the evaluations of the exaggeratedly attractive face. The present results supported the observer hypothesis, demonstrating the romantic relationship to be an important influential factor of facial attractiveness. Our findings have important implications for the research of self-face evaluation. PMID:29755725

A two-dimensional model for the study of interpersonal attraction.

PubMed

Montoya, R Matthew; Horton, Robert S

2014-02-01

We describe a model for understanding interpersonal attraction in which attraction can be understood as a product of the initial evaluations we make about others. The model posits that targets are evaluated on two basic dimensions, capacity and willingness, such that affective and behavioral attraction result from evaluations of (a) a target's capacity to facilitate the perceiver's goals/needs and (b) a target's potential willingness to facilitate those goals/needs. The plausibility of the two-dimensional model of attraction is evaluated vis-à-vis the extant literature on various attraction phenomena including the reciprocity of liking effect, pratfall effect, matching hypothesis, arousal effects, and similarity effect. We conclude that considerable evidence across a wide range of phenomena supports the idea that interpersonal attraction is principally determined by inferences about the target's capacity and willingness.

Name-valence and physical attractiveness in Facebook: their compensatory effects on friendship acceptance.

PubMed

Greitemeyer, Tobias; Kunz, Irene

2013-01-01

Name-valence and physical attractiveness have been shown to be associated with how people respond toward others, in that people judge and behave more positively toward individuals with positive names and individuals who are physically attractive. The present research examined whether Facebook users are more likely to accept friendship requests from other Facebook users with positive (relative to negative) names and who are physically attractive (relative to being moderately attractive). In fact, both name-valence and physical attractiveness affected friendship acceptance. Moreover, results revealed that name-valence can be compensated by physical attractiveness (and vice versa). Acceptance rates of requests from users with positive names who are moderately attractive, as well as requests from users with negative names who are attractive did not significantly differ from those with positive names who are attractive.

An Evaluation of Web- and Print-Based Methods to Attract People to a Physical Activity Intervention.

PubMed

Alley, Stephanie; Jennings, Cally; Plotnikoff, Ronald C; Vandelanotte, Corneel

2016-05-27

Cost-effective and efficient methods to attract people to Web-based health behavior interventions need to be identified. Traditional print methods including leaflets, posters, and newspaper advertisements remain popular despite the expanding range of Web-based advertising options that have the potential to reach larger numbers at lower cost. This study evaluated the effectiveness of multiple Web-based and print-based methods to attract people to a Web-based physical activity intervention. A range of print-based (newspaper advertisements, newspaper articles, letterboxing, leaflets, and posters) and Web-based (Facebook advertisements, Google AdWords, and community calendars) methods were applied to attract participants to a Web-based physical activity intervention in Australia. The time investment, cost, number of first time website visits, the number of completed sign-up questionnaires, and the demographics of participants were recorded for each advertising method. A total of 278 people signed up to participate in the physical activity program. Of the print-based methods, newspaper advertisements totaled AUD $145, letterboxing AUD $135, leaflets AUD $66, posters AUD $52, and newspaper article AUD $3 per sign-up. Of the Web-based methods, Google AdWords totaled AUD $495, non-targeted Facebook advertisements AUD $68, targeted Facebook advertisements AUD $42, and community calendars AUD $12 per sign-up. Although the newspaper article and community calendars cost the least per sign-up, they resulted in only 17 and 6 sign-ups respectively. The targeted Facebook advertisements were the next most cost-effective method and reached a large number of sign-ups (n=184). The newspaper article and the targeted Facebook advertisements required the lowest time investment per sign-up (5 and 7 minutes respectively). People reached through the targeted Facebook advertisements were on average older (60 years vs 50 years, P<.001) and had a higher body mass index (32 vs 30, P<.05) than

Attraction between like-charged monovalent ions.

PubMed

Zangi, Ronen

2012-05-14

Ions with like-charges repel each other with a magnitude given by the Coulomb law. The repulsion is also known to persist in aqueous solutions albeit factored by the medium's dielectric constant. In this paper, we report results from molecular dynamics simulations of alkali halides salt solutions indicating an effective attraction between some of the like-charged monovalent ions. The attraction is observed between anions, as well as between cations, leading to the formation of dimers with lifetimes on the order of few picoseconds. Two mechanisms have been identified to drive this counterintuitive attraction. The first is exhibited by high-charge density ions, such as fluoride, at low salt concentrations, yielding effective attractions with magnitude up to the order of 1-2 kT. In this case, the stronger local electric field generated when the two ions are in contact augments the alignment of neighboring waters toward the ions. This results in a gain of substantial favorable ion-water interaction energy. For fluorides, this interaction constitutes the major change among the different energy components compensating for the anion-anion repulsion, and therefore, rendering like-charge association possible. The second mechanism involves mediation by counterions, the attractions increase with salt concentration and are characterized by small magnitudes. In particular, clusters of ion triplets, in which a counterion is either bridging the two like-charged ions or is paired to only one of them, are formed. Although these two mechanisms may not yield net attractions in many cases, they might still be operational and significant, explaining effective repulsions between like-charged ions with magnitudes much smaller than expected based on continuum electrostatics.

Old maids have more appeal: effects of age and pheromone source on mate attraction in an orb-web spider.

PubMed

Cory, Anna-Lena; Schneider, Jutta M

2016-01-01

Background. In many insects and spider species, females attract males with volatile sex pheromones, but we know surprisingly little about the costs and benefits of female pheromone emission. Here, we test the hypothesis that mate attraction by females is dynamic and strategic in the sense that investment in mate attraction is matched to the needs of the female. We use the orb-web spider Argiope bruennichi in which females risk the production of unfertilised egg clutches if they do not receive a copulation within a certain time-frame. Methods. We designed field experiments to compare mate attraction by recently matured (young) females with females close to oviposition (old). In addition, we experimentally separated the potential sources of pheromone transmission, namely the female body and the web silk. Results. In accordance with the hypothesis of strategic pheromone production, the probability of mate attraction and the number of males attracted differed between age classes. While the bodies and webs of young females were hardly found by males, the majority of old females attracted up to two males within two hours. Old females not only increased pheromone emission from their bodies but also from their webs. Capture webs alone spun by old females were significantly more efficient in attracting males than webs of younger females. Discussion. Our results suggest that females modulate their investment in signalling according to the risk of remaining unmated and that they thereby economize on the costs associated with pheromone production and emission.

Self-attracting walk on heterogeneous networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kim, Kanghun; Kyoung, Jaegu; Lee, D.-S.

2016-05-01

Understanding human mobility in cyberspace becomes increasingly important in this information era. While human mobility, memory-dependent and subdiffusive, is well understood in Euclidean space, it remains elusive in random heterogeneous networks like the World Wide Web. Here we study the diffusion characteristics of self-attracting walks, in which a walker is more likely to move to the locations visited previously than to unvisited ones, on scale-free networks. Under strong attraction, the number of distinct visited nodes grows linearly in time with larger coefficients in more heterogeneous networks. More interestingly, crossovers to sublinear growths occur in strongly heterogeneous networks. To understand these phenomena, we investigate the characteristic volumes and topology of the cluster of visited nodes and find that the reinforced attraction to hubs results in expediting exploration first but delaying later, as characterized by the scaling exponents that we derive. Our findings and analysis method can be useful for understanding various diffusion processes mediated by human.

Size effects of solvent molecules on the phase behavior and effective interaction of colloidal systems with the bridging attraction.

PubMed

Chen, Jie; Wang, Xuewu; Kline, Steven R; Liu, Yun

2016-11-16

There has been much recent research interest towards understanding the phase behavior of colloidal systems interacting with a bridging attraction, where the small solvent particles and large solute colloidal particles can be reversibly associated with each other. These systems show interesting phase behavior compared to the more widely studied depletion attraction systems. Here, we use Baxter's two-component sticky hard sphere model with a Percus-Yevick closure to solve the Ornstein-Zernike equation and study the size effect on colloidal systems with bridging attractions. The spinodal decomposition regions, percolation transition boundaries and binodal regions are systematically investigated as a function of the relative size of the small solvent and large solute particles as well as the attraction strength between the small and large particles. In the phase space determined by the concentrations of small and large particles, the spinodal and binodal regions form isolated islands. The locations and shapes of the spinodal and binodal regions sensitively depend on the relative size of the small and large particles and the attraction strength between them. The percolation region shrinks by decreasing the size ratio, while the binodal region slightly expands with the decrease of the size ratio. Our results are very important in understanding the phase behavior for a bridging attraction colloidal system, a model system that provides insight into oppositely charged colloidal systems, protein phase behavior, and colloidal gelation mechanisms.

Attraction under Aversive Conditions: Misattributions or Fear-Reduction?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Miller, Rowland S.

Interpersonal attraction appears to increase under aversive conditions. Two distinct theories suggest that attraction results from either misattribution or fear reduction. To investigate the effects of misattribution and fear reduction on attraction, 36 male college students were ostensibly exposed to an electromagnetic field while an attractive…

The effect of microscopic attractive interactions on piezoelectric coefficients of nanoscale DNA films and its resultant mirocantilever-based biosensor signals

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wu, Jun-Zheng; Zhou, Mei-Hong; Zhang, Neng-Hui

2017-10-01

The adsorption of charged biomolecules on a substrate will trigger a self-induced electric potential field that could deflect microcantilever biosensors in the nanometer regime. The paper is devoted to a multiscale characterization of the piezoelectric coefficient of double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) films with microscopic attractive interactions in multivalence salt solutions, which has a close relationship with biosensor signals. First, two different analytical models of cantilever deflections based on macroscopic piezoelectric theories or mesoscopic liquid crystal theories were combined in the sense of equivalent deformation in order to bridge the relation between the macroscopic piezoelectric coefficient of an adsorbate film and the sensitivity of its microstructure to surrounding conditions. Second, two interaction potentials of the free energy for repulsion-dominated DNA films in NaCl solution or attraction-repulsion-coexisted DNA films in multivalent salt solutions were used to compare the piezoelectric effect and the resultant cantilever deformation at various packing conditions, such as different packing density, various nucleotide numbers and two packing technologies, i.e. nano-grafting or self-assembling technology. The variational tendency of microcantilever deflections predicted by the present multiscale analytical model agrees well with the related DNA-mirocantilever experiments. Negative piezoelectric coefficient of dsDNA film exists in multivalent salt solutions, and its distinctive size effect with different packing densities and nucleotide numbers provides us with an opportunity to obtain a more sensitive microcantilever sensor by careful control of packing conditions.

CRITICAL EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SEWAGE SLUDGE DISINFECTION AND VECTOR ATTRACTION REDUCTION PROCESSES

EPA Science Inventory

What is the current state of management practices for biosolids production and application, and how can those be made more effective? How effective are Class B disinfection and vector attraction processes, and public access and harvesting restrictions at reducing the public's exp...

The effect of leg-to-body ratio on male attractiveness depends on the ecological validity of the figures.

PubMed

Versluys, Thomas M M; Skylark, William J

2017-10-01

Leg-to-body ratio (LBR) predicts evolutionary fitness, and is therefore expected to influence bodily attractiveness. Previous investigations of LBR attractiveness have used a wide variety of stimuli, including line drawings, silhouettes, and computer-generated images based on anthropometric data. In two studies, community samples of heterosexual women from the USA rated the attractiveness of male figures presented as silhouettes and as detailed computer-generated images with three different skin tones (white, black, and an artificial grey). The effects of LBR depended on the image format. In particular, a curve-fitting analysis indicated that the optimally-attractive LBR for silhouettes was fractionally below the baseline, whereas the optima for more detailed computer-generated images was approximately 0.5 s.d. above the baseline and was similar for all three skin-tones. In addition, the participants' sensitivity to changes in the LBR was lowest for the silhouettes and highest for the grey figures. Our results add to evidence that the most attractive LBR is close to, but slightly above, the population mean, and caution that the effects of limb proportions on attractiveness depend on the ecological validity of the figures.

The Effects of Defendant and Juror Attractiveness on Simulated Courtroom Trial Decisions.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Darby, Bruce W.; Jeffers, Devon

1988-01-01

College students (N=78) rated own attractiveness and rated attractive, moderately attractive, and unattractive hypothetical defendants as to guilt, responsibility, trustworthiness, happiness, honesty, intelligence, likeability, and recommended punishment. Findings suggest that decisions made by jurors are affected by physical appearance of…

It's not just average faces that are attractive: computer-manipulated averageness makes birds, fish, and automobiles attractive.

PubMed

Halberstadt, Jamin; Rhodes, Gillian

2003-03-01

Average faces are attractive. We sought to distinguish whether this preference is an adaptation for finding high-quality mates (the direct selection account) or whether it reflects more general information-processing mechanisms. In three experiments, we examined the attractiveness of birds, fish, and automobiles whose averageness had been manipulated using digital image manipulation techniques common in research on facial attractiveness. Both manipulated averageness and rated averageness were strongly associated with attractiveness in all three stimulus categories. In addition, for birds and fish, but not for automobiles, the correlation between subjective averageness and attractiveness remained significant when the effect of subjective familiarity was partialled out. The results suggest that at least two mechanisms contribute to the attractiveness of average exemplars. One is a general preference for familiar stimuli, which contributes to the appeal of averageness in all three categories. The other is a preference for averageness per se, which was found for birds and fish, but not for automobiles, and may reflect a preference for features signaling genetic quality in living organisms, including conspecifics.

How facial attractiveness affects sustained attention.

PubMed

Li, Jie; Oksama, Lauri; Hyönä, Jukka

2016-10-01

The present study investigated whether and how facial attractiveness affects sustained attention. We adopted a multiple-identity tracking paradigm, using attractive and unattractive faces as stimuli. Participants were required to track moving target faces amid distractor faces and report the final location of each target. In Experiment 1, the attractive and unattractive faces differed in both the low-level properties (i.e., luminance, contrast, and color saturation) and high-level properties (i.e., physical beauty and age). The results showed that the attractiveness of both the target and distractor faces affected the tracking performance: The attractive target faces were tracked better than the unattractive target faces; when the targets and distractors were both unattractive male faces, the tracking performance was poorer than when they were of different attractiveness. In Experiment 2, the low-level properties of the facial images were equalized. The results showed that the attractive target faces were still tracked better than unattractive targets while the effects related to distractor attractiveness ceased to exist. Taken together, the results indicate that during attentional tracking the high-level properties related to the attractiveness of the target faces can be automatically processed, and then they can facilitate the sustained attention on the attractive targets, either with or without the supplement of low-level properties. On the other hand, only low-level properties of the distractor faces can be processed. When the distractors share similar low-level properties with the targets, they can be grouped together, so that it would be more difficult to sustain attention on the individual targets. © 2016 Scandinavian Psychological Associations and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

The face of AIDS: Effects of physical attractiveness and target gender on inferred mode of HIV infection.

PubMed

Boehm, L; Wambaugh, M; Riney, T; Kunzelman, C

1996-04-01

We examined the effects of physical attractiveness on the assumed mode of HIV acquisition. 176 students read a description of an HIV-positive target whose photograph was placed above the description. A 2 (target gender) by 2 (attractive or unattractive target) factorial design was used. Unattractive targets were perceived as more likely to have acquired HIV through homosexual relationships. Further, men were perceived as more likely than women to have acquired HIV homosexually. Attractiveness did not bias health-care allocations regarding the infected target.

The Role of Attractiveness and Aggression in High School Popularity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Borch, Casey; Hyde, Allen; Cillessen, Antonius H. N.

2011-01-01

This study examines the effects of physical attractiveness and aggression on popularity among high school students. Previous work has found positive relationships between aggression and popularity and physical attractiveness and popularity. The current study goes beyond this work by examining the interactive effects of physical attractiveness and…

Fecal sacs attract insects to the nest and provoke an activation of the immune system of nestlings.

PubMed

Ibáñez-Álamo, Juan Diego; Ruiz-Raya, Francisco; Rodríguez, Laura; Soler, Manuel

2016-01-01

Nest sanitation is a widespread but rarely studied behavior in birds. The most common form of nest sanitation behavior, the removal of nestling feces, has focused the discussion about which selective pressures determine this behavior. The parasitism hypothesis, which states that nestling fecal sacs attract parasites that negatively affect breeding birds, was proposed 40 years ago and is frequently cited as a demonstrated fact. But, to our knowledge, there is no previous experimental test of this hypothesis. We carried out three different experiments to investigate the parasitism hypothesis. First, we used commercial McPhail traps to test for the potential attraction effect of nestling feces alone on flying insects. We found that traps with fecal sacs attracted significantly more flies (Order Diptera), but not ectoparasites, than the two control situations. Second, we used artificial blackbird (Turdus merula) nests to investigate the combined attraction effect of feces and nest materials on arthropods (not only flying insects). Flies, again, were the only group of arthropods significantly attracted by fecal sacs. We did not detect an effect on ectoparasites. Third, we used active blackbird nests to investigate the potential effect of nestling feces in ecto- and endoparasite loads in real nestlings. The presence of fecal sacs near blackbird nestlings did not increase the number of louse flies or chewing lice, and unexpectedly reduced the number of nests infested with mites. The endoparasite prevalence was also not affected. In contrast, feces provoked an activation of the immune system as the H/L ratio of nestlings living near excrements was significantly higher than those kept under the two control treatments. Surprisingly, our findings do not support the parasitism hypothesis, which suggests that parasites are not the main reason for fecal sac removal. In contrast, the attraction of flies to nestling feces, the elevation of the immune response of chicks, and the

Does Ethylene Treatment Mimic the Effects of Pollination on Floral Lifespan and Attractiveness?

PubMed Central

VAN DOORN, WOUTER G.

2002-01-01

In some species pollination may result in rapid changes in perianth colour and form (petal senescence and abscission, flower closure), rendering the flowers less attractive to pollinators. It has been suggested that this effect is mediated by ethylene. Flowers from about 200 species and 50 families were exposed to ethylene (3 ppm for 24 h at 20 °C). The effects on petal senescence and abscission have been described previously. Flower closure and perianth colour changes were generally ethylene‐sensitive, but responses showed no consistency within families. Several flowers known to respond to pollination by rapid cessation of attractiveness were also exposed to ethylene: this produced the same effect as pollination, both on flower colour and form. Species that respond to pollination by changing flower form or colour were found exclusively in families in which the species are generally ethylene‐sensitive (with regard to changes in perianth form and colour). However, several families are generally ethylene‐sensitive but contain no species reported to respond to pollination. PMID:12096797

Caterpillar-induced plant volatiles attract conspecific adults in nature

PubMed Central

El-Sayed, Ashraf M.; Knight, Alan L.; Byers, John A.; Judd, Gary J. R.; Suckling, David M.

2016-01-01

Plants release volatiles in response to caterpillar feeding that attract natural enemies of the herbivores, a tri-trophic interaction which has been considered an indirect plant defence against herbivores. The caterpillar-induced plant volatiles have been reported to repel or attract conspecific adult herbivores. To date however, no volatile signals that either repel or attract conspecific adults under field conditions have been chemically identified. Apple seedlings uniquely released seven compounds including acetic acid, acetic anhydride, benzyl alcohol, benzyl nitrile, indole, 2-phenylethanol, and (E)-nerolidol only when infested by larvae of the light brown apple moth, Epiphyas postvittana. In field tests in New Zealand, a blend of two of these, benzyl nitrile and acetic acid, attracted a large number of conspecific male and female adult moths. In North America, male and female adults of the tortricid, oblique-banded leafroller, Choristoneura rosaceana, were most attracted to a blend of 2-phenylethanol and acetic acid. Both sexes of the eye-spotted bud moth, Spilonota ocellana, were highly attracted to a blend of benzyl nitrile and acetic acid. This study provides the first identification of caterpillar-induced plant volatiles that attract conspecific adult herbivores under natural conditions, challenging the expectation of herbivore avoidance of these induced volatiles. PMID:27892474

Some Effects of Attitudinal Similarity and Exposure on Attraction and Aggression

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shuntich, Richard J.

1976-01-01

Previous research investigating the relationship of attraction and aggression has yielded somewhat equivocal results. The present study investigated the influence of two variables, attitudinal similarity and exposure, on interpersonal attraction and physical aggression. (Editor)

The Effects of Physical Appearance and Behavior Upon Ratings of Social Attractiveness.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mahoney, Sandra D.

A videotaped interaction between a stimulus person (SP) and an interviewer was viewed by 80 male and 80 female college students. The SP's physical appearance and behavior were varied in a 2 X 2 X 2 factorial design with student gender as the third independent variable. The effects of these three variables upon general attractiveness ratings and…

Attitude Similarity, Topic Importance, and Psychotherapeutic Attraction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cheney, Thomas

1975-01-01

The effect of attitude similarity and topic importance on attraction was studied by exposing 75 prison inmates, incarcerated for public intoxication, to varying attitudes of a psychotherapist. Subjects were more attracted to the therapist after receiving alcohol items regardless of degree of similarity expressed. (Author)

An innovative mosquito trap for testing attractants

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

We describe a simple trap modification for testing or using attractants to collect flying mosquitoes. The trap also can test the effectiveness of spatial repellents. The proposed design may facilitate standardized testing of mosquito attractants and repellents. The trap uses a standard Centers f...

Is there an own-race preference in attractiveness?

PubMed

Burke, Darren; Nolan, Caroline; Hayward, William Gordon; Russell, Robert; Sulikowski, Danielle

2013-08-15

Even in multicultural nations interracial relationships and marriages are quite rare, one reflection of assortative mating. A relatively unexplored factor that could explain part of this effect is that people may find members of their own racial group more attractive than members of other groups. We tested whether there is an own-race preference in attractiveness judgments, and also examined the effect of familiarity by comparing the attractiveness ratings given by participants of different ancestral and geographic origins to faces of European, East Asian and African origin. We did not find a strong own-race bias in attractiveness judgments, but neither were the data consistent with familiarity, suggesting an important role for other factors determining the patterns of assortative mating observed.

Internet research: self-monitoring and judgments of attractiveness.

PubMed

Buchanan, T

2000-11-01

Two studies examined the relationship between self-monitoring and factors influencing romantic attraction to others. In Study 1, participants completed an Internet-mediated version of the Self-Monitoring Scale (Gangestad & Snyder, 1985) and indicated which of two people (one physically attractive, one with a more desirable personality) they found most attractive. Results matched previous findings (Snyder, Berscheid, & Glick, 1985), but the effect was smaller. Study 2, a paper-and-pencil replication of Study 1, examined whether the weaker effect was due to Internet mediation and found no differences in the choices made by high and low self-monitors. Results suggested that while determinants of attraction may vary for different populations, Internet research methods can tap the same phenomena as traditional laboratory studies.

Phase attraction in sensorimotor synchronization with auditory sequences: effects of single and periodic distractors on synchronization accuracy.

PubMed

Repp, Bruno H

2003-04-01

Four experiments showed that both single and periodic distractor tones affected the timing of finger taps produced in synchrony with an isochronous auditory target sequence. Single distractors had only small effects, but periodic distractors occurring at various fixed or changing phase relationships exerted strong phase attraction. The attraction was asymmetric, being stronger when distractors preceded target tones than when they lagged behind. A large pitch difference between target and distractor tones (20 vs. 3 semitones) did not reduce phase attraction substantially, although in the case of continuously changing phase relationships it did prevent complete capture of the taps by the distractors. The results support the hypothesis that phase attraction is an automatic process that is sensitive primarily to event onsets.

The attractiveness-positivity link: Let's contextualize it.

PubMed

Mello, Joana; Garcia-Marques, Teresa

2018-02-27

The statement "what is beautiful is good" reflects a persuasive heuristic that may be supported either by a general association of attractiveness with positivity or by a specific association with the perceived credibility of an attractive source. In one study (N = 58), we approach this question using an explicit and an implicit measure (Stroop Task) to assess whether attractiveness is more likely associated with valenced words when these are related (vs. unrelated) to credibility. Results show that this effect occurs but only for the implicit measure. When the word-face associations were made at an explicit level, we found a general association between positivity and attractiveness, unrestricted to the dimension of credibility. We discuss how these results inform about attractiveness as a shortcut to judgments of validity.

An Evaluation of Web- and Print-Based Methods to Attract People to a Physical Activity Intervention

PubMed Central

Jennings, Cally; Plotnikoff, Ronald C; Vandelanotte, Corneel

2016-01-01

Background Cost-effective and efficient methods to attract people to Web-based health behavior interventions need to be identified. Traditional print methods including leaflets, posters, and newspaper advertisements remain popular despite the expanding range of Web-based advertising options that have the potential to reach larger numbers at lower cost. Objective This study evaluated the effectiveness of multiple Web-based and print-based methods to attract people to a Web-based physical activity intervention. Methods A range of print-based (newspaper advertisements, newspaper articles, letterboxing, leaflets, and posters) and Web-based (Facebook advertisements, Google AdWords, and community calendars) methods were applied to attract participants to a Web-based physical activity intervention in Australia. The time investment, cost, number of first time website visits, the number of completed sign-up questionnaires, and the demographics of participants were recorded for each advertising method. Results A total of 278 people signed up to participate in the physical activity program. Of the print-based methods, newspaper advertisements totaled AUD $145, letterboxing AUD $135, leaflets AUD $66, posters AUD $52, and newspaper article AUD $3 per sign-up. Of the Web-based methods, Google AdWords totaled AUD $495, non-targeted Facebook advertisements AUD $68, targeted Facebook advertisements AUD $42, and community calendars AUD $12 per sign-up. Although the newspaper article and community calendars cost the least per sign-up, they resulted in only 17 and 6 sign-ups respectively. The targeted Facebook advertisements were the next most cost-effective method and reached a large number of sign-ups (n=184). The newspaper article and the targeted Facebook advertisements required the lowest time investment per sign-up (5 and 7 minutes respectively). People reached through the targeted Facebook advertisements were on average older (60 years vs 50 years, P<.001) and had a higher

Conformation-dependent DNA attraction

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Weifeng; Nordenskiöld, Lars; Zhou, Ruhong; Mu, Yuguang

2014-05-01

Understanding how DNA molecules interact with other biomolecules is related to how they utilize their functions and is therefore critical for understanding their structure-function relationships. For a long time, the existence of Z-form DNA (a left-handed double helical version of DNA, instead of the common right-handed B-form) has puzzled the scientists, and the definitive biological significance of Z-DNA has not yet been clarified. In this study, the effects of DNA conformation in DNA-DNA interactions are explored by molecular dynamics simulations. Using umbrella sampling, we find that for both B- and Z-form DNA, surrounding Mg2+ ions always exert themselves to screen the Coulomb repulsion between DNA phosphates, resulting in very weak attractive force. On the contrary, a tight and stable bound state is discovered for Z-DNA in the presence of Mg2+ or Na+, benefiting from their hydrophobic nature. Based on the contact surface and a dewetting process analysis, a two-stage binding process of Z-DNA is outlined: two Z-DNA first attract each other through charge screening and Mg2+ bridges to phosphate groups in the same way as that of B-DNA, after which hydrophobic contacts of the deoxyribose groups are formed via a dewetting effect, resulting in stable attraction between two Z-DNA molecules. The highlighted hydrophobic nature of Z-DNA interaction from the current study may help to understand the biological functions of Z-DNA in gene transcription.Understanding how DNA molecules interact with other biomolecules is related to how they utilize their functions and is therefore critical for understanding their structure-function relationships. For a long time, the existence of Z-form DNA (a left-handed double helical version of DNA, instead of the common right-handed B-form) has puzzled the scientists, and the definitive biological significance of Z-DNA has not yet been clarified. In this study, the effects of DNA conformation in DNA-DNA interactions are explored by

Impressions of Counselors as a Function of Counselor Physical Attractiveness

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Carter, Jean A.

1978-01-01

Research assessed the effects of counselor physical attractiveness and inter-actions between attractiveness and counselor subject sex. It is suggested that sex of counselor and client may play a more important role independently and in conjunction with attractiveness than does attractiveness alone in influencing impressions and expectations.…

The Effects of Sex of Subject, Sex and Attractiveness of Photo on Facial Recognition.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Carroo, Agatha W.; Mozingo, R.

1989-01-01

Assessed effect of sex of subject, and sex and attractiveness of photo on facial recognition with 25 male and 25 female college students. Found male subjects performed better with male faces with d' prime scores. (Author/ABL)

A kairomone based attract-and-kill system effective against alfalfa looper (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae).

PubMed

Camelo, Leonardo de A; Landolt, Peter J; Zack, Richard S

2007-04-01

A chemical lure derived from flowers that are visited by moths attracts male and female alfalfa loopers, Autographa californica (Speyer) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae). This feeding attractant is dispensed from polypropylene bottles that provide controlled release for several weeks. A killing station was tested in the laboratory, in a screenhouse, and in the field in combination with this lure as an "attract-and-kill" system. Starved alfalfa looper adults (moths) were strongly attracted to the attract-and-kill station in a flight tunnel, and 90.9% of female moths and 87.6% of male moths that contacted the station died. In commercial fields of alfalfa hay, female moths captured in monitoring traps were reduced by 80-93% in plots receiving 125 attract-and-kill stations per hectare. In screenhouse trials using two attract-and-kill stations per screenhouse, oviposition on potted lettuce plants by starved female alfalfa looper moths was reduced by 98.5%. Moths were less likely to be attracted to lures when provided sugar before flight tunnel assays, and oviposition by fed moths was much less affected by attract-and-kill stations in screenhouse trials, compared with starved moths. This method has potential as a means to manage alfalfa looper populations in vegetable and other agricultural crops. However, consideration must be given to competing food and odor sources in the field.

Facial Features: What Women Perceive as Attractive and What Men Consider Attractive

PubMed Central

Muñoz-Reyes, José Antonio; Iglesias-Julios, Marta; Pita, Miguel; Turiegano, Enrique

2015-01-01

Attractiveness plays an important role in social exchange and in the ability to attract potential mates, especially for women. Several facial traits have been described as reliable indicators of attractiveness in women, but very few studies consider the influence of several measurements simultaneously. In addition, most studies consider just one of two assessments to directly measure attractiveness: either self-evaluation or men's ratings. We explored the relationship between these two estimators of attractiveness and a set of facial traits in a sample of 266 young Spanish women. These traits are: facial fluctuating asymmetry, facial averageness, facial sexual dimorphism, and facial maturity. We made use of the advantage of having recently developed methodologies that enabled us to measure these variables in real faces. We also controlled for three other widely used variables: age, body mass index and waist-to-hip ratio. The inclusion of many different variables allowed us to detect any possible interaction between the features described that could affect attractiveness perception. Our results show that facial fluctuating asymmetry is related both to self-perceived and male-rated attractiveness. Other facial traits are related only to one direct attractiveness measurement: facial averageness and facial maturity only affect men's ratings. Unmodified faces are closer to natural stimuli than are manipulated photographs, and therefore our results support the importance of employing unmodified faces to analyse the factors affecting attractiveness. We also discuss the relatively low equivalence between self-perceived and male-rated attractiveness and how various anthropometric traits are relevant to them in different ways. Finally, we highlight the need to perform integrated-variable studies to fully understand female attractiveness. PMID:26161954

Facial Features: What Women Perceive as Attractive and What Men Consider Attractive.

PubMed

Muñoz-Reyes, José Antonio; Iglesias-Julios, Marta; Pita, Miguel; Turiegano, Enrique

2015-01-01

Attractiveness plays an important role in social exchange and in the ability to attract potential mates, especially for women. Several facial traits have been described as reliable indicators of attractiveness in women, but very few studies consider the influence of several measurements simultaneously. In addition, most studies consider just one of two assessments to directly measure attractiveness: either self-evaluation or men's ratings. We explored the relationship between these two estimators of attractiveness and a set of facial traits in a sample of 266 young Spanish women. These traits are: facial fluctuating asymmetry, facial averageness, facial sexual dimorphism, and facial maturity. We made use of the advantage of having recently developed methodologies that enabled us to measure these variables in real faces. We also controlled for three other widely used variables: age, body mass index and waist-to-hip ratio. The inclusion of many different variables allowed us to detect any possible interaction between the features described that could affect attractiveness perception. Our results show that facial fluctuating asymmetry is related both to self-perceived and male-rated attractiveness. Other facial traits are related only to one direct attractiveness measurement: facial averageness and facial maturity only affect men's ratings. Unmodified faces are closer to natural stimuli than are manipulated photographs, and therefore our results support the importance of employing unmodified faces to analyse the factors affecting attractiveness. We also discuss the relatively low equivalence between self-perceived and male-rated attractiveness and how various anthropometric traits are relevant to them in different ways. Finally, we highlight the need to perform integrated-variable studies to fully understand female attractiveness.

The Effect of Person Order on Egress Time: A Simulation Model of Evacuation From a Neolithic Visitor Attraction.

PubMed

Stewart, Arthur; Elyan, Eyad; Isaacs, John; McEwen, Leah; Wilson, Lyn

2017-12-01

The aim of this study was to model the egress of visitors from a Neolithic visitor attraction. Tourism attracts increasing numbers of elderly and mobility-impaired visitors to our built-environment heritage sites. Some such sites have very limited and awkward access, were not designed for mass visitation, and may not be modifiable to facilitate disabled access. As a result, emergency evacuation planning must take cognizance of robust information, and in this study we aimed to establish the effect of visitor position on egress. Direct observation of three tours at Maeshowe, Orkney, informed typical time of able-bodied individuals and a mobility-impaired person through the 10-m access tunnel. This observation informed the design of egress and evacuation models running on the Unity gaming platform. A slow-moving person at the observed speed typically increased time to safety of 20 people by 170% and reduced the advantage offered by closer tunnel separation by 26%. Using speeds for size-specific characters of 50th, 95th, and 99th percentiles increased time to safety in emergency evacuation by 51% compared with able-bodied individuals. Larger individuals may slow egress times of a group; however, a single slow-moving mobility-impaired person exerts a greater influence on group egress, profoundly influencing those behind. Unidirectional routes in historic buildings and other visitor attractions are vulnerable to slow-moving visitors during egress. The model presented in this study is scalable, is applicable to other buildings, and can be used as part of a risk assessment and emergency evacuation plan in future work.

Do employers reward physical attractiveness in transition countries?

PubMed

Mavisakalyan, Astghik

2018-02-01

This paper studies the labour market returns to physical attractiveness using data from three transition countries of the Caucasus: Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. I estimate a large positive effect of attractive looks on males' probability of employment. Results from the most comprehensive model suggest a marginal effect of 11.1 percentage points. Using a partial identification approach, I show that this relationship is likely to be causal. After accounting for covariates, particularly measures of human capital, there is no evidence for a statistically significant link between females' attractiveness and employment. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Adaptive Allocation of Attention: Effects of Sex and Sociosexuality on Visual Attention to Attractive Opposite-Sex Faces.

PubMed

Duncan, Lesley A; Park, Justin H; Faulkner, Jason; Schaller, Mark; Neuberg, Steven L; Kenrick, Douglas T

2007-09-01

We tested the hypothesis that, compared with sociosexually restricted individuals, those with an unrestricted approach to mating would selectively allocate visual attention to attractive opposite-sex others. We also tested for sex differences in this effect. Seventy-four participants completed the Sociosexual Orientation Inventory, and performed a computer-based task that assessed the speed with which they detected changes in attractive and unattractive male and female faces. Differences in reaction times served as indicators of selective attention. Results revealed a Sex X Sociosexuality interaction: Compared with sociosexually restricted men, unrestricted men selectively allocated attention to attractive opposite-sex others; no such effect emerged among women. This finding was specific to opposite-sex targets and did not occur in attention to same-sex others. These results contribute to a growing literature on the adaptive allocation of attention in social environments.

Hierarchical encoding makes individuals in a group seem more attractive.

PubMed

Walker, Drew; Vul, Edward

2014-01-01

In the research reported here, we found evidence of the cheerleader effect-people seem more attractive in a group than in isolation. We propose that this effect arises via an interplay of three cognitive phenomena: (a) The visual system automatically computes ensemble representations of faces presented in a group, (b) individual members of the group are biased toward this ensemble average, and (c) average faces are attractive. Taken together, these phenomena suggest that individual faces will seem more attractive when presented in a group because they will appear more similar to the average group face, which is more attractive than group members' individual faces. We tested this hypothesis in five experiments in which subjects rated the attractiveness of faces presented either alone or in a group with the same gender. Our results were consistent with the cheerleader effect.

Effect of smile index and incisal edge position on perception of attractiveness in different age groups.

PubMed

Chou, J-C; Nelson, A; Katwal, D; Elathamna, E N; Durski, M T

2016-11-01

Changes in occlusal vertical dimension (OVD) and age have been found to affect Smile Index (SI, width/height of smile). Limited information is available regarding the aesthetic effects of these changes. The objective of this study was to evaluate the attractiveness of digitally manipulated smile images with differences in SI and incisal edge position (IEP) judged by respondents in different age groups. A total of 12 smile images were generated with varying SI (3·5, 5·3, 7·2, 9·0) and IEP (High, Medium, Low). Fifty respondents each in four age groups (15-24, 25-39, 40-54, 55+) evaluated the attractiveness of the 12 images using a 0-10 visual analog scale (VAS, 10 being most attractive). A repeated-measures three-factorial mixed model assessed differences. SI, IEP and age of respondents were found to significantly influence attractiveness score (P < 0·01 for all). With all age groups combined, SI = 7·2/IEP = Medium was most attractive (VAS = 7·22), followed by SI = 9·0/IEP = Medium, and SI = 5·3/IEP = Medium (VAS = 6·53 and 6·48, respectively). SI = 3·5/IEP = High and SI = 3·5/IEP = Low were least attractive (VAS = 1·99 and VAS = 2·58, respectively). Age group significantly influenced aesthetic perception, with younger respondents more critical in differences in SI and IEP. SI and IEP significantly influenced attractiveness of the smile in all respondent age groups. Low SI (i.e. 3·5) combined with high or low IEP was unattractive. Medium SI to high SI (i.e. 5·3-9·0) combined with medium IEP were considered attractive. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Beer Consumption Increases Human Attractiveness to Malaria Mosquitoes

PubMed Central

Lefèvre, Thierry; Gouagna, Louis-Clément; Dabiré, Kounbobr Roch; Elguero, Eric; Fontenille, Didier; Renaud, François; Costantini, Carlo; Thomas, Frédéric

2010-01-01

Background Malaria and alcohol consumption both represent major public health problems. Alcohol consumption is rising in developing countries and, as efforts to manage malaria are expanded, understanding the links between malaria and alcohol consumption becomes crucial. Our aim was to ascertain the effect of beer consumption on human attractiveness to malaria mosquitoes in semi field conditions in Burkina Faso. Methodology/Principal Findings We used a Y tube-olfactometer designed to take advantage of the whole body odour (breath and skin emanations) as a stimulus to gauge human attractiveness to Anopheles gambiae (the primary African malaria vector) before and after volunteers consumed either beer (n = 25 volunteers and a total of 2500 mosquitoes tested) or water (n = 18 volunteers and a total of 1800 mosquitoes). Water consumption had no effect on human attractiveness to An. gambiae mosquitoes, but beer consumption increased volunteer attractiveness. Body odours of volunteers who consumed beer increased mosquito activation (proportion of mosquitoes engaging in take-off and up-wind flight) and orientation (proportion of mosquitoes flying towards volunteers' odours). The level of exhaled carbon dioxide and body temperature had no effect on human attractiveness to mosquitoes. Despite individual volunteer variation, beer consumption consistently increased attractiveness to mosquitoes. Conclusions/Significance These results suggest that beer consumption is a risk factor for malaria and needs to be integrated into public health policies for the design of control measures. PMID:20209056

Inhibitory Effects of Semiochemicals on the Attraction of an Ambrosia Beetle Euwallacea nr. fornicatus to Quercivorol.

PubMed

Byers, John A; Maoz, Yonatan; Wakarchuk, David; Fefer, Daniela; Levi Zada, Anat

2018-04-17

The Euwallacea fornicatus (Eichhoff) species complex includes the polyphagous shot hole borer (PSHB), an ambrosia beetle infesting avocado limbs, Persea americana Mill. Synthetic quercivorol, a monoterpene alcohol, is known to attract females (males are flightless) over a range of release rates spanning three orders of magnitude. The upper release dose was extended 10-fold using sticky traps baited with quercivorol released at 1× (0.126 mg/day), 10×, and 108× relative rates to obtain a dose-response curve fitting a kinetic formation function. Naturally infested limbs of living avocado trees were wrapped with netting to exclude the possibility of catching emerging beetles on the encircling sticky traps. The results indicate PSHB are significantly attracted to infested limbs. Ethanol released over a 64-fold range (lowest rate of 7.5 mg/day) was moderately inhibitory of PSHB attraction to 1× quercivorol. β-caryophyllene and eucalyptol did not appear to affect attraction at the rates tested. A field test of potential inhibitors of 1× quercivorol was done using ~1 mg/day releases of monoterpene ketones: (-)-(S)-verbenone, (+)-(R)-verbenone, 3-methyl-2-cyclo-hexen-1-one (MCH or seudenone), piperitone, (+)-(S)-carvone, and racemic cryptone. Only piperitone and the two enantiomers of verbenone were strongly inhibitory. A blend of piperitone and verbenone tested together at different distances (0, 0.5, 1, 2, and 4 m) from a 1× quercivorol baited sticky trap became increasingly ineffective in inhibiting the attractant as separation distance increased. Due to the relatively short-range repellency (<1 m), the inhibitors would need to be released from several places on each tree to effectively repel PSHB from avocado trees. Effective attraction radii, EAR, and circular EARc are estimated for the quercivorol baits released at 1×, 10× and 108× rates. Push-pull simulations of moving beetles were performed in 1 ha plots with 2, 4, or 16 traps of 10× EARc and 400

Rheology of attractive emulsions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Datta, Sujit S.; Gerrard, Dustin D.; Rhodes, Travers S.; Mason, Thomas G.; Weitz, David A.

2011-10-01

We show how attractive interactions dramatically influence emulsion rheology. Unlike the repulsive case, attractive emulsions below random close packing, φRCP, can form soft gel-like elastic solids. However, above φRCP, attractive and repulsive emulsions have similar elasticities. Such compressed attractive emulsions undergo an additional shear-driven relaxation process during yielding. Our results suggest that attractive emulsions begin to yield at weak points through the breakage of bonds, and, above φRCP, also undergo droplet configurational rearrangements.

Rheology of attractive emulsions.

PubMed

Datta, Sujit S; Gerrard, Dustin D; Rhodes, Travers S; Mason, Thomas G; Weitz, David A

2011-10-01

We show how attractive interactions dramatically influence emulsion rheology. Unlike the repulsive case, attractive emulsions below random close packing, φ(RCP), can form soft gel-like elastic solids. However, above φ(RCP), attractive and repulsive emulsions have similar elasticities. Such compressed attractive emulsions undergo an additional shear-driven relaxation process during yielding. Our results suggest that attractive emulsions begin to yield at weak points through the breakage of bonds, and, above φ(RCP), also undergo droplet configurational rearrangements.

Effective sampling range of a synthetic protein-based attractant for Ceratitis capitata (Diptera: Tephritidae).

PubMed

Epsky, Nancy D; Espinoza, Hernán R; Kendra, Paul E; Abernathy, Robert; Midgarden, David; Heath, Robert R

2010-10-01

Studies were conducted in Honduras to determine effective sampling range of a female-targeted protein-based synthetic attractant for the Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata (Wiedemann) (Diptera: Tephritidae). Multilure traps were baited with ammonium acetate, putrescine, and trimethylamine lures (three-component attractant) and sampled over eight consecutive weeks. Field design consisted of 38 traps (over 0.5 ha) placed in a combination of standard and high-density grids to facilitate geostatistical analysis, and tests were conducted in coffee (Coffea arabica L.),mango (Mangifera indica L.),and orthanique (Citrus sinensis X Citrus reticulata). Effective sampling range, as determined from the range parameter obtained from experimental variograms that fit a spherical model, was approximately 30 m for flies captured in tests in coffee or mango and approximately 40 m for flies captured in orthanique. For comparison, a release-recapture study was conducted in mango using wild (field-collected) mixed sex C. capitata and an array of 20 baited traps spaced 10-50 m from the release point. Contour analysis was used to document spatial distribution of fly recaptures and to estimate effective sampling range, defined by the area that encompassed 90% of the recaptures. With this approach, effective range of the three-component attractant was estimated to be approximately 28 m, similar to results obtained from variogram analysis. Contour maps indicated that wind direction had a strong influence on sampling range, which was approximately 15 m greater upwind compared with downwind from the release point. Geostatistical analysis of field-captured insects in appropriately designed trapping grids may provide a supplement or alternative to release-recapture studies to estimate sampling ranges for semiochemical-based trapping systems.

Response Time Distributional Evidence for Distinct Varieties of Number Attraction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Staub, Adrian

2010-01-01

Speakers are known to make subject-verb agreement errors both when a number-mismatching noun intervenes between the head of the subject phrase and the verb (e.g., "*The key to the cabinets are on the table") and in configurations in which there is a number-mismatching noun that does not intervene (e.g., "*The cabinets that the key open are on the…

The role of holistic processing in judgments of facial attractiveness.

PubMed

Abbas, Zara-Angela; Duchaine, Bradley

2008-01-01

Previous work has demonstrated that facial identity recognition, expression recognition, gender categorisation, and race categorisation rely on a holistic representation. Here we examine whether a holistic representation is also used for judgments of facial attractiveness. Like past studies, we used the composite paradigm to assess holistic processing (Young et al 1987, Perception 16 747-759). Experiment 1 showed that top halves of upright faces are judged to be more attractive when aligned with an attractive bottom half than when aligned with an unattractive bottom half. To assess whether this effect resulted from holistic processing or more general effects, we examined the impact of the attractive and unattractive bottom halves when upright halves were misaligned and when aligned and misaligned halves were presented upside-down. The bottom halves had no effect in either condition. These results demonstrate that the perceptual processes underlying upright facial-attractiveness judgments represent the face holistically. Our findings with attractiveness judgments and previous demonstrations involving other aspects of face processing suggest that a common holistic representation is used for most types of face processing.

Effect of finite particle number sampling on baryon number fluctuations

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Steinheimer, Jan; Koch, Volker

The effects of finite particle number sampling on the net baryon number cumulants, extracted from fluid dynamical simulations, are studied. The commonly used finite particle number sampling procedure introduces an additional Poissonian (or multinomial if global baryon number conservation is enforced) contribution which increases the extracted moments of the baryon number distribution. If this procedure is applied to a fluctuating fluid dynamics framework, one severely overestimates the actual cumulants. We show that the sampling of so-called test particles suppresses the additional contribution to the moments by at least one power of the number of test particles. We demonstrate this methodmore » in a numerical fluid dynamics simulation that includes the effects of spinodal decomposition due to a first-order phase transition. Furthermore, in the limit where antibaryons can be ignored, we derive analytic formulas which capture exactly the effect of particle sampling on the baryon number cumulants. These formulas may be used to test the various numerical particle sampling algorithms.« less

Effect of finite particle number sampling on baryon number fluctuations

DOE PAGES

Steinheimer, Jan; Koch, Volker

2017-09-28

The effects of finite particle number sampling on the net baryon number cumulants, extracted from fluid dynamical simulations, are studied. The commonly used finite particle number sampling procedure introduces an additional Poissonian (or multinomial if global baryon number conservation is enforced) contribution which increases the extracted moments of the baryon number distribution. If this procedure is applied to a fluctuating fluid dynamics framework, one severely overestimates the actual cumulants. We show that the sampling of so-called test particles suppresses the additional contribution to the moments by at least one power of the number of test particles. We demonstrate this methodmore » in a numerical fluid dynamics simulation that includes the effects of spinodal decomposition due to a first-order phase transition. Furthermore, in the limit where antibaryons can be ignored, we derive analytic formulas which capture exactly the effect of particle sampling on the baryon number cumulants. These formulas may be used to test the various numerical particle sampling algorithms.« less

Insights into the role of age and social interactions on the sexual attractiveness of queens in an eusocial bee, Melipona flavolineata (Apidae, Meliponini)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Veiga, Jamille Costa; Menezes, Cristiano; Contrera, Felipe Andrés León

2017-04-01

The attraction of sexual partners is a vital necessity among insects, and it involves conflict of interests and complex communication systems among male and female. In this study, we investigated the developing of sexual attractiveness in virgin queens (i.e., gynes) of Melipona flavolineata, an eusocial stingless bee. We followed the development of sexual attractiveness in 64 gynes, belonging to seven age classes (0, 3, 6, 9, 15, 18 days post-emergence), and we also evaluated the effect of different social interactions (such as competition between queens and interactions with workers) on the development of attractiveness in other 60 gynes. We used the number of males that tried to mate with a focal gyne as a representative variable of its sexual attractiveness. During the essays, each gyne was individually presented to 10 sexually mature males, and during 3 min, we counted the number of males that everted their genitalia in response to the presence of a gyne. Here, we show that M. flavolineata gynes are capable to (i) maintain their sexual attractiveness for long periods through adult life, (ii) they need a minimum social interaction to trigger the development of sexual attractiveness, and (iii) that gynes express this trait only within a social context. We conclude that the effective occurrence of matings is conditional on potential social interactions that gynes experienced before taking the nuptial flight, when they are still in the nest. These findings bring insights into the factors determining reproductive success in social insects.

Environmental Esthetics and Interpersonal Attraction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kitchens, James T.; And Others

1977-01-01

Discusses a study designed to determine the effects of visual environmental esthetics on interpersonal attraction and concludes that visual esthetics influence participants' perspectives of their partners in live interpersonal communication settings. (MH)

Response of Tabanidae (Diptera) to natural and synthetic olfactory attractants.

PubMed

Krcmar, Stjepan; Hribar, Lawrence J; Kopi, Marija

2005-06-01

The attraction of female tabanids to Malaise traps and canopy traps baited with aged horse urine, 1-octen-3-ol, or a combination of aged horse urine and acetone was studied in the Kopacki rit Nature Park in Eastern Croatia. Malaise traps captured very few tabanids relative to canopy traps. The number of females of Tabanus tergestinus and Haematopotapluvialis collected from 1-octen-3-ol baited canopy traps differed significantly from traps baited with aged horse urine. However, the number of females of Tabanus bromius, Atylotus loewianus, and Tabanus maculicornis collected from canopy traps baited with 1-octen-3-ol and aged horse urine did not differ significantly. Canopy traps baited with aged horse urine collected significantly more Tabanus sudeticus than did traps baited with 1-octen-3-ol. Canopy traps baited with 1-octen-3-ol collected eight times more tabanids than unbaited traps, whereas canopy traps baited with aged horse urine and a combination of aged horse urine and acetone collected seven and four times as many tabanids, respectively, as did unbaited traps. It appears that 1-octen-3-oland aged horse urine are very effective attractants for tabanids in this part of Europe. Tabanus bromius was the most abundant species with 53.14% in the sample collected by canopy traps.

A Quantitative Approach to Determining the Ideal Female Lip Aesthetic and Its Effect on Facial Attractiveness.

PubMed

Popenko, Natalie A; Tripathi, Prem B; Devcic, Zlatko; Karimi, Koohyar; Osann, Kathryn; Wong, Brian J F

2017-07-01

Aesthetic proportions of the lips and their effect on facial attractiveness are poorly defined. Established guidelines would aid practitioners in achieving optimal aesthetic outcomes during cosmetic augmentation. To assess the most attractive lip dimensions of white women based on attractiveness ranking of surface area, ratio of upper to lower lip, and dimensions of the lip surface area relative to the lower third of the face. In phase 1 of this study, synthetic morph frontal digital images of the faces of 20 white women ages 18 to 25 years old were used to generate 5 varied lip surface areas for each face. These 100 faces were cardinally ranked by attractiveness through our developed conventional and internet-based focus groups by 150 participants. A summed ranking score of each face was plotted to quantify the most attractive surface area. In phase 2 of the study, 4 variants for each face were created with 15 of the most attractive images manipulating upper to lower lip ratios while maintaining the most attractive surface area from phase 1. A total of 60 faces were created, and each ratio was ranked by attractiveness by 428 participants (internet-based focus groups). In phase 3, the surface area from the most attractive faces was used to determine the total lip surface area relative to the lower facial third. Data were collected from March 1 to November 31, 2010, and analyzed from June 1 to October 31, 2016. Most attractive lip surface area, ratio of upper to lower lip, and dimension of the lips relative to the lower facial third. In phase 1, all 100 faces were cardinally ranked by 150 individuals (internet-based focus groups [n = 130] and raters from conventional focus groups [conventional raters] [n = 20]). In phase 2, all 60 faces were cardinally ranked by 428 participants (internet-based focus groups [n = 408] and conventional raters [n = 20]). The surface area that corresponded to the range of 2.0 to 2.5 × 104 pixels represented the

Facial attractiveness, weight status, and personality trait attribution: The role of attractiveness in weight stigma.

PubMed

Cross, Nicole; Kiefner-Burmeister, Allison; Rossi, James; Borushok, Jessica; Hinman, Nova; Burmeister, Jacob; Carels, Robert A

The current study examined the influence of facial attractiveness and weight status on personality trait attributions (e.g., honest, friendly) among more and less facially attractive as well as thin and overweight models. Participants viewed pictures of one of four types of models (overweight/less attractive, overweight/more attractive, thin/less attractive, thin/more attractive) and rated their attractiveness (facial, body, overall) and personality on 15 traits. Facial attractiveness and weight status additively impacted personality trait ratings. In mediation analyses, the facial attractiveness condition was no longer associated with personality traits after controlling for perceived facial attractiveness in 12 personality traits. Conversely, the thin and overweight condition was no longer associated with personality traits after controlling for perceived body attractiveness in only 2 personality traits. Post hoc moderation analysis indicated that weight status differently influenced the association between body attractiveness and personality trait attribution. Findings bear implications for attractiveness bias, weight bias, and discrimination research. Copyright © 2016 Asia Oceania Association for the Study of Obesity. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The physics of pollinator attraction.

PubMed

Moyroud, Edwige; Glover, Beverley J

2017-10-01

Contents 350 I. 350 II. 350 III. 352 IV. 353 V. 353 353 References 354 SUMMARY: This Tansley Insight focuses on recent advances in our understanding of how flowers manipulate physical forces to attract animal pollinators and ensure reproductive success. Research has traditionally explored the role of chemical pigments and volatile organic compounds as cues for pollinators, but recent reports have demonstrated the importance of physical and structural means of pollinator attraction. Here we explore the role of petal microstructure in influencing floral light capture and optics, analysing colour, gloss and polarization effects. We discuss the interaction between flower, pollinator and gravity, and how petal surface structure can influence that interaction. Finally, we consider the role of electrostatic forces in pollen transfer and pollinator attraction. We conclude that this new interdisciplinary field is evolving rapidly. © 2016 The Authors. New Phytologist © 2016 New Phytologist Trust.

Sex-typicality and attractiveness: are supermale and superfemale faces super-attractive?

PubMed

Rhodes, G; Hickford, C; Jeffery, L

2000-02-01

Many animals find extreme versions of secondary sexual characteristics attractive, and such preferences can enhance reproductive success (Andersson, 1994). We hypothesized, therefore, that extreme versions of sex-typical traits may be attractive in human faces. We created supermale and superfemale faces by exaggerating all spatial differences between an average male and an average female face. In Expt 1 the male average was preferred to a supermale (50% exaggeration of differences from the female average). There was no clear preference for the female average or the superfemale (50% exaggeration). In Expt 2, participants chose the most attractive face from sets of images containing feminized as well as masculinized images for each sex, and spanning a wider range of exaggeration levels than in Expt 1. Chinese sets were also shown, to see whether similar preferences would occur for a less familiar race (participants were Caucasian). The most attractive female image was significantly feminized for faces of both races. However, the most attractive male image for both races was also significantly feminized. These results indicate that feminization, rather than sex exaggeration per se, is attractive in human faces, and they corroborate similar findings by Perrett et al. (1998).

Annual dynamics of wild bee densities: attractiveness and productivity effects of oilseed rape.

PubMed

Riedinger, Verena; Mitesser, Oliver; Hovestadt, Thomas; Steffan-Dewenter, Ingolf; Holzschuh, Andrea

2015-05-01

Mass-flowering crops may affect long-term population dynamics, but effects on pollinators have never been studied across several years. We monitored wild bees in oilseed rape fields in 16 landscapes in Germany in two consecutive years. Effects on bee densities of landscape oilseed rape cover in the years of monitoring and in the previous years were evaluated with landscape data from three consecutive years. We fit empirical data to a mechanistic model to provide estimates for oilseed rape attractiveness and its effect on bee productivity in comparison to the rest of the landscape, and we evaluated consequences for pollinator densities in consecutive years. Our results show that high oilseed rape cover in the previous year enhances current densities of wild bees (except for bumble bees). Moreover, we show a strong attractiveness of and dilution on (i.e., decreasing bee densities with increasing landscape oilseed rape cover) oilseed rape for bees during flowering in the current year, modifying the effect of the previous year's oilseed rape cover in the case of wild bees (excluding Bombus). As long as other factors such as nesting sites or natural enemies do not limit bee reproduction, our findings suggest long-term positive effects of mass-flowering crops on bee populations, at least for non-Bombus generalists, which possibly help to maintain crop pollination services even when crop area increases. Similar effects are conceivable for other organisms providing ecosystem services in annual crops and should be considered in future studies.

Chemosignalling effects of human tears revisited: Does exposure to female tears decrease males' perception of female sexual attractiveness?

PubMed

Gračanin, Asmir; van Assen, Marcel A L M; Omrčen, Višnja; Koraj, Ivana; Vingerhoets, Ad J J M

2017-01-01

Gelstein et al. reported the results of three experiments suggesting a dampening influence of inhalation of female emotional tears on males' arousal and perception of female sexual attractiveness, specifically in non-sexual situations. This prompted the hypothesis that crying exerts its influence on others not only via the auditory and visual mode but also via chemosignals. In three studies, we attempted to replicate and extend Gelstein et al.'s findings by including an additional condition with irritant tears, by using pictures of sexually attractive women, and by testing related hypotheses on the pro-social effects of exposure to tears. All three studies, separately or combined in a meta-analysis, failed to replicate the original inhibitory effects of tears. In addition, sniffing tears did not affect measures of connectedness, aggression and pro-social behaviour. It is concluded that the effects of female tears on male arousal and perception of female sexual attractiveness, if any, are very weak at best. Rather, it seems that crying exerts its strong inter-personal effects through the visual and auditory sensory channels.

Motivational orientations and task autonomy fit: effects on organizational attraction.

PubMed

Wu, Yu-Chi

2012-02-01

The main purpose of this study was to investigate whether there is congruence between applicant needs (i.e., motivational orientations) and what is available (i.e., task autonomy) from an organizational perspective based on the fit between needs and supply. The fit between work motivation and task autonomy was examined to see whether it was associated with organizational attraction. This experimental study included two phases. Phase 1 participants consisted of 446 undergraduate students, of whom 228 were recruited to participate in Phase 2. The fit relations between task autonomy and intrinsic motivation and between task control and extrinsic motivation were characterized. Findings indicated that the fit between work motivation and task autonomy was positively associated with organizational attraction. Based on these results, it may be inferred that employers should emphasize job characteristics such as autonomy or control orientations to attract individuals, and focus on the most suitable work motivations for their organizations.

Thermodynamically consistent Langevin dynamics with spatially correlated noise predicting frictionless regime and transient attraction effect

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Majka, M.; Góra, P. F.

2016-10-01

While the origins of temporal correlations in Langevin dynamics have been thoroughly researched, the understanding of spatially correlated noise (SCN) is rather incomplete. In particular, very little is known about the relation between friction and SCN. In this article, starting from the microscopic, deterministic model, we derive the analytical formula for the spatial correlation function in the particle-bath interactions. This expression shows that SCN is the inherent component of binary mixtures, originating from the effective (entropic) interactions. Further, employing this spatial correlation function, we postulate the thermodynamically consistent Langevin equation driven by the Gaussian SCN and calculate the adequate fluctuation-dissipation relation. The thermodynamical consistency is achieved by introducing the spatially variant friction coefficient, which can be also derived analytically. This coefficient exhibits a number of intriguing properties, e.g., the singular behavior for certain types of interactions. Eventually, we apply this new theory to the system of two charged particles in the presence of counter-ions. Such particles interact via the screened-charge Yukawa potential and the inclusion of SCN leads to the emergence of the anomalous frictionless regime. In this regime the particles can experience active propulsion leading to the transient attraction effect. This effect suggests a nonequilibrium mechanism facilitating the molecular binding of the like-charged particles.

Gay male attraction toward muscular men: does mating context matter?

PubMed

Varangis, Eleanna; Lanzieri, Nicholas; Hildebrandt, Tom; Feldman, Matthew

2012-03-01

The purpose of this study was to examine gay men's perceived attractiveness of male figures based on short-term and long-term partner contexts. A sample of 190 gay adult men rated the attractiveness of line-drawings depicting male figures varying systematically in muscularity and body fat percentage in both short-term and long-term dating contexts. Mixed effects modeling was used to estimate the effects of figure (muscularity and body fat), dating context (short-term vs. long-term), and individual rater characteristics on attractiveness ratings. Results indicated that figure muscularity and body-fat had significant non-linear (i.e., quadratic) relationships with attractiveness ratings, and short-term dating context was associated with more discriminating ratings of attractiveness. Interactions between individual characteristics and figure characteristics indicated that the more available the individual and lower body fat, the more discriminating they were in ratings of attractiveness. The implications for future investigations considering both object and observer characteristics of attractiveness preferences are discussed. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Conformation-dependent DNA attraction.

PubMed

Li, Weifeng; Nordenskiöld, Lars; Zhou, Ruhong; Mu, Yuguang

2014-06-21

Understanding how DNA molecules interact with other biomolecules is related to how they utilize their functions and is therefore critical for understanding their structure-function relationships. For a long time, the existence of Z-form DNA (a left-handed double helical version of DNA, instead of the common right-handed B-form) has puzzled the scientists, and the definitive biological significance of Z-DNA has not yet been clarified. In this study, the effects of DNA conformation in DNA-DNA interactions are explored by molecular dynamics simulations. Using umbrella sampling, we find that for both B- and Z-form DNA, surrounding Mg(2+) ions always exert themselves to screen the Coulomb repulsion between DNA phosphates, resulting in very weak attractive force. On the contrary, a tight and stable bound state is discovered for Z-DNA in the presence of Mg(2+) or Na(+), benefiting from their hydrophobic nature. Based on the contact surface and a dewetting process analysis, a two-stage binding process of Z-DNA is outlined: two Z-DNA first attract each other through charge screening and Mg(2+) bridges to phosphate groups in the same way as that of B-DNA, after which hydrophobic contacts of the deoxyribose groups are formed via a dewetting effect, resulting in stable attraction between two Z-DNA molecules. The highlighted hydrophobic nature of Z-DNA interaction from the current study may help to understand the biological functions of Z-DNA in gene transcription.

Effects of lengthscales and attractions on the collapse of hydrophobic polymers in water

PubMed Central

Athawale, Manoj V.; Goel, Gaurav; Ghosh, Tuhin; Truskett, Thomas M.; Garde, Shekhar

2007-01-01

We present results from extensive molecular dynamics simulations of collapse transitions of hydrophobic polymers in explicit water focused on understanding effects of lengthscale of the hydrophobic surface and of attractive interactions on folding. Hydrophobic polymers display parabolic, protein-like, temperature-dependent free energy of unfolding. Folded states of small attractive polymers are marginally stable at 300 K and can be unfolded by heating or cooling. Increasing the lengthscale or decreasing the polymer–water attractions stabilizes folded states significantly, the former dominated by the hydration contribution. That hydration contribution can be described by the surface tension model, ΔG = γ(T)ΔA, where the surface tension, γ, is lengthscale-dependent and decreases monotonically with temperature. The resulting variation of the hydration entropy with polymer lengthscale is consistent with theoretical predictions of Huang and Chandler [Huang DM, Chandler D (2000) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 97:8324–8327] that explain the blurring of entropy convergence observed in protein folding thermodynamics. Analysis of water structure shows that the polymer–water hydrophobic interface is soft and weakly dewetted, and is characterized by enhanced interfacial density fluctuations. Formation of this interface, which induces polymer folding, is strongly opposed by enthalpy and favored by entropy, similar to the vapor–liquid interface. PMID:17215352

Effect of genotype of cocoa (Theobroma cacao) on attractiveness to the mirid Sahlbergella singularis (Hemiptera: Miridae) in the laboratory.

PubMed

Dibog, Luc; Babin, Régis; Mbang, Joseph Amang A; Decazy, Bernard; Nyassé, Salomon; Cilas, Christian; Eskes, Albertus B

2008-09-01

Mirids are a major constraint to cocoa growing in Africa. Cocoa breeding for tolerance/resistance could be effective in an integrated pest management system. Attractiveness is one aspect of tolerance/resistance, and decreasing the attractiveness of cocoa trees should be a good way of reducing damage. Small-scale laboratory tests were carried out in Cameroon to assess differences in the attractiveness to mirids of eleven cocoa genotypes. The genotypes were ranked according to their attractiveness score and a distance from a mean value. An analysis of variance was performed and revealed significant differences between cocoa genotypes (F=3.15, P<0.001). The cocoa genotype groupings revealed three major categories, with BE10 and SNK413 proving to be the most attractive. In contrast, five genotypes, IMC60, the Catongo Trinitario genotypes, Playa Alta2 (from Venezuela), SIC5 and SNK614, proved to be less attractive than the mean. Four genotypes (PA107, SNK619, UPA134 and T60/887) displayed similar attractiveness to the mean. The circular microtest offered the advantage of not needing a reference cocoa genotype. The least attractive clones, such as IMC60, were also the most tolerant in the field. Comparisons with the results of other studies are proposed.

Evaluation of the effect of buccal corridor size on smile attractiveness.

PubMed

Oshagh, Morteza; Zarif, Najafi H; Bahramnia, F

2010-01-01

an attractive smile helps people feel more self-confident and look younger. One of the more controversial aspects of smile attractiveness pertains to buccal corridor size. There is no previous study by those with artistic knowledge that has assessed the asthetic considerations of buccal corridor size. The purpose of this study was to observe whether the size of buccal corridors has an impact on smile attractiveness evaluated by lay people, dental students, and art students. colored post-treatment photograph with posed smiles of two subjects (one male, one female) were selected. The maxillary posterior dentitions were digitally altered to produce different buccal corridor sizes: narrow (28% buccal corridor), medium-narrow (22% buccal corridor), medium-broad (10% buccal corridor), and broad (2% buccal corridor). The 5 images of each subject were paired into 11 possible combinations and presented to three group: art students, dental students, and lay people, who compared the two images in each pair of smile attractiveness. The statistical test used were Wilcoxon signed rank and Mann-Whitney test. minimal and excessive buccal corridors were the least attractive when judged by three groups. All groups preferred smaller buccal corridors for the male subject and larger buccal corridors for the female subject. No significant judging differences were found between male and female judges from among art and dental students. minimal or excessive buccal corridor should be included in the problem list during orthodontic diagnosis and treatment planning.

Therapist Competency as a Function of Physical Attractiveness.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gonzalez, Carmen

Research has suggested that physical attractiveness contributes to subjects' perception of female competency. This finding has generated interest in investigating the effect of physical attractiveness on subjects' perceptions of competency in male and female therapists. Undergraduates (N=192) viewed a 15-minute videotaped session reflecting either…

Effect of attractive interactions on the water-like anomalies of a core-softened model potential.

PubMed

Pant, Shashank; Gera, Tarun; Choudhury, Niharendu

2013-12-28

It is now well established that water-like anomalies can be reproduced by a spherically symmetric potential with two length scales, popularly known as core-softened potential. In the present study we aim to investigate the effect of attractive interactions among the particles in a model fluid interacting with core-softened potential on the existence and location of various water-like anomalies in the temperature-pressure plane. We employ extensive molecular dynamic simulations to study anomalous nature of various order parameters and properties under isothermal compression. Order map analyses have also been done for all the potentials. We observe that all the systems with varying depth of attractive wells show structural, dynamic, and thermodynamic anomalies. As many of the previous studies involving model water and a class of core softened potentials have concluded that the structural anomaly region encloses the diffusion anomaly region, which in turn, encloses the density anomaly region, the same pattern has also been observed in the present study for the systems with less depth of attractive well. For the systems with deeper attractive well, we observe that the diffusion anomaly region shifts toward higher densities and is not always enclosed by the structural anomaly region. Also, density anomaly region is not completely enclosed by diffusion anomaly region in this case.

Patterns of Eye Movements When Observers Judge Female Facial Attractiveness

PubMed Central

Zhang, Yan; Wang, Xiaoying; Wang, Juan; Zhang, Lili; Xiang, Yu

2017-01-01

The purpose of the present study is to explore the fixed model for the explicit judgments of attractiveness and infer which features are important to judge the facial attractiveness. Behavioral studies on the perceptual cues for female facial attractiveness implied three potentially important features: averageness, symmetry, and sexual dimorphy. However, these studies did not explained which regions of facial images influence the judgments of attractiveness. Therefore, the present research recorded the eye movements of 24 male participants and 19 female participants as they rated a series of 30 photographs of female facial attractiveness. Results demonstrated the following: (1) Fixation is longer and more frequent on the noses of female faces than on their eyes and mouths (no difference exists between the eyes and the mouth); (2) The average pupil diameter at the nose region is bigger than that at the eyes and mouth (no difference exists between the eyes and the mouth); (3) the number of fixations of male participants was significantly more than female participants. (4) Observers first fixate on the eyes and mouth (no difference exists between the eyes and the mouth) before fixating on the nose area. In general, participants attend predominantly to the nose to form attractiveness judgments. The results of this study add a new dimension to the existing literature on judgment of facial attractiveness. The major contribution of the present study is the finding that the area of the nose is vital in the judgment of facial attractiveness. This finding establish a contribution of partial processing on female facial attractiveness judgments during eye-tracking. PMID:29209242

Patterns of Eye Movements When Observers Judge Female Facial Attractiveness.

PubMed

Zhang, Yan; Wang, Xiaoying; Wang, Juan; Zhang, Lili; Xiang, Yu

2017-01-01

The purpose of the present study is to explore the fixed model for the explicit judgments of attractiveness and infer which features are important to judge the facial attractiveness. Behavioral studies on the perceptual cues for female facial attractiveness implied three potentially important features: averageness, symmetry, and sexual dimorphy. However, these studies did not explained which regions of facial images influence the judgments of attractiveness. Therefore, the present research recorded the eye movements of 24 male participants and 19 female participants as they rated a series of 30 photographs of female facial attractiveness. Results demonstrated the following: (1) Fixation is longer and more frequent on the noses of female faces than on their eyes and mouths (no difference exists between the eyes and the mouth); (2) The average pupil diameter at the nose region is bigger than that at the eyes and mouth (no difference exists between the eyes and the mouth); (3) the number of fixations of male participants was significantly more than female participants. (4) Observers first fixate on the eyes and mouth (no difference exists between the eyes and the mouth) before fixating on the nose area. In general, participants attend predominantly to the nose to form attractiveness judgments. The results of this study add a new dimension to the existing literature on judgment of facial attractiveness. The major contribution of the present study is the finding that the area of the nose is vital in the judgment of facial attractiveness. This finding establish a contribution of partial processing on female facial attractiveness judgments during eye-tracking.

[A multi-measure analysis of the similarity, attraction, and compromise effects in multi-attribute decision making].

PubMed

Tsuzuki, Takashi; Matsui, Hiroshi; Kikuchi, Manabu

2012-12-01

In multi-attribute decision making, the similarity, attraction, and compromise effects warrant specific investigation as they cause violations of principles in rational choice. In order to investigate these three effects simultaneously, we assigned 145 undergraduates to three context effect conditions. We requested them to solve the same 20 hypothetical purchase problems, each of which had three alternatives described along two attributes. We measured their choices, confidence ratings, and response times. We found that manipulating the third alternative had significant context effects for choice proportions and confidence ratings in all three conditions. Furthermore, the attraction effect was the most prominent with regard to choice proportions. In the compromise effect condition, although the choice proportion of the third alternative was high, the confidence rating was low and the response time was long. These results indicate that the relationship between choice proportions and confidence ratings requires further theoretical investigation. They also suggest that a combination of experimental and modeling studies is imperative to reveal the mechanisms underlying the context effects in multi-attribute, multi-alternative decision making.

Evaluation of textile substrates for dispensing synthetic attractants for malaria mosquitoes.

PubMed

Mweresa, Collins K; Mukabana, Wolfgang R; Omusula, Philemon; Otieno, Bruno; Gheysens, Tom; Takken, Willem; van Loon, Joop J A

2014-08-16

The full-scale impact of odour-baited technology on the surveillance, sampling and control of vectors of infectious diseases is partly limited by the lack of methods for the efficient and sustainable dispensing of attractants. In this study we investigated whether locally-available and commonly used textiles are efficient substrates for the release of synthetic odorant blends attracting malaria mosquitoes. The relative efficacy of (a) polyester, (b) cotton, (c) cellulose + polyacrylate, and (d) nylon textiles as substrates for dispensing a synthetic odour blend (Ifakara blend 1(IB1)) that attracts malaria mosquitoes was evaluated in western Kenya. The study was conducted through completely randomized Latin square experimental designs under semi-field and field conditions. Traps charged with IB1-impregnated polyester, cotton and cellulose + polyacrylate materials caught significantly more female Anopheles gambiae sensu stricto (semi-field conditions) and An. gambiae sensu lato (field conditions) mosquitoes than IB1-treated nylon (P = 0.001). The IB1-impregnated cellulose + polyacrylate material was the most attractive to female An. funestus mosquitoes compared to all other dispensing textile substrates (P < 0.001). The responses of female An. funestus mosquitoes to IB1-treated cotton and polyester were equal (P = 0.45). Significantly more female Culex mosquitoes were attracted to IB1-treated cotton than to the other treatments (P < 0.001). Whereas IB1-impregnated cotton and cellulose + polyacrylate material attracted equal numbers of female Mansonia mosquitoes (P = 0.44), the catches due to these two substrates were significantly higher than those associated with the other substrates (P < 0.001). The number and species of mosquitoes attracted to a synthetic odour blend is influenced by the type of odour-dispensing material used. Thus, surveillance and intervention programmes for malaria and other mosquito vectors using

Insights into the role of age and social interactions on the sexual attractiveness of queens in an eusocial bee, Melipona flavolineata (Apidae, Meliponini).

PubMed

Veiga, Jamille Costa; Menezes, Cristiano; Contrera, Felipe Andrés León

2017-04-01

The attraction of sexual partners is a vital necessity among insects, and it involves conflict of interests and complex communication systems among male and female. In this study, we investigated the developing of sexual attractiveness in virgin queens (i.e., gynes) of Melipona flavolineata, an eusocial stingless bee. We followed the development of sexual attractiveness in 64 gynes, belonging to seven age classes (0, 3, 6, 9, 15, 18 days post-emergence), and we also evaluated the effect of different social interactions (such as competition between queens and interactions with workers) on the development of attractiveness in other 60 gynes. We used the number of males that tried to mate with a focal gyne as a representative variable of its sexual attractiveness. During the essays, each gyne was individually presented to 10 sexually mature males, and during 3 min, we counted the number of males that everted their genitalia in response to the presence of a gyne. Here, we show that M. flavolineata gynes are capable to (i) maintain their sexual attractiveness for long periods through adult life, (ii) they need a minimum social interaction to trigger the development of sexual attractiveness, and (iii) that gynes express this trait only within a social context. We conclude that the effective occurrence of matings is conditional on potential social interactions that gynes experienced before taking the nuptial flight, when they are still in the nest. These findings bring insights into the factors determining reproductive success in social insects.

Effects of aging and dilution on attraction and toxicity of GF-120 fruit fly bait spray for melon fly control in Hawaii.

PubMed

Revis, Hannah C; Miller, Neil W; Vargas, Roger I

2004-10-01

Attractiveness and toxicity of GF-120 Fruit Fly Bait (Dow AgroScience Indianapolis, IN) to melon flies, Bactrocera cucurbitae Coquillett, were examined to assess the effects of concentration and aging. We tested dilutions of 20, 40, and 80 ppm (AI) (spinosad) against water controls. The 80 and 40 ppm treatments were significantly more attractive than the 20 ppm and control treatments. Attraction was compared between baits aged for 2 and 24 h, fresh bait and water controls. Age had significant effects on both attractiveness and toxicity of GF-120. Baits aged for 2 h were 11 times less attractive to female melon flies than fresh bait. Mortality rates were reduced by 50% when GF-120 was subjected to rain. Our results suggest the need for frequent applications of GF-120 to obtain maximum benefits, particularly in wet tropical climates.

Vibrational properties of quasi-two-dimensional colloidal glasses with varying interparticle attraction.

PubMed

Gratale, Matthew D; Ma, Xiaoguang; Davidson, Zoey S; Still, Tim; Habdas, Piotr; Yodh, A G

2016-10-01

We measure the vibrational modes and particle dynamics of quasi-two-dimensional colloidal glasses as a function of interparticle interaction strength. The interparticle attractions are controlled via a temperature-tunable depletion interaction. Specifically, the interparticle attraction energy is increased gradually from a very small value (nearly hard-sphere) to moderate strength (∼4k_{B}T), and the variation of colloidal particle dynamics and vibrations are concurrently probed. The particle dynamics slow monotonically with increasing attraction strength, and the particle motions saturate for strengths greater than ∼2k_{B}T, i.e., as the system evolves from a nearly repulsive glass to an attractive glass. The shape of the phonon density of states is revealed to change with increasing attraction strength, and the number of low-frequency modes exhibits a crossover for glasses with weak compared to strong interparticle attraction at a threshold of ∼2k_{B}T. This variation in the properties of the low-frequency vibrational modes suggests a new means for distinguishing between repulsive and attractive glass states.

Happy guys finish last: the impact of emotion expressions on sexual attraction.

PubMed

Tracy, Jessica L; Beall, Alec T

2011-12-01

This research examined the relative sexual attractiveness of individuals showing emotion expressions of happiness, pride, and shame compared with a neutral control. Across two studies using different images and samples ranging broadly in age (total N = 1041), a large gender difference emerged in the sexual attractiveness of happy displays: happiness was the most attractive female emotion expression, and one of the least attractive in males. In contrast, pride showed the reverse pattern; it was the most attractive male expression, and one of the least attractive in women. Shame displays were relatively attractive in both genders, and, among younger adult women viewers, male shame was more attractive than male happiness, and not substantially less than male pride. Effects were largely consistent with evolutionary and socio-cultural-norm accounts. Overall, this research provides the first evidence that distinct emotion expressions have divergent effects on sexual attractiveness, which vary by gender but largely hold across age. (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved.

The undermining effect of facial attractiveness on brain responses to fairness in the Ultimatum Game: an ERP study

PubMed Central

Ma, Qingguo; Hu, Yue; Jiang, Shushu; Meng, Liang

2015-01-01

To investigate the time course of the neural processing of facial attractiveness and its influence on fairness consideration during social interactions, event-related potentials (ERP) were recorded from 21 male subjects performing a two-person Ultimatum Game (UG). During this bargaining game, the male subjects played responders who decided whether to accept offers from female proposers, whose facial images (grouped as “attractive” and “unattractive”) were presented prior to the offer presentation. The behavioral data demonstrated that the acceptance ratio increased with the fairness level of the offers and, more importantly, the subjects were more likely to accept unfair offers when presented with the attractive-face condition compared with the unattractive-face condition. The reaction times (RTs) for five offers (1:9, 2:8, 3:7, 4:6, and 5:5) in the unattractive-face condition were not significantly different. In contrast, the subjects reacted slower to the attractive proposers' unfair offers and quicker to fair offers. The ERP analysis of the face presentation demonstrated a decreased early negativity (N2) and enhanced late positive potentials (LPPs) elicited by the attractive faces compared with the unattractive faces. In addition, the feedback-related negativity (FRN) in response to an offer presentation was not significantly different for the unfair (1:9 and 2:8) and fair (4:6 and 5:5) offers in the attractive-face condition. However, the unfair offers generated larger FRNs compared with the fair offers in the unattractive-face condition (consistent with prior studies). A similar effect was identified for P300. The present study demonstrated an undermining effect of proposer facial attractiveness on responder consideration of offer fairness during the UG. PMID:25805967

Electrophysiological response and attraction of emerald ash borer to green leaf volatiles (GLVs) emitted by host foliage.

PubMed

de Groot, Peter; Grant, Gary G; Poland, Therese M; Scharbach, Roger; Buchan, Linda; Nott, Reginald W; Macdonald, Linda; Pitt, Doug

2008-09-01

Green leaf volatiles (GLVs) function as host attractants, pheromone synergists, or sexual kairomones for a number of coleopteran folivores. Hence, we focused on host GLVs to determine if they were attractive to adults of the emerald ash borer, Agrilus planipennis (Coleoptera: Buprestidae), which feeds on ash (Fraxinus) foliage. Eight GLVs were identified by chromatography-electroantennogram (GC) and GC-mass spectrometry in foliar headspace volatiles collected in traps containing Super-Q from white ash, Fraxinus americana, and green ash, Fraxinus pennsylvanica, trees. GLVs in the aeration extracts elicited antennal responses from both male and female adults in gas chromatography-electroantennogram detection bioassays. Male antennae were more responsive than female antennae and showed the strongest response to (Z)-3-hexenol. Six field experiments were conducted in Canada and the USA from 2004 to 2006 to evaluate the attractiveness of candidate GLVs, in various lure combinations and dosages. Field experiments demonstrated that lures containing (Z)-3-hexenol were the most effective in increasing trap catch when placed on purple traps in open areas or along the edges of woodlots containing ash. Lures with (Z)-3-hexenol were more attractive to males than females, and dosage may be a factor determining its effectiveness.

The Effect of Camera Angle and Image Size on Source Credibility and Interpersonal Attraction.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McCain, Thomas A.; Wakshlag, Jacob J.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of two nonverbal visual variables (camera angle and image size) on variables developed in a nonmediated context (source credibility and interpersonal attraction). Camera angle and image size were manipulated in eight video taped television newscasts which were subsequently presented to eight…

Effects of Profane Language and Physical Attractiveness on Perceptions of Counselor Behavior.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Paradise, Louis V.; And Others

1980-01-01

Data revealed that counselors using profanity were rated less favorably across all measures regardless of physical attractiveness. When profanity was present, female counselors were rated more positively than male counselors. Overall, physically attractive counselors were judged to have more favorable attributes. (Author)

Boosting spin-caloritronic effects by attractive correlations in molecular junctions.

PubMed

Weymann, Ireneusz

2016-01-25

In nanoscopic systems quantum confinement and interference can lead to an enhancement of thermoelectric properties as compared to conventional bulk materials. For nanostructures, such as molecules or quantum dots coupled to external leads, the thermoelectric figure of merit can reach or even exceed unity. Moreover, in the presence of external magnetic field or when the leads are ferromagnetic, an applied temperature gradient can generate a spin voltage and an associated spin current flow in the system, which makes such nanostructures particularly interesting for future thermoelectric applications. In this study, by using the numerical renormalization group method, we examine the spin-dependent thermoelectric transport properties of a molecular junction involving an orbital level with attractive Coulomb correlations coupled to ferromagnetic leads. We analyze how attractive correlations affect the spin-resolved transport properties of the system and find a nontrivial dependence of the conductance and tunnel magnetoresistance on the strength and sign of those correlations. We also demonstrate that attractive correlations can lead to an enhancement of the spin thermopower and the figure of merit, which can be controlled by a gate voltage.

Attractiveness Differences Between Twins Predicts Evaluations of Self and Co-Twin

PubMed Central

Principe, Connor P.; Rosen, Lisa H.; Taylor-Partridge, Teresa; Langlois, Judith H.

2012-01-01

One of the most consistent findings in psychology shows that people prefer and make positive attributions about attractive compared with unattractive people. The goal of the current study was to determine the power of attractiveness effects by testing whether these social judgments are made where attractiveness differences are smallest: between twins. Differences in facial attractiveness predicted twins’ evaluations of self and their co-twin (n = 158; 54 male). In twin pairs, the more attractive twin judged their less attractive sibling as less physically attractive, athletic, socially competent, and emotionally stable. The less attractive twin did the reverse. Given that even negligible differences in facial attractiveness predicted self and co-twin attitudes, these results provide the strongest test yet of appearance-based stereotypes. PMID:23467329

The effect of "single" vs "double" eyelids on the perceived attractiveness of Chinese women.

PubMed

Hwang, Harry S; Spiegel, Jeffrey H

2014-03-01

A well-defined supratarsal crease has often been considered attractive, representing a significant component in a beautiful upper eyelid. Approximately 50% of East and Southeast Asian women are born with either a minimal or absent supratarsal eyelid crease. Among people of Chinese descent, the creation of a supratarsal crease ("double" eyelid blepharoplasty) is the most common cosmetic surgical procedure, but no comparative study has assessed the height by which an upper eyelid crease is deemed most attractive and depending on cultural background. The authors assess how attractiveness is interpreted by different cultural groups to determine whether double-eyelid blepharoplasty enhances attractiveness according to both Chinese and non-Chinese observers. Facial photographs were taken of 19 women of Chinese descent. The photographs were enhanced with computer imaging software to generate 3 additional pictures, depicting low, medium, and high upper eyelid creases on each model. Via an Internet-based survey tool, Chinese and non-Chinese observers were asked to rate the attractiveness of the faces with each potential eyelid position. (Surveys are available online at www.aestheticsurgeryjournal.com, as Appendix 1 and Appendix 2.) Both Chinese and non-Chinese observers considered the medium-height upper eyelid crease most attractive (P < .00001). An absent upper eyelid crease was deemed the least attractive (P < .00001). These preference data for eyelid height can be used to better counsel patients on perceived attractiveness and expectations for surgical results, since these results further elucidate which facial features are universally considered attractive.

Distinct collective states due to trade-off between attractive and repulsive couplings

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sathiyadevi, K.; Chandrasekar, V. K.; Senthilkumar, D. V.; Lakshmanan, M.

2018-03-01

We investigate the effect of repulsive coupling together with an attractive coupling in a network of nonlocally coupled oscillators. To understand the complex interaction between these two couplings we introduce a control parameter in the repulsive coupling which plays a crucial role in inducing distinct complex collective patterns. In particular, we show the emergence of various cluster chimera death states through a dynamically distinct transition route, namely the oscillatory cluster state and coherent oscillation death state as a function of the repulsive coupling in the presence of the attractive coupling. In the oscillatory cluster state, the oscillators in the network are grouped into two distinct dynamical states of homogeneous and inhomogeneous oscillatory states. Further, the network of coupled oscillators follow the same transition route in the entire coupling range. Depending upon distinct coupling ranges, the system displays different number of clusters in the death state and oscillatory state. We also observe that the number of coherent domains in the oscillatory cluster state exponentially decreases with increase in coupling range and obeys a power-law decay. Additionally, we show analytical stability for observed solitary state, synchronized state, and incoherent oscillation death state.

Epidemic spreading on activity-driven networks with attractiveness.

PubMed

Pozzana, Iacopo; Sun, Kaiyuan; Perra, Nicola

2017-10-01

We study SIS epidemic spreading processes unfolding on a recent generalization of the activity-driven modeling framework. In this model of time-varying networks, each node is described by two variables: activity and attractiveness. The first describes the propensity to form connections, while the second defines the propensity to attract them. We derive analytically the epidemic threshold considering the time scale driving the evolution of contacts and the contagion as comparable. The solutions are general and hold for any joint distribution of activity and attractiveness. The theoretical picture is confirmed via large-scale numerical simulations performed considering heterogeneous distributions and different correlations between the two variables. We find that heterogeneous distributions of attractiveness alter the contagion process. In particular, in the case of uncorrelated and positive correlations between the two variables, heterogeneous attractiveness facilitates the spreading. On the contrary, negative correlations between activity and attractiveness hamper the spreading. The results presented contribute to the understanding of the dynamical properties of time-varying networks and their effects on contagion phenomena unfolding on their fabric.

The effects of women's age and physical appearance on evaluations of attractiveness and social desirability.

PubMed

Perlini, A H; Bertolissi, S; Lind, D L

1999-06-01

Younger people are perceived as possessing a host of socially desirable attributes, some of which are the same traits attributed to attractive people. In the present study, 160 younger and older White Canadians rated the attractiveness and personality traits of 1 of 4 target women. The results indicated an interaction between the participant's age and gender and the age and attractiveness of the target person. Both younger and older judges showed an attractiveness bias and downrated the social desirability of younger unattractive targets. Younger judges rated younger and older attractive targets as equal in social desirability. Older male judges rated older attractive targets as less socially desirable than younger attractive targets. Results are discussed in terms of cultural expectations of beauty.

Vaginal scent marking: effects on ultrasonic calling and attraction of male golden hamsters.

PubMed

Johnston, R E; Kwan, M

1984-11-01

Male hamsters were tested for their responses to areas that had been scent marked by intact or vaginectomized females to determine the effects of naturally deposited vaginal secretions on male behavior. In the first experiment males produced more ultrasonic courtship calls when investigating areas marked by intact females than areas scented by vaginectomized females, demonstrating that vaginal marks facilitate such calling. In a wind-tunnel preference test situation in which scent-marked alleys and clean alleys served as sources of odor, males approached the scented alley first if it had been freshly marked by intact females but not if it had been scented by vaginectomized females or other males. Thus, the odors of vaginal marks are sufficient to attract males over short distances. After males entered these alleys they showed a preference for odors of both intact and vaginectomized females over no odors, but still spent significantly more time investigating the odors of intact females than those of vaginectomized females. These experiments indicate that vaginal secretions are one of the primary cues that elicit male courtship calling, and the small quantities of vaginal secretions deposited by females in vaginal marks are sufficient to elicit ultrasonic calling and attract males over short distances. Thus it is likely that vaginal scent marking and ultrasonic calling by females interact to facilitate attraction and location of mates during courtship.

Contribution of malocclusion and female facial attractiveness to smile esthetics evaluated by eye tracking.

PubMed

Richards, Michael R; Fields, Henry W; Beck, F Michael; Firestone, Allen R; Walther, Dirk B; Rosenstiel, Stephen; Sacksteder, James M

2015-04-01

There is disagreement in the literature concerning the importance of the mouth in overall facial attractiveness. Eye tracking provides an objective method to evaluate what people see. The objective of this study was to determine whether dental and facial attractiveness alters viewers' visual attention in terms of which area of the face (eyes, nose, mouth, chin, ears, or other) is viewed first, viewed the greatest number of times, and viewed for the greatest total time (duration) using eye tracking. Seventy-six viewers underwent 1 eye tracking session. Of these, 53 were white (49% female, 51% male). Their ages ranged from 18 to 29 years, with a mean of 19.8 years, and none were dental professionals. After being positioned and calibrated, they were shown 24 unique female composite images, each image shown twice for reliability. These images reflected a repaired unilateral cleft lip or 3 grades of dental attractiveness similar to those of grades 1 (near ideal), 7 (borderline treatment need), and 10 (definite treatment need) as assessed in the aesthetic component of the Index of Orthodontic Treatment Need (AC-IOTN). The images were then embedded in faces of 3 levels of attractiveness: attractive, average, and unattractive. During viewing, data were collected for the first location, frequency, and duration of each viewer's gaze. Observer reliability ranged from 0.58 to 0.92 (intraclass correlation coefficients) but was less than 0.07 (interrater) for the chin, which was eliminated from the study. Likewise, reliability for the area of first fixation was kappa less than 0.10 for both intrarater and interrater reliabilities; the area of first fixation was also removed from the data analysis. Repeated-measures analysis of variance showed a significant effect (P <0.001) for level of attractiveness by malocclusion by area of the face. For both number of fixations and duration of fixations, the eyes overwhelmingly were most salient, with the mouth receiving the second most

Tuning the white light spectrum of light emitting diode lamps to reduce attraction of nocturnal arthropods

PubMed Central

Longcore, Travis; Aldern, Hannah L.; Eggers, John F.; Flores, Steve; Franco, Lesly; Hirshfield-Yamanishi, Eric; Petrinec, Laina N.; Yan, Wilson A.; Barroso, André M.

2015-01-01

Artificial lighting allows humans to be active at night, but has many unintended consequences, including interference with ecological processes, disruption of circadian rhythms and increased exposure to insect vectors of diseases. Although ultraviolet and blue light are usually most attractive to arthropods, degree of attraction varies among orders. With a focus on future indoor lighting applications, we manipulated the spectrum of white lamps to investigate the influence of spectral composition on number of arthropods attracted. We compared numbers of arthropods captured at three customizable light-emitting diode (LED) lamps (3510, 2704 and 2728 K), two commercial LED lamps (2700 K), two commercial compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs; 2700 K) and a control. We configured the three custom LEDs to minimize invertebrate attraction based on published attraction curves for honeybees and moths. Lamps were placed with pan traps at an urban and two rural study sites in Los Angeles, California. For all invertebrate orders combined, our custom LED configurations were less attractive than the commercial LED lamps or CFLs of similar colour temperatures. Thus, adjusting spectral composition of white light to minimize attracting nocturnal arthropods is feasible; not all lights with the same colour temperature are equally attractive to arthropods. PMID:25780237

Proteus mirabilis interkingdom swarming signals attract blow flies

PubMed Central

Ma, Qun; Fonseca, Alicia; Liu, Wenqi; Fields, Andrew T; Pimsler, Meaghan L; Spindola, Aline F; Tarone, Aaron M; Crippen, Tawni L; Tomberlin, Jeffery K; Wood, Thomas K

2012-01-01

Flies transport specific bacteria with their larvae that provide a wider range of nutrients for those bacteria. Our hypothesis was that this symbiotic interaction may depend on interkingdom signaling. We obtained Proteus mirabilis from the salivary glands of the blow fly Lucilia sericata; this strain swarmed significantly and produced a strong odor that attracts blow flies. To identify the putative interkingdom signals for the bacterium and flies, we reasoned that as swarming is used by this bacterium to cover the food resource and requires bacterial signaling, the same bacterial signals used for swarming may be used to communicate with blow flies. Using transposon mutagenesis, we identified six novel genes for swarming (ureR, fis, hybG, zapB, fadE and PROSTU_03490), then, confirming our hypothesis, we discovered that fly attractants, lactic acid, phenol, NaOH, KOH and ammonia, restore swarming for cells with the swarming mutations. Hence, compounds produced by the bacterium that attract flies also are utilized for swarming. In addition, bacteria with the swarming mutation rfaL attracted fewer blow flies and reduced the number of eggs laid by the flies. Therefore, we have identified several interkingdom signals between P. mirabilis and blow flies. PMID:22237540

Malaria-induced changes in host odors enhance mosquito attraction

PubMed Central

De Moraes, Consuelo M.; Stanczyk, Nina M.; Betz, Heike S.; Pulido, Hannier; Sim, Derek G.; Read, Andrew F.; Mescher, Mark C.

2014-01-01

Vector-borne pathogens may alter traits of their primary hosts in ways that influence the frequency and nature of interactions between hosts and vectors. Previous work has reported enhanced mosquito attraction to host organisms infected with malaria parasites but did not address the mechanisms underlying such effects. Here we document malaria-induced changes in the odor profiles of infected mice (relative to healthy individuals) over the course of infection, as well as effects on the attractiveness of infected hosts to mosquito vectors. We observed enhanced mosquito attraction to infected mice during a key period after the subsidence of acute malaria symptoms, but during which mice remained highly infectious. This attraction corresponded to an overall elevation in the volatile emissions of infected mice observed during this period. Furthermore, data analyses—using discriminant analysis of principal components and random forest approaches—revealed clear differences in the composition of the volatile blends of infected and healthy individuals. Experimental manipulation of individual compounds that exhibited altered emission levels during the period when differential vector attraction was observed also elicited enhanced mosquito attraction, indicating that compounds being influenced by malaria infection status also mediate vector host-seeking behavior. These findings provide important insights into the cues that mediate vector attraction to hosts infected with transmissible stages of malaria parasites, as well as documenting characteristic changes in the odors of infected individuals that may have potential value as diagnostic biomarkers of infection. PMID:24982164

Malaria-induced changes in host odors enhance mosquito attraction.

PubMed

De Moraes, Consuelo M; Stanczyk, Nina M; Betz, Heike S; Pulido, Hannier; Sim, Derek G; Read, Andrew F; Mescher, Mark C

2014-07-29

Vector-borne pathogens may alter traits of their primary hosts in ways that influence the frequency and nature of interactions between hosts and vectors. Previous work has reported enhanced mosquito attraction to host organisms infected with malaria parasites but did not address the mechanisms underlying such effects. Here we document malaria-induced changes in the odor profiles of infected mice (relative to healthy individuals) over the course of infection, as well as effects on the attractiveness of infected hosts to mosquito vectors. We observed enhanced mosquito attraction to infected mice during a key period after the subsidence of acute malaria symptoms, but during which mice remained highly infectious. This attraction corresponded to an overall elevation in the volatile emissions of infected mice observed during this period. Furthermore, data analyses--using discriminant analysis of principal components and random forest approaches--revealed clear differences in the composition of the volatile blends of infected and healthy individuals. Experimental manipulation of individual compounds that exhibited altered emission levels during the period when differential vector attraction was observed also elicited enhanced mosquito attraction, indicating that compounds being influenced by malaria infection status also mediate vector host-seeking behavior. These findings provide important insights into the cues that mediate vector attraction to hosts infected with transmissible stages of malaria parasites, as well as documenting characteristic changes in the odors of infected individuals that may have potential value as diagnostic biomarkers of infection.

The Effect of Body Type and Camera Shot on Interpersonal Attraction and Source Credibility.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McCain, Thomas A.; Divers, Lawrence

In order to examine the effects of manipulating image size (i.e., relative size) and body type of speakers in a television context on source credibility and interpersonal attraction, a study was conducted at Illinois State University during the spring of 1973. Subjects were eighteen intact groups of students enrolled in speech communication class…

Romantic red: red enhances men's attraction to women.

PubMed

Elliot, Andrew J; Niesta, Daniela

2008-11-01

In many nonhuman primates, the color red enhances males' attraction to females. In 5 experiments, the authors demonstrate a parallel effect in humans: Red, relative to other achromatic and chromatic colors, leads men to view women as more attractive and more sexually desirable. Men seem unaware of this red effect, and red does not influence women's perceptions of the attractiveness of other women, nor men's perceptions of women's overall likeability, kindness, or intelligence. The findings have clear practical implications for men and women in the mating game and, perhaps, for fashion consultants, product designers, and marketers. Furthermore, the findings document the value of extending research on signal coloration to humans and of considering color as something of a common language, both within and across species. (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved.

Effects of Applicant Sex, Physical Attractiveness, and Type of Job on Employment Interviewers' Decisions.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gilmore, David C.; And Others

Past research on the employment interview has suggested that interviewers are influenced by many variables, including physical attractiveness. To investigate the potential interaction of applicant sex and attractiveness on hiring decisions, the type of job, applicant sex, and applicant physical attractiveness were manipulated to determine the…

Assimilation as Attraction: Computing Distance, Similarity, and Locality in Phonology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wayment, Adam

2009-01-01

This dissertation explores similarity effects in assimilation, proposing an Attraction Framework to analyze cases of parasitic harmony where a trigger-target pair only results in harmony if the trigger and target agree on other features. Attraction provides a natural model of these effects by relating the pressure for assimilation to the…

Eigenvalue Attraction

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Movassagh, Ramis

2016-02-01

We prove that the complex conjugate (c.c.) eigenvalues of a smoothly varying real matrix attract (Eq. 15). We offer a dynamical perspective on the motion and interaction of the eigenvalues in the complex plane, derive their governing equations and discuss applications. C.c. pairs closest to the real axis, or those that are ill-conditioned, attract most strongly and can collide to become exactly real. As an application we consider random perturbations of a fixed matrix M. If M is Normal, the total expected force on any eigenvalue is shown to be only the attraction of its c.c. (Eq. 24) and when M is circulant the strength of interaction can be related to the power spectrum of white noise. We extend this by calculating the expected force (Eq. 41) for real stochastic processes with zero-mean and independent intervals. To quantify the dominance of the c.c. attraction, we calculate the variance of other forces. We apply the results to the Hatano-Nelson model and provide other numerical illustrations. It is our hope that the simple dynamical perspective herein might help better understanding of the aggregation and low density of the eigenvalues of real random matrices on and near the real line respectively. In the appendix we provide a Matlab code for plotting the trajectories of the eigenvalues.

Attracted to power: challenge/threat and promotion/prevention focus differentially predict the attractiveness of group power

PubMed Central

Scholl, Annika; Sassenrath, Claudia; Sassenberg, Kai

2015-01-01

Depending on their motivation, individuals prefer different group contexts for social interactions. The present research sought to provide more insight into this relationship. More specifically, we tested how challenge/threat and a promotion/prevention focus predict attraction to groups with high- or low-power. As such, we examined differential outcomes of threat and prevention focus as well as challenge and promotion focus that have often been regarded as closely related. According to regulatory focus, individuals should prefer groups that they expect to “feel right” for them to join: Low-power groups should be more attractive in a prevention (than a promotion) focus, as these groups suggest security-oriented strategies, which fit a prevention focus. High-power groups should be more attractive in a promotion (rather than a prevention) focus, as these groups are associated with promotion strategies fitting a promotion focus (Sassenberg et al., 2007). In contrast, under threat (vs. challenge), groups that allow individuals to restore their (perceived) lack of control should be preferred: Low-power groups should be less attractive under threat (than challenge) because they provide low resources which threatened individuals already perceive as insufficient and high-power groups might be more attractive under threat (than under challenge), because their high resources allow individuals to restore control. Two experiments (N = 140) supported these predictions. The attractiveness of a group often depends on the motivation to engage in what fits (i.e., prefer a group that feels right in the light of one’s regulatory focus). However, under threat the striving to restore control (i.e., prefer a group allowing them to change the status quo under threat vs. challenge) overrides the fit effect, which may in turn guide individuals’ behavior in social interactions. PMID:25904887

Response of Olive Fruit Fly (Diptera: Tephritidae) to an Attract-and-Kill Trap in Greenhouse Cage Tests

PubMed Central

Yokoyama, Victoria Y.

2014-01-01

Abstract A novel attract-and-kill trap for olive fruit fly, Bactrocera oleae (Rossi) (Diptera: Tephritidae), was constructed with yellow corrugated plastic in an inverted cylindrical pan shape formed from a disk and collar. The trap components were tested under three greenhouse temperatures and humidities of warm, hot, and very hot for attractiveness to caged young or older adults. A greater proportion of adults regardless of age were found underneath the devices including disks, cylindrical pans, and pans with pheromone lures and test units of cylindrical pans sprayed with water, insecticidal bait spray, and with lures. The effect was related to lower temperatures on the underside compared with the top and the intolerance of the pest to heat. A circular collar added to the perimeter of the disk that formed the top of the inverted cylinder made the attract-and-kill trap more attractive to adults than the disk alone. Pheromone lures or bait sprays did not increase adult attraction, so were not needed for efficacy. The cylindrical pan was especially attractive to adults when temperatures were high by providing shelter from the heat. At very high temperatures, the pan became unattractive, possibly due to heating of the construction materials. Cylindrical pans sprayed with water on the underside attracted the highest number of adults especially at high temperatures. Greenhouse tests showed that the inverted cylindrical pan design has potential as an attract-and-kill device for olive fruit fly control. PMID:25368094

Attractant-based systems as pesticide alternatives for control of tropical fruit flies (Diptera: Tephritidae)

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Mass trapping and attract-and-kill bait stations are two attractant based systems that are being used or are under development as pesticide alternatives for control of a number of pest tephritid fruit flies. Results of field trials for suppression of Caribbean fruit flies in guava orchards in Florid...

Understanding the physical attractiveness literature: Qualitative reviews versus meta-analysis.

PubMed

Feingold, Alan

2017-01-01

The target article is a qualitative review of selected findings in the physical attractiveness literature. This commentary explains why the meta-analytic approach, frequently used by other attractiveness reviewers, is preferable for drawing unbiased conclusions about the effects of attractiveness. The article's main contribution is affording a foundation for subsequent meta-analysis of the studies discussed in a subjective fashion.

Sexual Preference Similarity, Attitude Similarity, and Perceived Counselor Credibility and Attractiveness.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Atkinson, Donald R.; And Others

1981-01-01

Examined the effect of membership group and attitudinal similarity on perceived counselor credibility and attractiveness. Homosexual men (N=84) rated the counselor's credibility and attractiveness after listening to a recorded counseling interview. The counselor was rated more expert, trustworthy, and attractive when he stated a sexual preference…

Predicting plant attractiveness to pollinators with passive crowdsourcing

DOE PAGES

Bahlai, Christie A.; Landis, Douglas A.

2016-06-01

Global concern regarding pollinator decline has intensified interest in enhancing pollinator resources in managed landscapes. These efforts frequently emphasize restoration or planting of flowering plants to provide pollen and nectar resources that are highly attractive to the desired pollinators. However, determining exactly which plant species should be used to enhance a landscape is difficult. Empirical screening of plants for such purposes is logistically daunting, but could be streamlined by crowdsourcing data to create lists of plants most probable to attract the desired pollinator taxa. People frequently photograph plants in bloom and the Internet has become a vast repository of suchmore » images. A proportion of these images also capture floral visitation by arthropods. Here, we test the hypothesis that the abundance of floral images containing identifiable pollinator and other beneficial insects is positively associated with the observed attractiveness of the same species in controlled field trials from previously published studies. We used Google Image searches to determine the correlation of pollinator visitation captured by photographs on the Internet relative to the attractiveness of the same species in common-garden field trials for 43 plant species. From the first 30 photographs, which successfully identified the plant, we recorded the number of Apis (managed honeybees), non-Apis (exclusively wild bees) and the number of bee-mimicking syrphid flies. We used these observations from search hits as well as bloom period (BP) as predictor variables in Generalized Linear Models (GLMs) for field-observed abundances of each of these groups. We found that non-Apis bees observed in controlled field trials were positively associated with observations of these taxa in Google Image searches (pseudo-R 2 of 0.668). Syrphid fly observations in the field were also associated with the frequency they were observed in images, but this relationship was weak. Apis bee

Predicting plant attractiveness to pollinators with passive crowdsourcing

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Bahlai, Christie A.; Landis, Douglas A.

Global concern regarding pollinator decline has intensified interest in enhancing pollinator resources in managed landscapes. These efforts frequently emphasize restoration or planting of flowering plants to provide pollen and nectar resources that are highly attractive to the desired pollinators. However, determining exactly which plant species should be used to enhance a landscape is difficult. Empirical screening of plants for such purposes is logistically daunting, but could be streamlined by crowdsourcing data to create lists of plants most probable to attract the desired pollinator taxa. People frequently photograph plants in bloom and the Internet has become a vast repository of suchmore » images. A proportion of these images also capture floral visitation by arthropods. Here, we test the hypothesis that the abundance of floral images containing identifiable pollinator and other beneficial insects is positively associated with the observed attractiveness of the same species in controlled field trials from previously published studies. We used Google Image searches to determine the correlation of pollinator visitation captured by photographs on the Internet relative to the attractiveness of the same species in common-garden field trials for 43 plant species. From the first 30 photographs, which successfully identified the plant, we recorded the number of Apis (managed honeybees), non-Apis (exclusively wild bees) and the number of bee-mimicking syrphid flies. We used these observations from search hits as well as bloom period (BP) as predictor variables in Generalized Linear Models (GLMs) for field-observed abundances of each of these groups. We found that non-Apis bees observed in controlled field trials were positively associated with observations of these taxa in Google Image searches (pseudo-R 2 of 0.668). Syrphid fly observations in the field were also associated with the frequency they were observed in images, but this relationship was weak. Apis bee

Predicting plant attractiveness to pollinators with passive crowdsourcing.

PubMed

Bahlai, Christie A; Landis, Douglas A

2016-06-01

Global concern regarding pollinator decline has intensified interest in enhancing pollinator resources in managed landscapes. These efforts frequently emphasize restoration or planting of flowering plants to provide pollen and nectar resources that are highly attractive to the desired pollinators. However, determining exactly which plant species should be used to enhance a landscape is difficult. Empirical screening of plants for such purposes is logistically daunting, but could be streamlined by crowdsourcing data to create lists of plants most probable to attract the desired pollinator taxa. People frequently photograph plants in bloom and the Internet has become a vast repository of such images. A proportion of these images also capture floral visitation by arthropods. Here, we test the hypothesis that the abundance of floral images containing identifiable pollinator and other beneficial insects is positively associated with the observed attractiveness of the same species in controlled field trials from previously published studies. We used Google Image searches to determine the correlation of pollinator visitation captured by photographs on the Internet relative to the attractiveness of the same species in common-garden field trials for 43 plant species. From the first 30 photographs, which successfully identified the plant, we recorded the number of Apis (managed honeybees), non-Apis (exclusively wild bees) and the number of bee-mimicking syrphid flies. We used these observations from search hits as well as bloom period (BP) as predictor variables in Generalized Linear Models (GLMs) for field-observed abundances of each of these groups. We found that non-Apis bees observed in controlled field trials were positively associated with observations of these taxa in Google Image searches (pseudo-R (2) of 0.668). Syrphid fly observations in the field were also associated with the frequency they were observed in images, but this relationship was weak. Apis bee

Predicting plant attractiveness to pollinators with passive crowdsourcing

PubMed Central

Bahlai, Christie A.; Landis, Douglas A.

2016-01-01

Global concern regarding pollinator decline has intensified interest in enhancing pollinator resources in managed landscapes. These efforts frequently emphasize restoration or planting of flowering plants to provide pollen and nectar resources that are highly attractive to the desired pollinators. However, determining exactly which plant species should be used to enhance a landscape is difficult. Empirical screening of plants for such purposes is logistically daunting, but could be streamlined by crowdsourcing data to create lists of plants most probable to attract the desired pollinator taxa. People frequently photograph plants in bloom and the Internet has become a vast repository of such images. A proportion of these images also capture floral visitation by arthropods. Here, we test the hypothesis that the abundance of floral images containing identifiable pollinator and other beneficial insects is positively associated with the observed attractiveness of the same species in controlled field trials from previously published studies. We used Google Image searches to determine the correlation of pollinator visitation captured by photographs on the Internet relative to the attractiveness of the same species in common-garden field trials for 43 plant species. From the first 30 photographs, which successfully identified the plant, we recorded the number of Apis (managed honeybees), non-Apis (exclusively wild bees) and the number of bee-mimicking syrphid flies. We used these observations from search hits as well as bloom period (BP) as predictor variables in Generalized Linear Models (GLMs) for field-observed abundances of each of these groups. We found that non-Apis bees observed in controlled field trials were positively associated with observations of these taxa in Google Image searches (pseudo-R2 of 0.668). Syrphid fly observations in the field were also associated with the frequency they were observed in images, but this relationship was weak. Apis bee

The effect of a topical insecticide containing permethrin on the number of Culicoides midges caught near horses with and without insect bite hypersensitivity in the Netherlands.

PubMed

de Raat, I J; van den Boom, R; van Poppel, M; van Oldruitenborgh-Oosterbaan, M M Sloet

2008-10-15

Insect bite hypersensitivity (IBH) in horses is most likely caused by Culicoides species, although other insects may also play a role. Until now no effective cure has been found for this condition, although numerous therapeutic and preventive measures have been used to control insect hypersensitivity. One such method is to apply a topical insecticide to horses. In this study, the effect of a topical insecticide containing permethrin (3.6%) was examined in seven pairs of horses. The horses were placed inside a tent trap to collect Culicoides spp. and other insects attracted to the horses on two subsequent evenings. On the first evening, both horses were untreated. After the end of this session, one horse of each pair was treated with the pour-on insecticide; treated horses were kept separate from untreated horses. The next evening the pairs of horses were again placed inside the tent trap and insects were collected. Similar percentages of Culicoides were trapped as in earlier studies (C. obsoletus 95.34% and C. pulicaris 4.54%), with healthy horses attracting more Culicoides than horses affected by IBH. The number of Culicoides, the percentage of blood-fed Culicoides obsoletus, and the total number of insects attracted to horses 24 hours after treatment with permethrin were reduced but the reduction was not statistically significant. No negative side effects of permethrin administration were observed.

Making vasectomy attractive.

PubMed

Herndon, N

1992-08-01

In 1989, Pro-Pater, a private, nonprofit family planning organization in Brazil, used attractive ads with the message Vasectomy, An Act of Love to promote vasectomy. The number of vasectomies performed/day at Pro-Pater clinics increased from 11 to 20 during the publicity campaign and fell after the ads stopped but continued at higher levels. Word of mouth communication among friends, neighbors, and relatives who had vasectomies maintained these high levels. This type of communication reduced the fear that often involves vasectomies because men hear from men they know and trust that vasectomies are harmless and do not deprive them of potency. In Sao Paulo, the percentage of men familiar with vasectomies and how they are performed increased after the campaign, but in Salvador, knowledge did not increase even though the number of vasectomies in Pro-Pater clinics increased. Organizations in Colombia and Guatemala have also been effective in educating men about vasectomies. These successes were especially relevant in Latin American where machismo has been an obstacle of family planning programs. The no-scalpel technique 1st introduced in China in 1974 reduces the fear of vasectomy and has fewer complications than the conventional technique. Further trained physicians can perform the no-scalpel technique in about 10 minutes compared with 15 minutes for the conventional technique. In 1987 during a 1-day festival in Thailand, physicians averaged 57 no-scalpel vasectomies/day compared with only 33 for conventional vasectomies. This technique has not spread to Guatemala, Brazil, Colombia, the US, and some countries in Asia and Africa. Extensive research does not indicate that vasectomy has an increased risk of testicular cancer, prostate cancer, and myocardial infarction. Physicians are working on ways to improve vasectomy.

Effects of reading health and appearance exercise magazine articles on perceptions of attractiveness and reasons for exercise.

PubMed

Pankratow, Melanie; Berry, Tanya R; McHugh, Tara-Leigh F

2013-01-01

To examine the effects of reading exercise-related magazine articles (health, appearance, or control) and the moderating effects of exercise self-identity on reasons for exercise and perceptions of attractiveness, among women in first year university. An additional purpose was to use a thought listing technique, the results of which were examined for evidence of internalization of the exercise-related messages. Female students in their first year of studies between September 2010 and April 2011 (N = 173; mean age = 19.31 years, mean body mass index = 22.01). Participants read a health, appearance, or control article, listed thoughts, and completed questionnaires measuring reasons for exercising, physical self-perception, and exercise self-identity. Participants in the health condition rated exercise for health significantly higher than control condition participants. Participants with high exercise self-identity rated attractiveness as a reason for exercising significantly higher than low exercise self-identity participants in both the health and appearance conditions. Participants with higher internalization scores (i.e., accepted societal norms of appearance) reported exercising for attractiveness reasons more so than participants with lower internalization scores. The good news is that health messages may be influential and result in wanting to exercise for health purposes. However, exercising for attractiveness was rated highly by participants with high exercise identity who read either the health or appearance articles. Health and appearance are not necessarily distinct concepts for female undergraduate students and the media may influence cited reasons for exercise.

Experimentally comparing the attractiveness of domestic lights to insects: Do LEDs attract fewer insects than conventional light types?

PubMed

Wakefield, Andrew; Broyles, Moth; Stone, Emma L; Jones, Gareth; Harris, Stephen

2016-11-01

LED lighting is predicted to constitute 70% of the outdoor and residential lighting markets by 2020. While the use of LEDs promotes energy and cost savings relative to traditional lighting technologies, little is known about the effects these broad-spectrum "white" lights will have on wildlife, human health, animal welfare, and disease transmission. We conducted field experiments to compare the relative attractiveness of four commercially available "domestic" lights, one traditional (tungsten filament) and three modern (compact fluorescent, "cool-white" LED and "warm-white" LED), to aerial insects, particularly Diptera. We found that LEDs attracted significantly fewer insects than other light sources, but found no significant difference in attraction between the "cool-" and "warm-white" LEDs. Fewer flies were attracted to LEDs than alternate light sources, including fewer Culicoides midges (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae). Use of LEDs has the potential to mitigate disturbances to wildlife and occurrences of insect-borne diseases relative to competing lighting technologies. However, we discuss the risks associated with broad-spectrum lighting and net increases in lighting resulting from reduced costs of LED technology.

Synthetic Sex Pheromone in a Long-Lasting Lure Attracts the Visceral Leishmaniasis Vector, Lutzomyia longipalpis, for up to 12 Weeks in Brazil

PubMed Central

Bray, Daniel P.; Carter, Vicky; Alves, Graziella B.; Brazil, Reginaldo P.; Bandi, Krishna K.; Hamilton, James G. C.

2014-01-01

Current control methodologies have not prevented the spread of visceral leishmaniasis (VL) across Brazil. Here, we describe the development of a new tool for controlling the sand fly vector of the disease: a long-lasting lure, which releases a synthetic male sex pheromone, attractive to both sexes of Lutzomyia longipalpis. This device could be used to improve the effectiveness of residual insecticide spraying as a means of sand fly control, attracting L. longipalpis to insecticide-treated animal houses, where they could be killed in potentially large numbers over a number of weeks. Different lure designs releasing the synthetic pheromone (±)-9-methylgermacrene-B (CAS 183158-38-5) were field-tested in Araçatuba, São Paulo (SP). Experiments compared numbers of sand flies caught overnight in experimental chicken sheds with pheromone lures, to numbers caught in control sheds without pheromone. Prototype lures, designed to last one night, were first used to confirm the attractiveness of the pheromone in SP, and shown to attract significantly more flies to test sheds than controls. Longer-lasting lures were tested when new, and at fortnightly intervals. Lures loaded with 1 mg of pheromone did not attract sand flies for more than two weeks. However, lures loaded with 10 mg of pheromone, with a releasing surface of 15 cm2 or 7.5 cm2, attracted female L. longipalpis for up to ten weeks, and males for up to twelve weeks. Approximately five times more sand flies were caught with 7.5 cm2 10 mg lures when first used than occurred naturally in non-experimental chicken resting sites. These results demonstrate that these lures are suitably long-lasting and attractive for use in sand fly control programmes in SP. To our knowledge, this is the first sex pheromone-based technology targeting an insect vector of a neglected human disease. Further studies should explore the general applicability of this approach for combating other insect-borne diseases. PMID:24651528

Synthetic sex pheromone in a long-lasting lure attracts the visceral leishmaniasis vector, Lutzomyia longipalpis, for up to 12 weeks in Brazil.

PubMed

Bray, Daniel P; Carter, Vicky; Alves, Graziella B; Brazil, Reginaldo P; Bandi, Krishna K; Hamilton, James G C

2014-03-01

Current control methodologies have not prevented the spread of visceral leishmaniasis (VL) across Brazil. Here, we describe the development of a new tool for controlling the sand fly vector of the disease: a long-lasting lure, which releases a synthetic male sex pheromone, attractive to both sexes of Lutzomyia longipalpis. This device could be used to improve the effectiveness of residual insecticide spraying as a means of sand fly control, attracting L. longipalpis to insecticide-treated animal houses, where they could be killed in potentially large numbers over a number of weeks. Different lure designs releasing the synthetic pheromone (±)-9-methylgermacrene-B (CAS 183158-38-5) were field-tested in Araçatuba, São Paulo (SP). Experiments compared numbers of sand flies caught overnight in experimental chicken sheds with pheromone lures, to numbers caught in control sheds without pheromone. Prototype lures, designed to last one night, were first used to confirm the attractiveness of the pheromone in SP, and shown to attract significantly more flies to test sheds than controls. Longer-lasting lures were tested when new, and at fortnightly intervals. Lures loaded with 1 mg of pheromone did not attract sand flies for more than two weeks. However, lures loaded with 10 mg of pheromone, with a releasing surface of 15 cm2 or 7.5 cm2, attracted female L. longipalpis for up to ten weeks, and males for up to twelve weeks. Approximately five times more sand flies were caught with 7.5 cm2 10 mg lures when first used than occurred naturally in non-experimental chicken resting sites. These results demonstrate that these lures are suitably long-lasting and attractive for use in sand fly control programmes in SP. To our knowledge, this is the first sex pheromone-based technology targeting an insect vector of a neglected human disease. Further studies should explore the general applicability of this approach for combating other insect-borne diseases.

Intact Marriages in which One Partner Dis-Identifies with Experiences of Same-Sex Attraction.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yarhouse, Mark A.; Pawlowski, Lisa M.; Tan, Erica S. N.

2003-01-01

This study is of heterosexually married couples in which one partner reports having experienced same-sex attraction and both partners report satisfaction with their marriage despite facing such constraints. Analysis suggested a number of themes related to how spouses learned about their partners' experiences of same-sex attraction, motivations for…

Floral reward, advertisement and attractiveness to honey bees in dioecious Salix caprea.

PubMed

Dötterl, Stefan; Glück, Ulrike; Jürgens, Andreas; Woodring, Joseph; Aas, Gregor

2014-01-01

In dioecious, zoophilous plants potential pollinators have to be attracted to both sexes and switch between individuals of both sexes for pollination to occur. It often has been suggested that males and females require different numbers of visits for maximum reproductive success because male fertility is more likely limited by access to mates, whereas female fertility is rather limited by resource availability. According to sexual selection theory, males therefore should invest more in pollinator attraction (advertisement, reward) than females. However, our knowledge on the sex specific investment in floral rewards and advertisement, and its effects on pollinator behaviour is limited. Here, we use an approach that includes chemical, spectrophotometric, and behavioural studies i) to elucidate differences in floral nectar reward and advertisement (visual, olfactory cues) in dioecious sallow, Salix caprea, ii) to determine the relative importance of visual and olfactory floral cues in attracting honey bee pollinators, and iii) to test for differential attractiveness of female and male inflorescence cues to honey bees. Nectar amount and sugar concentration are comparable, but sugar composition varies between the sexes. Olfactory sallow cues are more attractive to honey bees than visual cues; however, a combination of both cues elicits the strongest behavioural responses in bees. Male flowers are due to the yellow pollen more colourful and emit a higher amount of scent than females. Honey bees prefer the visual but not the olfactory display of males over those of females. In all, the data of our multifaceted study are consistent with the sexual selection theory and provide novel insights on how the model organism honey bee uses visual and olfactory floral cues for locating host plants.

Floral Reward, Advertisement and Attractiveness to Honey Bees in Dioecious Salix caprea

PubMed Central

Dötterl, Stefan; Glück, Ulrike; Jürgens, Andreas; Woodring, Joseph; Aas, Gregor

2014-01-01

In dioecious, zoophilous plants potential pollinators have to be attracted to both sexes and switch between individuals of both sexes for pollination to occur. It often has been suggested that males and females require different numbers of visits for maximum reproductive success because male fertility is more likely limited by access to mates, whereas female fertility is rather limited by resource availability. According to sexual selection theory, males therefore should invest more in pollinator attraction (advertisement, reward) than females. However, our knowledge on the sex specific investment in floral rewards and advertisement, and its effects on pollinator behaviour is limited. Here, we use an approach that includes chemical, spectrophotometric, and behavioural studies i) to elucidate differences in floral nectar reward and advertisement (visual, olfactory cues) in dioecious sallow, Salix caprea, ii) to determine the relative importance of visual and olfactory floral cues in attracting honey bee pollinators, and iii) to test for differential attractiveness of female and male inflorescence cues to honey bees. Nectar amount and sugar concentration are comparable, but sugar composition varies between the sexes. Olfactory sallow cues are more attractive to honey bees than visual cues; however, a combination of both cues elicits the strongest behavioural responses in bees. Male flowers are due to the yellow pollen more colourful and emit a higher amount of scent than females. Honey bees prefer the visual but not the olfactory display of males over those of females. In all, the data of our multifaceted study are consistent with the sexual selection theory and provide novel insights on how the model organism honey bee uses visual and olfactory floral cues for locating host plants. PMID:24676333

Can a safety-in-numbers effect and a hazard-in-numbers effect co-exist in the same data?

PubMed

Elvik, Rune

2013-11-01

Safety-in-numbers denotes a non-linear relationship between exposure (traffic volume) and the number of accidents, characterised by declining risk as traffic volume increases. There is safety-in-numbers when the number of accidents increases less than proportional to traffic volume, e.g. a doubling of traffic volume is associated with less than a doubling of the number of accidents. Hazard-in-numbers, a less-used concept, refers to the opposite effect: the number of accidents increases more than in proportion to traffic volume, e.g. is more than doubled when traffic volume is doubled. This paper discusses whether a safety-in-numbers effect and a hazard-in-numbers effect can co-exist in the same data. It is concluded that both effects can exist in a given data set. The paper proposes to make a distinction between partial safety-in-numbers and complete safety-in-numbers. Another issue that has been raised in discussions about the safety-in-numbers effect is whether the effect found in some studies is an artefact created by the way exposure was measured. The paper discusses whether measuring exposure as a rate or a share, e.g. kilometres travelled per inhabitant per year, will generate a safety-in-numbers effect as a statistical artefact. It is concluded that this is the case. The preferred measure of exposure is a count of the number of road users. The count should not be converted to a rate or to the share any group of road user contribute to total traffic volume. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Association of Rhinoplasty With Perceived Attractiveness, Success, and Overall Health.

PubMed

Nellis, Jason C; Ishii, Masaru; Bater, Kristin L; Papel, Ira D; Kontis, Theda C; Byrne, Patrick J; Boahene, Kofi D O; Ishii, Lisa E

2018-03-01

To date, the impact of rhinoplasty surgery on social perceptions has not been quantified. To measure the association of rhinoplasty with observer-graded perceived attractiveness, success, and overall health. In a web-based survey, blinded casual observers viewed independent images of 13 unique patient faces before or after rhinoplasty. Delphi method was used to select standardized patient images, confirming appropriate patient candidacy and overall surgical effect. Observers rated the attractiveness, perceived success, and perceived overall health for each patient image. Facial perception questions were answered on a visual analog scale from 0 to 100, where higher scores corresponded to more positive responses. A multivariate mixed-effects regression model was used to determine the effect of rhinoplasty while accounting for observer biases. To further characterize the effect of rhinoplasty, estimated ordinal rank change was calculated for each domain. The primary objective was to measure the effect of rhinoplasty on observer-graded perceived attractiveness, success, and overall health. A total of 473 observers (mean age, 29 years [range, 18-73 years]; 305 [70.8%] were female) successfully completed the survey. On multivariate regression, patients after rhinoplasty were rated as significantly more attractive (rhinoplasty effect, 6.26; 95% CI, 5.10-7.41), more successful (rhinoplasty effect, 3.24; 95% CI, 2.32-4.17), and overall healthier (rhinoplasty effect, 3.78; 95% CI, 2.79-4.81). The ordinal rank change for an average individual's perceived attractiveness, success, and overall health was a positive shift of 14, 9, and 10 out of 100 rank positions, respectively. As perceived by casual observers, rhinoplasty surgery was associatedwith perceptions that in patients appeared significantly more attractive, more successful, and healthier. These results suggest patients undergoing rhinoplasty may derive a multifaceted benefit when partaking in social interactions

Meeting your match: how attractiveness similarity affects approach behavior in mixed-sex dyads.

PubMed

van Straaten, Ischa; Engels, Rutger C M E; Finkenauer, Catrin; Holland, Rob W

2009-06-01

This experimental study investigated approach behavior toward opposite-sex others of similar versus dissimilar physical attractiveness. Furthermore, it tested the moderating effects of sex. Single participants interacted with confederates of high and low attractiveness. Observers rated their behavior in terms of relational investment (i.e., behavioral efforts related to the improvement of interaction fluency, communication of positive interpersonal affect, and positive self-presentation). As expected, men displayed more relational investment behavior if their own physical attractiveness was similar to that of the confederate. For women, no effects of attractiveness similarity on relational investment behavior were found. Results are discussed in the light of positive assortative mating, preferences for physically attractive mates, and sex differences in attraction-related interpersonal behaviors.

Dynamics of Entangled Polymers: Role of Attractive Interactions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Grest, Gary S.; Koski, Jason

The coupled dynamics of entangled polymers, which span broad time and length scales, govern their unique viscoelastic properties. Numerical simulations of highly coarse grained models are often used to follow chain mobility from the intermediate Rouse and reptation regimes to the late time diffusive regime. In these models, purely repulsive interactions between monomers are typically used because it is less computationally expensive than including attractive interactions. The effect of including the attractive interaction on the local and macroscopic properties of entangled polymer melts is explored over a wide temperature range using large scale molecular dynamics simulations. Attractive interactions are shown to have little effect on the local packing for all temperatures T and chain mobility for T higher than about twice the glass transition Tg. For lower T, the attractive interactions play a significant role, reducing the chain mobility compared to the repulsive case. As T approaches Tg breakdown of time-temperature superposition for the stress autocorrelation function is observed. Sandia National Labs is a multiprogram laboratory managed and operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed-Martin Company, for the U.S. Dept of Energy under Contract No. DEAC04-94AL85000.

Racial stereotypes and interracial attraction: phenotypic prototypicality and perceived attractiveness of Asians.

PubMed

Wilkins, Clara L; Chan, Joy F; Kaiser, Cheryl R

2011-10-01

What does it take to find a member of a different race attractive? In this research, we suggest that for Whites, attraction to Asians may be based, in part, on stereotypes and variations in Asians' racial appearance. Study 1 reveals that Asians are stereotyped as being more feminine and less masculine than other racial groups-characteristics considered appealing for women but not for men to possess. Study 2 examines how variation in racial appearance, phenotypic prototypicality (PP), shapes the degree to which Asians are gender stereotyped and how PP relates to perceptions of attractiveness. Higher PP Asian men are perceived as being less masculine and less physically attractive than lower PP Asian men. These findings inform theory on how within-group variation in racial appearance affects stereotyping and other social outcomes.

Collapse and coexistence for a molecular braid with an attractive interaction component subject to mechanical forces.

PubMed

Lee, Dominic J O'

2015-04-15

Dual mechanical braiding experiments provide a useful tool with which to investigate the nature of interactions between rod-like molecules, for instance actin and DNA. In conditions close to molecular condensation, one would expect an appearance of a local minimum in the interaction potential between the two molecules. We investigate this situation, introducing an attractive component into the interaction potential, using a model developed for describing such experiments. We consider both attractive interactions that do not depend on molecular structure and those which depend on a DNA-like helix structure. In braiding experiments, an attractive term may lead to certain effects. A local minimum may cause molecules to collapse from a loosely braided configuration into a tight one, occurring at a critical value of the moment applied about the axis of the braid. For a fixed number of braid pitches, this may lead to coexistence between the two braiding states, tight and loose. Coexistence implies certain proportions of the braid are in each state, their relative size depending on the number of braid pitches. This manifests itself as a linear dependence in numerically calculated quantities as functions of the number of braid pitches. Also, in the collapsed state, the braid radius stays roughly constant. Furthermore, if the attractive interaction is helix dependent, the left-right handed braid symmetry is broken. For a DNA like charge distribution, using the Kornyshev-Leikin interaction model, our results suggest that significant braid collapse and coexistence only occurs for left handed braids. Regardless of the interaction model, the study highlights the possible qualitative physics of braid collapse and coexistence; and the role helix specific forces might play, if important. The model could be used to connect other microscopic theories of interaction with braiding experiments.

Hemifield memory for attractiveness.

PubMed

Deblieck, C; Zaidel, D W

2003-07-01

In order to determine whether or not facial attractiveness plays a role in hemispheric facial memory, 35 right-handed participants first assigned attractiveness ratings to faces and then performed a recognition test on those faces in the left visual half-field (LVF) and right visual half-field (RVF). We found significant interactions between the experimental factors and visual half-field. There were significant differences in the extreme ends of the rating scale, that is, the very unattractive versus the very attractive faces: Female participants remembered very attractive faces of both women and men, with memory being superior in the RVF than in the LVF. In contrast, the male participants remembered very unattractive faces of both women and men; RVF memory was better than the LVF for women faces while for men faces memory was superior in the LVF. The interactions with visual half-field suggest that hemispheric biases in remembering faces are influenced by degree of attractiveness.

Why are mixed-race people perceived as more attractive?

PubMed

Lewis, Michael B

2010-01-01

Previous, small scale, studies have suggested that people of mixed race are perceived as being more attractive than non-mixed-race people. Here, it is suggested that the reason for this is the genetic process of heterosis or hybrid vigour (ie cross-bred offspring have greater genetic fitness than pure-bred offspring). A random sample of 1205 black, white, and mixed-race faces was collected. These faces were then rated for their perceived attractiveness. There was a small but highly significant effect, with mixed-race faces, on average, being perceived as more attractive. This result is seen as a perceptual demonstration of heterosis in humans-a biological process that may have implications far beyond just attractiveness.

Investors prefer entrepreneurial ventures pitched by attractive men.

PubMed

Brooks, Alison Wood; Huang, Laura; Kearney, Sarah Wood; Murray, Fiona E

2014-03-25

Entrepreneurship is a central path to job creation, economic growth, and prosperity. In the earliest stages of start-up business creation, the matching of entrepreneurial ventures to investors is critically important. The entrepreneur's business proposition and previous experience are regarded as the main criteria for investment decisions. Our research, however, documents other critical criteria that investors use to make these decisions: the gender and physical attractiveness of the entrepreneurs themselves. Across a field setting (three entrepreneurial pitch competitions in the United States) and two experiments, we identify a profound and consistent gender gap in entrepreneur persuasiveness. Investors prefer pitches presented by male entrepreneurs compared with pitches made by female entrepreneurs, even when the content of the pitch is the same. This effect is moderated by male physical attractiveness: attractive males were particularly persuasive, whereas physical attractiveness did not matter among female entrepreneurs.

Effects of gender and physical attractiveness on visual attention to Facebook profiles.

PubMed

Seidman, Gwendolyn; Miller, Olivia S

2013-01-01

The current study examined viewers' gaze while observing Facebook profiles of strangers varying in gender and physical attractiveness. Fifty-one participants viewed four Facebook profiles, a physically attractive and unattractive individual of each gender. Participants' eye movements were tracked as they viewed each profile for 60 seconds. Results showed that participants paid more attention to the physical appearance (main profile photograph) of female than of male profile owners and to the personal information (likes and interests) of male than to female profile owners. Participants spent more time focusing on information that was irrelevant to forming an impression of the profile owner (advertisements) when viewing the profiles of unattractive than attractive individuals, suggesting that they made a greater effort to learn about these individuals.

Evaluating self and partner physical attractiveness.

PubMed

Swami, Viren; Furnham, Adrian; Georgiades, Chrissa; Pang, Lily

2007-03-01

This study used a novel questionnaire to examine ratings of self and partner physical attractiveness. Seventy-two men and 83 women estimated their own and their opposite-sex partner's overall physical attractiveness and the attractiveness of various body parts and measures. They also answered six simple questions concerning physical attractiveness. Results showed significant gender differences in self-estimates of overall facial attractiveness and upper body features. In general, and regardless of gender, participants rated their opposite-sex partners as being significantly more attractive than themselves. In addition, the results showed that body weight and facial attractiveness were the best predictors of overall physical attractiveness. Implications of these results in terms of social biases are considered.

Insulin Signaling Mediates Sexual Attractiveness in Drosophila

PubMed Central

Hansen, Ingrid; Dreisewerd, Klaus; Dierick, Herman A.; Yew, Joanne Y.; Pletcher, Scott D.

2012-01-01

Sexually attractive characteristics are often thought to reflect an individual's condition or reproductive potential, but the underlying molecular mechanisms through which they do so are generally unknown. Insulin/insulin-like growth factor signaling (IIS) is known to modulate aging, reproduction, and stress resistance in several species and to contribute to variability of these traits in natural populations. Here we show that IIS determines sexual attractiveness in Drosophila through transcriptional regulation of genes involved in the production of cuticular hydrocarbons (CHC), many of which function as pheromones. Using traditional gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) together with newly introduced laser desorption/ionization orthogonal time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LDI-MS) we establish that CHC profiles are significantly affected by genetic manipulations that target IIS. Manipulations that reduce IIS also reduce attractiveness, while females with increased IIS are significantly more attractive than wild-type animals. IIS effects on attractiveness are mediated by changes in CHC profiles. Insulin signaling influences CHC through pathways that are likely independent of dFOXO and that may involve the nutrient-sensing Target of Rapamycin (TOR) pathway. These results suggest that the activity of conserved molecular regulators of longevity and reproductive output may manifest in different species as external characteristics that are perceived as honest indicators of fitness potential. PMID:22570625

Penguins are attracted to dimethyl sulphide at sea.

PubMed

Wright, Kyran L B; Pichegru, Lorien; Ryan, Peter G

2011-08-01

Breeding Spheniscus penguins are central place foragers that feed primarily on schooling pelagic fish. They are visual hunters, but it is unclear how they locate prey patches on a coarse scale. Many petrels and storm petrels (Procellariiformes), the penguins' closest relatives, use olfactory cues to locate prey concentrations at sea, but this has not been demonstrated for penguins. Procellariiforms are attracted to a variety of olfactory cues, including dimethyl sulphide (DMS), an organosulphur compound released when phytoplankton is grazed, as well as fish odorants such as cod liver oil. A recent study found that African penguins Spheniscus demersus react to DMS on land. We confirm this result and show that African penguins are also attracted by DMS at sea. DMS-scented oil slicks attracted 2-3 times more penguins than control slicks, whereas penguins showed no response to slicks containing cod liver oil. The number of penguins attracted to DMS increased for at least 30 min, suggesting penguins could travel up to 2 km to reach scent cues. Repeats of land-based trials confirmed previous results showing DMS sensitivity of penguins on land. Our results also support the hypothesis that African penguins use DMS as an olfactory cue to locate prey patches at sea from a distance, which is particularly important given their slow commuting speed relative to that of flying seabirds.

The floral scent of Taccarum ulei (Araceae): attraction of scarab beetle pollinators to an unusual aliphatic acyloin.

PubMed

Maia, Artur Campos Dália; Gibernau, Marc; Dötterl, Stefan; Navarro, Daniela Maria do Amaral Ferraz; Seifert, Karlheinz; Müller, Tobias; Schlindwein, Clemens

2013-09-01

The strongly fragrant thermogenic inflorescences of Taccarum ulei (Araceae) are highly attractive to night-active scarab beetles of Cyclocephala celata and C. cearae (Scarabaeidae, Cyclocephalini), which are effective pollinators of plants in the wild in northeastern Brazil. GC-MS analysis of headspace floral scent samples of T. ulei established that two constituents, (S)-2-hydroxy-5-methyl-3-hexanone (an aliphatic acyloin rarely detected in flowers) and dihydro-β-ionone (an irregular terpene) accounted for over 96% of the total scent discharge. Behavioral tests (in both field and cages) showed that male and female C. celata and C. cearae were attracted to traps baited with a synthetic mixture of both compounds; however, they were also responsive to (S)-2-hydroxy-5-methyl-3-hexanone alone, which thus functions as a specific attractive cue. These findings support other recent research in suggesting that angiosperms pollinated by cyclocephaline scarab beetles release floral odors of limited complexity in terms of numbers of compounds, but often dominated by unusual compounds that may ensure attraction of specific pollinator species. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Spinon attraction in spin- 1/2 antiferromagnetic chains.

PubMed

Bernevig, B A; Giuliano, D; Laughlin, R B

2001-04-09

We derive the representation of the two-spinon wave function for the Haldane-Shastry model in terms of the spinon coordinates. This result allows us to rigorously analyze spinon interaction and its physical effects. We show that spinons attract one another. The attraction gets stronger as the size of the system is increased and, in the thermodynamic limit, determines the power law with which the susceptibility diverges.

Moving attractive virtual agent improves interpersonal coordination stability.

PubMed

Zhao, Zhong; Salesse, Robin N; Gueugnon, Mathieu; Schmidt, Richard C; Marin, Ludovic; Bardy, Benoît G

2015-06-01

Interpersonal motor coordination is influenced not only by biomechanical factors such as coordination pattern, oscillating frequency, and individual differences, but also by psychosocial factor such as likability and social competences. Based on the social stereotype of "what is beautiful is good", the present study aimed at investigating whether people coordinate differently with physically attractive people compared to less attractive people. 34 participants were engaged in an interpersonal coordination task with different looking (virtual) agents while performing at the same time a reaction time task. Results showed that participants had more stable motor coordination with the moving attractive than with the less attractive agent, and that the difference in motor coordination could not be interpreted by a specific attention allocation strategy. Our findings provide the evidence that physical attractiveness genuinely affects how people interact with another person, and that the temporal-spatial coordinated movement varies with the partner's psychosocial characteristics. The study broadens the perspective of exploring the effect of additional psychosocial factors on social motor coordination. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Interpersonal Attraction in Dyads and Groups: Effects of the Hearts of the Beholder and the Beheld.

PubMed

Malloy, Thomas E

2018-04-01

Dyadic interpersonal attraction (IA) was studied within groups of very highly acquainted family members, friends and co-workers. IA was determined by the perceiver (i.e., the heart of the beholder), the target (i.e., the heart of the beheld), and in specific dyads, by the unique combination of the two. The consistency of one's attraction to others and others' attraction to the person across groups were addressed using the key person design . Attraction to a person in one group was independent of attraction to that person in another, although people predicted that members of different groups were similarly attracted to them. A new model (ARRMA) was specified to simultaneously study assumed reciprocity, actual reciprocity, and metaperception accuracy of attraction (i.e., accurate predictions of others' attraction to oneself). Assumed reciprocity of IA was substantial at the individual and dyadic levels. Reciprocity of attraction at the individual level, a heretofore unconfirmed "plausible hypothesis" (Newcomb, 1979), was supported; dyadic reciprocity was weak. Meta-accuracy of IA was observed among individuals but was weak in dyads. Perceived interpersonal similarity predicted IA among individuals and in specific dyads. Considering dyadic attraction within and between groups, and the use of componential analysis permitted the specification of new IA phenomena and resolved a long standing theoretical problem regarding the reciprocity of attraction.

The Relationship of Interpersonal Attraction and Attraction to Group in a Growth Group Setting.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Evans, Nancy J.

1984-01-01

Investigated the relationship of interpersonal attraction and attraction to groups. Students (N=56) participating in growth groups completed the Group Attitude Scale and individual rating scales early, midway, and late in the group. Data indicated an increasing relationship between interpersonal and group attraction throughout the life of the…

An Adult Developmental Approach to Perceived Facial Attractiveness and Distinctiveness

PubMed Central

Ebner, Natalie C.; Luedicke, Joerg; Voelkle, Manuel C.; Riediger, Michaela; Lin, Tian; Lindenberger, Ulman

2018-01-01

Attractiveness and distinctiveness constitute facial features with high biological and social relevance. Bringing a developmental perspective to research on social-cognitive face perception, we used a large set of faces taken from the FACES Lifespan Database to examine effects of face and perceiver characteristics on subjective evaluations of attractiveness and distinctiveness in young (20–31 years), middle-aged (44–55 years), and older (70–81 years) men and women. We report novel findings supporting variations by face and perceiver age, in interaction with gender and emotion: although older and middle-aged compared to young perceivers generally rated faces of all ages as more attractive, young perceivers gave relatively higher attractiveness ratings to young compared to middle-aged and older faces. Controlling for variations in attractiveness, older compared to young faces were viewed as more distinctive by young and middle-aged perceivers. Age affected attractiveness more negatively for female than male faces. Furthermore, happy faces were rated as most attractive, while disgusted faces were rated as least attractive, particularly so by middle-aged and older perceivers and for young and female faces. Perceivers largely agreed on distinctiveness ratings for neutral and happy emotions, but older and middle-aged compared to young perceivers rated faces displaying negative emotions as more distinctive. These findings underscore the importance of a lifespan perspective on perception of facial characteristics and suggest possible effects of age on goal-directed perception, social motivation, and in-group bias. This publication makes available picture-specific normative data for experimental stimulus selection. PMID:29867620

Effects of Reading Health and Appearance Exercise Magazine Articles on Perceptions of Attractiveness and Reasons for Exercise

PubMed Central

Pankratow, Melanie; Berry, Tanya R.; McHugh, Tara-Leigh F.

2013-01-01

Objective To examine the effects of reading exercise-related magazine articles (health, appearance, or control) and the moderating effects of exercise self-identity on reasons for exercise and perceptions of attractiveness, among women in first year university. An additional purpose was to use a thought listing technique, the results of which were examined for evidence of internalization of the exercise-related messages. Participants Female students in their first year of studies between September 2010 and April 2011 (N = 173; mean age = 19.31 years, mean body mass index = 22.01). Methods Participants read a health, appearance, or control article, listed thoughts, and completed questionnaires measuring reasons for exercising, physical self-perception, and exercise self-identity. Results Participants in the health condition rated exercise for health significantly higher than control condition participants. Participants with high exercise self-identity rated attractiveness as a reason for exercising significantly higher than low exercise self-identity participants in both the health and appearance conditions. Participants with higher internalization scores (i.e., accepted societal norms of appearance) reported exercising for attractiveness reasons more so than participants with lower internalization scores. Conclusions The good news is that health messages may be influential and result in wanting to exercise for health purposes. However, exercising for attractiveness was rated highly by participants with high exercise identity who read either the health or appearance articles. Health and appearance are not necessarily distinct concepts for female undergraduate students and the media may influence cited reasons for exercise. PMID:23630618

Perceptions of the physical attractiveness of the self, current romantic partners, and former partners.

PubMed

Swami, Viren; Allum, Lucy

2012-02-01

This study examined ratings of physical attractiveness of the self and former and current partners. A total of 304 participants completed measures of attractiveness, relationship satisfaction, love dimensions, self-esteem and sociosexual orientation. Consistent with previous work, results showed that participants rated their current partners as more attractive than themselves and their former partners. However, results also showed that former partners were rated as more attractive than the self on a number of bodily characteristics. Finally, results showed that ratings of former partner physical attractiveness were associated with passion for the former partner, self-esteem, sociosexual orientation, and attributions of relationship termination. These results are discussed in relation to the available literature on positive illusions in intimate relationships. © 2011 The Authors. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology © 2011 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.

Incidental regulation of attraction: The neural basis of the derogation of attractive alternatives in romantic relationships

PubMed Central

Meyer, Meghan L.; Berkman, Elliot T.; Karremans, Johan C.; Lieberman, Matthew D.

2011-01-01

Although a great deal of research addresses the neural basis of deliberate and intentional emotion-regulation strategies, less attention has been paid to the neural mechanisms involved in implicit forms of emotion regulation. Behavioural research suggests that romantically involved participants implicitly derogate the attractiveness of alternative partners, and the present study sought to examine the neural basis of this effect. Romantically committed participants in the present study were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while indicating whether they would consider each of a series of attractive (or unattractive) opposite-sex others as a hypothetical dating partner both while under cognitive load and no cognitive load. Successful derogation of attractive others during the no cognitive load compared to the cognitive load trials corresponded with increased activation in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) and posterior dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (pDMPFC), and decreased activation in the ventral striatum, a pattern similar to those reported in deliberate emotion-regulation studies. Activation in the VLPFC and pDMPFC was not significant in the cognitive load condition, indicating that while the derogation effect may be implicit, it nonetheless requires cognitive resources. Additionally, activation in the right VLPFC correlated with participants’ level of relationship investment. These findings suggest that the RVLPFC may play a particularly important role in implicitly regulating the emotions that threaten the stability of a romantic relationship. PMID:21432689

Lip colour affects perceived sex typicality and attractiveness of human faces.

PubMed

Stephen, Ian D; McKeegan, Angela M

2010-01-01

The luminance contrast between facial features and facial skin is greater in women than in men, and women's use of make-up enhances this contrast. In black-and-white photographs, increased luminance contrast enhances femininity and attractiveness in women's faces, but reduces masculinity and attractiveness in men's faces. In Caucasians, much of the contrast between the lips and facial skin is in redness. Red lips have been considered attractive in women in geographically and temporally diverse cultures, possibly because they mimic vasodilation associated with sexual arousal. Here, we investigate the effects of lip luminance and colour contrast on the attractiveness and sex typicality (masculinity/femininity) of human faces. In a Caucasian sample, we allowed participants to manipulate the colour of the lips in colour-calibrated face photographs along CIELab L* (light--dark), a* (red--green), and b* (yellow--blue) axes to enhance apparent attractiveness and sex typicality. Participants increased redness contrast to enhance femininity and attractiveness of female faces, but reduced redness contrast to enhance masculinity of men's faces. Lip blueness was reduced more in female than male faces. Increased lightness contrast enhanced the attractiveness of both sexes, and had little effect on perceptions of sex typicality. The association between lip colour contrast and attractiveness in women's faces may be attributable to its association with oxygenated blood perfusion indicating oestrogen levels, sexual arousal, and cardiac and respiratory health.

Fatal attraction: vegetation responses to nutrient inputs attract herbivores to infectious anthrax carcass sites

PubMed Central

Turner, Wendy C.; Kausrud, Kyrre L.; Krishnappa, Yathin S.; Cromsigt, Joris P. G. M.; Ganz, Holly H.; Mapaure, Isaac; Cloete, Claudine C.; Havarua, Zepee; Küsters, Martina; Getz, Wayne M.; Stenseth, Nils Chr.

2014-01-01

Parasites can shape the foraging behaviour of their hosts through cues indicating risk of infection. When cues for risk co-occur with desired traits such as forage quality, individuals face a trade-off between nutrient acquisition and parasite exposure. We evaluated how this trade-off may influence disease transmission in a 3-year experimental study of anthrax in a guild of mammalian herbivores in Etosha National Park, Namibia. At plains zebra (Equus quagga) carcass sites we assessed (i) carcass nutrient effects on soils and grasses, (ii) concentrations of Bacillus anthracis (BA) on grasses and in soils, and (iii) herbivore grazing behaviour, compared with control sites, using motion-sensing camera traps. We found that carcass-mediated nutrient pulses improved soil and vegetation, and that BA is found on grasses up to 2 years after death. Host foraging responses to carcass sites shifted from avoidance to attraction, and ultimately to no preference, with the strength and duration of these behavioural responses varying among herbivore species. Our results demonstrate that animal carcasses alter the environment and attract grazing hosts to parasite aggregations. This attraction may enhance transmission rates, suggesting that hosts are limited in their ability to trade off nutrient intake with parasite avoidance when relying on indirect cues. PMID:25274365

Investors prefer entrepreneurial ventures pitched by attractive men

PubMed Central

Brooks, Alison Wood; Huang, Laura; Kearney, Sarah Wood; Murray, Fiona E.

2014-01-01

Entrepreneurship is a central path to job creation, economic growth, and prosperity. In the earliest stages of start-up business creation, the matching of entrepreneurial ventures to investors is critically important. The entrepreneur’s business proposition and previous experience are regarded as the main criteria for investment decisions. Our research, however, documents other critical criteria that investors use to make these decisions: the gender and physical attractiveness of the entrepreneurs themselves. Across a field setting (three entrepreneurial pitch competitions in the United States) and two experiments, we identify a profound and consistent gender gap in entrepreneur persuasiveness. Investors prefer pitches presented by male entrepreneurs compared with pitches made by female entrepreneurs, even when the content of the pitch is the same. This effect is moderated by male physical attractiveness: attractive males were particularly persuasive, whereas physical attractiveness did not matter among female entrepreneurs. PMID:24616491

Novel electrostatic attraction from plasmon fluctuations

PubMed

Lau; Levine; Pincus

2000-05-01

In this Letter, we show that, at low temperatures, zero-point fluctuations of the plasmon modes of two mutually coupled 2D planar Wigner crystals give rise to a novel long-range attractive force. For the case where the distance d between two planar surfaces is large, this attractive force has an unusual power-law decay, which scales as d(-7/2), unlike other fluctuation-induced forces. Specifically, we note that its range is longer than the "standard" zero-temperature van der Waals interaction. This result may, in principle, be observed in bilayer electronic systems and provides insight into the nature of correlation effects for highly charged surfaces.

The Effects of Relaxation and Cognitive Expectancy on Attraction in a Social Interaction.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wilson, Midge

One approach to searching for determinants of interpersonal attraction involves the altering and studying of physiological arousal, psychological stress, and moods. On the basis of the reinforcement-affect model of attraction, it was hypothesized that the positive feelings obtained from undergoing relaxation exercises could serve to enhance…

The Effects of Physical Attractiveness and Ethnicity on Children's Behavioral Attributions and Peer Preferences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Langlois, Judith H.; Stephan, Cookie

1977-01-01

Investigates the generality of stereotypes associated with physical attractiveness and assesses the relative contributions of attractiveness and ethnicity in determining children's behavioral attributions and peer preferences. (JMB)

Physical Attractiveness and Health: Comment on Weeden and Sabini

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Grammer, Karl; Fink, Bernhard; Moller, Anders P.; Manning, John T.

2005-01-01

Evolutionary behavioral biology suggests that certain characteristics of the human face and body are important for mate preferences and are therefore subject to sexual selection. J. Weeden and J. Sabini identify a number of weaknesses in the association between traits' attractiveness and health. In contrast, the authors argue that (a) studies on…

Separating the effects of repulsive and attractive forces on the phase diagram, interfacial, and critical properties of simple fluids

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fuentes-Herrera, M.; Moreno-Razo, J. A.; Guzmán, O.; López-Lemus, J.; Ibarra-Tandi, B.

2016-06-01

Molecular simulations in the canonical and isothermal-isobaric ensembles were performed to study the effect of varying the shape of the intermolecular potential on the phase diagram, critical, and interfacial properties of model fluids. The molecular interactions were modeled by the Approximate Non-Conformal (ANC) theory potentials. Unlike the Lennard-Jones or Morse potentials, the ANC interactions incorporate parameters (called softnesses) that modulate the steepness of the potential in their repulsive and attractive parts independently. This feature allowed us to separate unambiguously the role of each region of the potential on setting the thermophysical properties. In particular, we found positive linear correlation between all critical coordinates and the attractive and repulsive softness, except for the critical density and the attractive softness which are negatively correlated. Moreover, we found that the physical properties related to phase coexistence (such as span of the liquid phase between the critical and triple points, variations in the P-T vaporization curve, interface width, and surface tension) are more sensitive to changes in the attractive softness than to the repulsive one. Understanding the different roles of attractive and repulsive forces on phase coexistence may contribute to developing more accurate models of liquids and their mixtures.

Separating the effects of repulsive and attractive forces on the phase diagram, interfacial, and critical properties of simple fluids.

PubMed

Fuentes-Herrera, M; Moreno-Razo, J A; Guzmán, O; López-Lemus, J; Ibarra-Tandi, B

2016-06-07

Molecular simulations in the canonical and isothermal-isobaric ensembles were performed to study the effect of varying the shape of the intermolecular potential on the phase diagram, critical, and interfacial properties of model fluids. The molecular interactions were modeled by the Approximate Non-Conformal (ANC) theory potentials. Unlike the Lennard-Jones or Morse potentials, the ANC interactions incorporate parameters (called softnesses) that modulate the steepness of the potential in their repulsive and attractive parts independently. This feature allowed us to separate unambiguously the role of each region of the potential on setting the thermophysical properties. In particular, we found positive linear correlation between all critical coordinates and the attractive and repulsive softness, except for the critical density and the attractive softness which are negatively correlated. Moreover, we found that the physical properties related to phase coexistence (such as span of the liquid phase between the critical and triple points, variations in the P-T vaporization curve, interface width, and surface tension) are more sensitive to changes in the attractive softness than to the repulsive one. Understanding the different roles of attractive and repulsive forces on phase coexistence may contribute to developing more accurate models of liquids and their mixtures.

On the importance of cognitive evaluation as a determinant of interpersonal attraction.

PubMed

Montoya, R Matthew; Horton, Robert S

2004-05-01

Three studies examined a model of attraction in which the cognitive evaluation of the target individual was the primary determinant of interpersonal attraction. In Study 1, the cognitive evaluation of the target individual mediated the influence of attitude similarity on interpersonal attraction. In Study 2, a path analysis revealed significant indirect effects of (a) similarity on cognitive evaluation via the valence of information implied by attitudes and (b) the valence of information implied by attitudes on attraction via cognitive evaluation of the target. Study 3 provided empirical and theoretical support for the uniqueness of interpersonal attraction from cognitive evaluation. The implications of these data for existing attraction theory are discussed, and a new model of interpersonal attraction is described.

Something to smile about: the interrelationship between attractiveness and emotional expression.

PubMed

Golle, Jessika; Mast, Fred W; Lobmaier, Janek S

2014-01-01

Previous studies have suggested a link between the processing of the emotional expression of a face and how attractive it appears. In two experiments we investigated the interrelationship between attractiveness and happiness. In Experiment 1 we presented morphed faces varying in attractiveness and happiness and asked participants to choose the more attractive of two simultaneously presented faces. In the second experiment we used the same stimuli as in Experiment 1 and asked participants to choose the happier face. The results of Experiment 1 revealed that the evaluation of attractiveness is strongly influenced by the intensity of a smile expressed on a face: A happy facial expression could even compensate for relative unattractiveness. Conversely, the findings of Experiment 2 showed that facial attractiveness also influences the evaluation of happiness: It was easier to choose the happier of two faces if the happier face was also more attractive. We discuss the interrelationship of happiness and attractiveness with regard to evolutionary relevance of positive affective status and rewarding effects.

Thermodynamic curvature for attractive and repulsive intermolecular forces

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

May, Helge-Otmar; Mausbach, Peter; Ruppeiner, George

2013-09-01

The thermodynamic curvature scalar R for the Lennard-Jones system is evaluated in phase space, including vapor, liquid, and solid state. We paid special attention to the investigation of R along vapor-liquid, liquid-solid, and vapor-solid equilibria. Because R is a measure of interaction strength, we traced out the line R=0 dividing the phase space into regions with effectively attractive (R<0) or repulsive (R>0) interactions. Furthermore, we analyzed the dependence of R on the strength of attraction applying a perturbation ansatz proposed by Weeks-Chandler-Anderson. Our results show clearly a transition from R>0 (for poorly repulsive interaction) to R<0 when loading attraction in the intermolecular potential.

Attention and memory benefits for physical attractiveness may mediate prosocial biases.

PubMed

Becker, David Vaughn

2017-01-01

Mating motivations can explain attractiveness benefits, but what proximate mechanisms might serve as efficient causes of these biases? There is growing evidence that visual cues of physical attractiveness capture attention and facilitate memory, enhancing salience in ways that could underlie, for example, preferring one job applicant over another. All of these effects beg deeper questions about the meaning of attractiveness.

The organizational attraction of nursing graduates: using research to guide employer branding.

PubMed

Fréchette, Julie; Bourhis, Anne; Stachura, Michal

2013-01-01

In the context of the global nursing shortage, only the most attractive employers are able to recruit a sufficient number of nurses to maintain high quality of care and ensure positive patient outcomes. It is important for health care organizations to align their practices and their employer marketing strategies with attraction factors important to nurses. This article presents the results of a survey of 666 nursing students graduating in the spring of 2009 in the Canadian province of Quebec. Hypotheses were tested using repeated-measures analysis of variance and post hoc tests. Consistent with hypotheses, the results showed that quality of care, type of work, compensation, and employer branding are organizational attraction factors that nursing graduates perceived as important, with quality of care being the most important one. These findings were later used by a Canadian university teaching hospital to optimize its employer branding and attraction strategy that resulted in an increase in the hiring of university-trained nurses. Further research is needed to examine organizational attractiveness for new nurses over time, across generations, and within various cultural contexts.

The impact of baby schema on perceived attractiveness, beauty, and cuteness in female adults.

PubMed

Kuraguchi, Kana; Taniguchi, Kosuke; Ashida, Hiroshi

2015-01-01

Beauty and cuteness are considered to represent different aspects of attractiveness and to be distinguishable from each other by their respective reliance on neonate and sexually mature features found in attractive faces. In this study, we investigated whether baby schema features in adult faces affect not only cuteness, but also beauty and attractiveness. We also investigated possible differences among attractiveness, beauty, and cuteness, and possible effects of perceived youth on these judgments. Results showed that baby schema features affected judgments of attractiveness, beauty, and cuteness, but that perceived youth did not significantly influence these judgments. Furthermore, the effect of each facial feature differed across rating types with the participants' naïve interpretation of rating categories. This suggests that beauty predominantly refers to sexual attraction, while attractiveness refers to a non-sexual attraction regardless of participants' gender. However, gender differences may exist in judging cuteness. Therefore, expressions related to attractiveness may incorporate different elements and this distinction may not be fully shared across gender.

Blinded by Beauty: Attractiveness Bias and Accurate Perceptions of Academic Performance.

PubMed

Talamas, Sean N; Mavor, Kenneth I; Perrett, David I

2016-01-01

Despite the old adage not to 'judge a book by its cover', facial cues often guide first impressions and these first impressions guide our decisions. Literature suggests there are valid facial cues that assist us in assessing someone's health or intelligence, but such cues are overshadowed by an 'attractiveness halo' whereby desirable attributions are preferentially ascribed to attractive people. The impact of the attractiveness halo effect on perceptions of academic performance in the classroom is concerning as this has shown to influence students' future performance. We investigated the limiting effects of the attractiveness halo on perceptions of actual academic performance in faces of 100 university students. Given the ambiguity and various perspectives on the definition of intelligence and the growing consensus on the importance of conscientiousness over intelligence in predicting actual academic performance, we also investigated whether perceived conscientiousness was a more accurate predictor of academic performance than perceived intelligence. Perceived conscientiousness was found to be a better predictor of actual academic performance when compared to perceived intelligence and perceived academic performance, and accuracy was improved when controlling for the influence of attractiveness on judgments. These findings emphasize the misleading effect of attractiveness on the accuracy of first impressions of competence, which can have serious consequences in areas such as education and hiring. The findings also have implications for future research investigating impression accuracy based on facial stimuli.

Does it pay to be smart, attractive, or confident (or all three)? Relationships among general mental ability, physical attractiveness, core self-evaluations, and income.

PubMed

Judge, Timothy A; Hurst, Charlice; Simon, Lauren S

2009-05-01

The authors investigated core self-evaluations and educational attainment as mediating mechanisms for the influence of appearance (physical attractiveness) and intelligence (general mental ability) on income and financial strain. The direct effects of core self-evaluations on financial strain, as well as the indirect effects through income, were also considered. Longitudinal data were obtained as part of a national study, the Harvard Study of Health and Life Quality, and proposed models were evaluated with structural equation modeling. Results supported a partially mediated model, such that general mental ability and physical attractiveness exhibited both direct and indirect effects on income, as mediated by educational attainment and core self-evaluations. Finally, income negatively predicted financial strain, whereas core self-evaluations had both a direct and an indirect (through income) negative effect on financial strain. Overall, the results suggest that looks (physical attractiveness), brains (intelligence), and personality (core self-evaluations) are all important to income and financial strain. (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved.

Fatal Attraction Phenomenon in Humans – Cat Odour Attractiveness Increased for Toxoplasma-Infected Men While Decreased for Infected Women

PubMed Central

Flegr, Jaroslav; Lenochová, Pavlína; Hodný, Zdeněk; Vondrová, Marta

2011-01-01

Background Latent toxoplasmosis, a lifelong infection with the protozoan Toxoplasma gondii, has cumulative effects on the behaviour of hosts, including humans. The most impressive effect of toxoplasmosis is the “fatal attraction phenomenon,” the conversion of innate fear of cat odour into attraction to cat odour in infected rodents. While most behavioural effects of toxoplasmosis were confirmed also in humans, neither the fatal attraction phenomenon nor any toxoplasmosis-associated changes in olfactory functions have been searched for in them. Principal Findings Thirty-four Toxoplasma-infected and 134 noninfected students rated the odour of urine samples from cat, horse, tiger, brown hyena and dog for intensity and pleasantness. The raters were blind to their infection status and identity of the samples. No signs of changed sensitivity of olfaction were observed. However, we found a strong, gender dependent effect of toxoplasmosis on the pleasantness attributed to cat urine odour (p = 0.0025). Infected men rated this odour as more pleasant than did the noninfected men, while infected women rated the same odour as less pleasant than did noninfected women. Toxoplasmosis did not affect how subjects rated the pleasantness of any other animal species' urine odour; however, a non-significant trend in the same directions was observed for hyena urine. Conclusions The absence of the effects of toxoplasmosis on the odour pleasantness score attributed to large cats would suggest that the amino acid felinine could be responsible for the fatal attraction phenomenon. Our results also raise the possibility that the odour-specific threshold deficits observed in schizophrenia patients could be caused by increased prevalence of Toxoplasma-infected subjects in this population rather than by schizophrenia itself. The trend observed with the hyena urine sample suggests that this carnivore, and other representatives of the Feliformia suborder, should be studied for their

Effects of potential partners' physical attractiveness and socioeconomic status on sexuality and partner selection.

PubMed

Townsend, J M; Levy, G D

1990-04-01

Male (n = 170) and female (n = 212) college students viewed photographs, which had been prerated for physical attractiveness, of three opposite-sex individuals. These photographs were paired with three levels of occupational status and income. Subjects indicated their willingness to engage in relationships of varying levels of sexual intimacy and marital potential with the portrayed individuals. Analyses of variance, correlations, and trend analyses supported the hypotheses. Compared to men, women are more likely to prefer or insist that sexual intercourse occur in relationships that involve affection and marital potential, and women place more emphasis than men do on partners' SES in such relationships. Consequently, men's SES and their willingness and ability to invest affection and resources in relationships may often outweigh the effects of their physical attractiveness in women's actual selection of partners. These results and the literature reviewed are more consistent with parental investment theory than with the view that these sex differences are solely the result of differential access to resources and differential socialization.

Oceanic signals in rapid polar motion: results from a barotropic forward model with explicit consideration of self-attraction and loading effects

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Schindelegger, Michael; Quinn, Katherine J.; Ponte, Rui M.

2017-04-01

Numerical modeling of non-tidal variations in ocean currents and bottom pressure has played a key role in closing the excitation budget of Earth's polar motion for a wide range of periodicities. Non-negligible discrepancies between observations and model accounts of pole position changes prevail, however, on sub-monthly time scales and call for examination of hydrodynamic effects usually omitted in general circulation models. Specifically, complete hydrodynamic cores must incorporate self-attraction and loading (SAL) feedbacks on redistributed water masses, effects that produces ocean bottom pressure perturbations of typically about 10% relative to the computed mass variations. Here, we report on a benchmark simulation with a near-global, barotropic forward model forced by wind stress, atmospheric pressure, and a properly calculated SAL term. The latter is obtained by decomposing ocean mass anomalies on a 30-minute grid into spherical harmonics at each time step and applying Love numbers to account for seafloor deformation and changed gravitational attraction. The increase in computational time at each time step is on the order of 50%. Preliminary results indicate that the explicit consideration of SAL in the forward runs increases the fidelity of modeled polar motion excitations, in particular on time scales shorter than 5 days as evident from cross spectral comparisons with geodetic excitation. Definite conclusions regarding the relevance of SAL in simulating rapid polar motion are, however, still hampered by the model's incomplete domain representation that excludes parts of the highly energetic Arctic Ocean.

Attractive Flicker--Guiding Attention in Dynamic Narrative Visualizations.

PubMed

Waldner, Manuela; Le Muzic, Mathieu; Bernhard, Matthias; Purgathofer, Werner; Viola, Ivan

2014-12-01

Focus+context techniques provide visual guidance in visualizations by giving strong visual prominence to elements of interest while the context is suppressed. However, finding a visual feature to enhance for the focus to pop out from its context in a large dynamic scene, while leading to minimal visual deformation and subjective disturbance, is challenging. This paper proposes Attractive Flicker, a novel technique for visual guidance in dynamic narrative visualizations. We first show that flicker is a strong visual attractor in the entire visual field, without distorting, suppressing, or adding any scene elements. The novel aspect of our Attractive Flicker technique is that it consists of two signal stages: The first "orientation stage" is a short but intensive flicker stimulus to attract the attention to elements of interest. Subsequently, the intensive flicker is reduced to a minimally disturbing luminance oscillation ("engagement stage") as visual support to keep track of the focus elements. To find a good trade-off between attraction effectiveness and subjective annoyance caused by flicker, we conducted two perceptual studies to find suitable signal parameters. We showcase Attractive Flicker with the parameters obtained from the perceptual statistics in a study of molecular interactions. With Attractive Flicker, users were able to easily follow the narrative of the visualization on a large display, while the flickering of focus elements was not disturbing when observing the context.

Attractive Interactions between Heteroallenes and the Cucurbituril Portal.

PubMed

Reany, Ofer; Li, Amanda; Yefet, Maayan; Gilson, Michael K; Keinan, Ehud

2017-06-21

In this paper, we report on the noteworthy attractive interaction between organic azides and the portal carbonyls of cucurbiturils. Five homologous bis-α,ω-azidoethylammonium alkanes were prepared, where the number of methylene groups between the ammonium groups ranges from 4 to 8. Their interactions with cucurbit[6]uril were studied by NMR spectroscopy, IR spectroscopy, X-ray crystallography, and computational methods. Remarkably, while the distance between the portal plane and most atoms at the guest end groups increases progressively with the molecular size, the β-nitrogen atoms maintain a constant distance from the portal plane in all homologues, pointing at a strong attractive interaction between the azide group and the portal. Both crystallography and NMR support a specific electrostatic interaction between the carbonyl and the azide β-nitrogen, which stabilizes the canonical resonance form with positive charge on the β-nitrogen and negative charge on the γ-nitrogen. Quantum computational analyses strongly support electrostatics, in the form of orthogonal dipole-dipole interaction, as the main driver for this attraction. The alternative mechanism of n → π* orbital delocalization does not seem to play a significant role in this interaction. The computational studies also indicate that the interaction is not limited to azides, but generalizes to other isoelectronic heteroallene functions, such as isocyanate and isothiocyanate. This essentially unexploited attractive interaction could be more broadly utilized as a tool not only in relation to cucurbituril chemistry, but also for the design of novel supramolecular architectures.

Are Brazil nuts attractive?

PubMed

Sanders, Duncan A; Swift, Michael R; Bowley, R M; King, P J

2004-11-12

We present event-driven simulation results for single and multiple intruders in a vertically vibrated granular bed. Under our vibratory conditions, the mean vertical position of a single intruder is governed primarily by a buoyancylike effect. Multiple intruders also exhibit buoyancy governed behavior; however, multiple neutrally buoyant intruders cluster spontaneously and undergo horizontal segregation. These effects can be understood by considering the dynamics of two neutrally buoyant intruders. We have measured an attractive force between such intruders which has a range of five intruder diameters, and we provide a mechanistic explanation for the origins of this force.

Females in Law Enforcement: Femininity, Competence, Attraction, and Work Acceptance.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hernandez, Ernie, Jr.

1982-01-01

Used photographs and biographical descriptions of female deputy strangers to examine effects of femininity and competence on male deputy attraction to and work acceptance of female deputies. Findings included an attraction preference for feminine-competent female deputies, and greater tolerance of feminine-incompetent female deputies for staff…

The Effects of Applicant Attractiveness, Managerial Attributes and Gender on Executive Employment Decisions.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Best, Bethia J.; Spector, Paul E.

Although it has been shown that physical attractiveness is an advantage to male applicants for managerial positions, it is not clear whether attractiveness is an advantage or disadvantage to female applicants for these jobs. Male (N=25) and female (N=22) business administration students were asked to simulate selection decisions for a high level…

Electromagnetic Attraction.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Milson, James L.

1990-01-01

Three activities involving electromagnetism are presented. Discussed are investigations involving the construction of an electromagnet, the effect of the number of turns of wire in the magnet, and the effect of the number of batteries in the circuit. Extension activities are suggested. (CW)

Changing perception: facial reanimation surgery improves attractiveness and decreases negative facial perception.

PubMed

Dey, Jacob K; Ishii, Masaru; Boahene, Kofi D O; Byrne, Patrick J; Ishii, Lisa E

2014-01-01

Determine the effect of facial reanimation surgery on observer-graded attractiveness and negative facial perception of patients with facial paralysis. Randomized controlled experiment. Ninety observers viewed images of paralyzed faces, smiling and in repose, before and after reanimation surgery, as well as normal comparison faces. Observers rated the attractiveness of each face and characterized the paralyzed faces by rating severity, disfigured/bothersome, and importance to repair. Iterated factor analysis indicated these highly correlated variables measure a common domain, so they were combined to create the disfigured, important to repair, bothersome, severity (DIBS) factor score. Mixed effects linear regression determined the effect of facial reanimation surgery on attractiveness and DIBS score. Facial paralysis induces an attractiveness penalty of 2.51 on a 10-point scale for faces in repose and 3.38 for smiling faces. Mixed effects linear regression showed that reanimation surgery improved attractiveness for faces both in repose and smiling by 0.84 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.67, 1.01) and 1.24 (95% CI: 1.07, 1.42) respectively. Planned hypothesis tests confirmed statistically significant differences in attractiveness ratings between postoperative and normal faces, indicating attractiveness was not completely normalized. Regression analysis also showed that reanimation surgery decreased DIBS by 0.807 (95% CI: 0.704, 0.911) for faces in repose and 0.989 (95% CI: 0.886, 1.093), an entire standard deviation, for smiling faces. Facial reanimation surgery increases attractiveness and decreases negative facial perception of patients with facial paralysis. These data emphasize the need to optimize reanimation surgery to restore not only function, but also symmetry and cosmesis to improve facial perception and patient quality of life. © 2013 The American Laryngological, Rhinological and Otological Society, Inc.

Incidental regulation of attraction: the neural basis of the derogation of attractive alternatives in romantic relationships.

PubMed

Meyer, Meghan L; Berkman, Elliot T; Karremans, Johan C; Lieberman, Matthew D

2011-04-01

Although a great deal of research addresses the neural basis of deliberate and intentional emotion-regulation strategies, less attention has been paid to the neural mechanisms involved in implicit forms of emotion regulation. Behavioural research suggests that romantically involved participants implicitly derogate the attractiveness of alternative partners, and the present study sought to examine the neural basis of this effect. Romantically committed participants in the present study were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while indicating whether they would consider each of a series of attractive (or unattractive) opposite-sex others as a hypothetical dating partner both while under cognitive load and no cognitive load. Successful derogation of attractive others during the no cognitive load compared to the cognitive load trials corresponded with increased activation in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) and posterior dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (pDMPFC), and decreased activation in the ventral striatum, a pattern similar to those reported in deliberate emotion-regulation studies. Activation in the VLPFC and pDMPFC was not significant in the cognitive load condition, indicating that while the derogation effect may be implicit, it nonetheless requires cognitive resources. Additionally, activation in the right VLPFC correlated with participants' level of relationship investment. These findings suggest that the RVLPFC may play a particularly important role in implicitly regulating the emotions that threaten the stability of a romantic relationship. © 2011 Psychology Press, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business

The mathematics of sexual attraction.

PubMed

Feijó, José A

2010-01-01

Pollen tubes follow attractants secreted by the ovules. In a recent paper in BMC Plant Biology, Stewman and colleagues have quantified the parameters of this attraction and used them to calibrate a mathematical model that reproduces the process and enables predictions on the nature of the female attractant and the mechanisms of the male response.

Evaluating the attractiveness and effectiveness of artificial coral reefs as a recreational ecosystem service.

PubMed

Belhassen, Yaniv; Rousseau, Meghan; Tynyakov, Jenny; Shashar, Nadav

2017-12-01

Artificial reefs are increasingly being used around the globe to attract recreational divers, for both environmental and commercial reasons. This paper examines artificial coral reefs as recreational ecosystem services (RES) by evaluating their attractiveness and effectiveness and by examining divers' attitudes toward them. An online survey targeted at divers in Israel (n = 263) indicated that 35% of the dives in Eilat (a resort city on the shore of the Red Sea) take place at artificial reefs. A second study monitored divers' behavior around the Tamar artificial reef, one of the most popular submerged artificial reefs in Eilat, and juxtaposed it with divers' activities around two adjacent natural reefs. Findings show that the average diver density at the artificial reef was higher than at the two nearby natural knolls and that the artificial reef effectively diverts divers from natural knolls. A third study that examined the attitudes towards natural vs. artificial reefs found that the artificial reefs are considered more appropriate for training, but that divers feel less relaxed around them. By utilizing the RES approach as a framework, the study offers a comprehensive methodology that brings together the aesthetic, behavioral, and attitudinal aspects in terms of which artificial reefs can be evaluated. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Direct observation of growth and collapse of a Bose-Einstein condensate with attractive interactions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gerton, Jordan M.; Strekalov, Dmitry; Prodan, Ionut; Hulet, Randall G.

2000-12-01

Quantum theory predicts that Bose-Einstein condensation of a spatially homogeneous gas with attractive interactions is precluded by a conventional phase transition into either a liquid or solid. When confined to a trap, however, such a condensate can form, provided that its occupation number does not exceed a limiting value. The stability limit is determined by a balance between the self-attractive forces and a repulsion that arises from position-momentum uncertainty under conditions of spatial confinement. Near the stability limit, self-attraction can overwhelm the repulsion, causing the condensate to collapse. Growth of the condensate is therefore punctuated by intermittent collapses that are triggered by either macroscopic quantum tunnelling or thermal fluctuation. Previous observations of growth and collapse dynamics have been hampered by the stochastic nature of these mechanisms. Here we report direct observations of the growth and subsequent collapse of a 7Li condensate with attractive interactions, using phase-contrast imaging. The success of the measurement lies in our ability to reduce the stochasticity in the dynamics by controlling the initial number of condensate atoms using a two-photon transition to a diatomic molecular state.

Fatal attraction: vegetation responses to nutrient inputs attract herbivores to infectious anthrax carcass sites.

PubMed

Turner, Wendy C; Kausrud, Kyrre L; Krishnappa, Yathin S; Cromsigt, Joris P G M; Ganz, Holly H; Mapaure, Isaac; Cloete, Claudine C; Havarua, Zepee; Küsters, Martina; Getz, Wayne M; Stenseth, Nils Chr

2014-11-22

Parasites can shape the foraging behaviour of their hosts through cues indicating risk of infection. When cues for risk co-occur with desired traits such as forage quality, individuals face a trade-off between nutrient acquisition and parasite exposure. We evaluated how this trade-off may influence disease transmission in a 3-year experimental study of anthrax in a guild of mammalian herbivores in Etosha National Park, Namibia. At plains zebra (Equus quagga) carcass sites we assessed (i) carcass nutrient effects on soils and grasses, (ii) concentrations of Bacillus anthracis (BA) on grasses and in soils, and (iii) herbivore grazing behaviour, compared with control sites, using motion-sensing camera traps. We found that carcass-mediated nutrient pulses improved soil and vegetation, and that BA is found on grasses up to 2 years after death. Host foraging responses to carcass sites shifted from avoidance to attraction, and ultimately to no preference, with the strength and duration of these behavioural responses varying among herbivore species. Our results demonstrate that animal carcasses alter the environment and attract grazing hosts to parasite aggregations. This attraction may enhance transmission rates, suggesting that hosts are limited in their ability to trade off nutrient intake with parasite avoidance when relying on indirect cues. © 2014 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.

Influence of food kiosk attraction on the road’s level of service

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Agustin, I. W.

2018-01-01

The main purpose of the research is to analyze the influence of food kiosk attraction on the road’s level service and to find a solution to decrease congestion at Mayjen Sungkono Road in Surabaya City. The development of commercial sector has profoundly contributed to the land use change into business and residential areas. There is an increase in the number of vehicles passing through Mayjen Sungkono Road per year based on the data from Department of Transportation in Surabaya. In 2014, the number of light vehicles (LV) passing through Mayjen Sungkono Road was as many as 131,620 units, heavy vehicles (HV) reached 248 units, while motorcycles (MC) recorded at 187,371 units. The research uses the road’s level of service analysis, multiple linear regression analysis, and do-something analysis. The results show that the influential variables comprise of the number of visitors (X32), parking area (X30), and building area (X29). The food kiosk attraction model is Yfood kiosk = 51.827+ 0.723(X32) + 5.859(X30) + 0.072(X29), and the result of attraction movement derived from food kiosk is 7,670.71 pcu/day. Widening the road can raise the average ofthe road’s level of service (LOS) at Mayjen Sungkono of formerly F value increased to D.

Physical attraction to reliable, low variability nervous systems: Reaction time variability predicts attractiveness.

PubMed

Butler, Emily E; Saville, Christopher W N; Ward, Robert; Ramsey, Richard

2017-01-01

The human face cues a range of important fitness information, which guides mate selection towards desirable others. Given humans' high investment in the central nervous system (CNS), cues to CNS function should be especially important in social selection. We tested if facial attractiveness preferences are sensitive to the reliability of human nervous system function. Several decades of research suggest an operational measure for CNS reliability is reaction time variability, which is measured by standard deviation of reaction times across trials. Across two experiments, we show that low reaction time variability is associated with facial attractiveness. Moreover, variability in performance made a unique contribution to attractiveness judgements above and beyond both physical health and sex-typicality judgements, which have previously been associated with perceptions of attractiveness. In a third experiment, we empirically estimated the distribution of attractiveness preferences expected by chance and show that the size and direction of our results in Experiments 1 and 2 are statistically unlikely without reference to reaction time variability. We conclude that an operating characteristic of the human nervous system, reliability of information processing, is signalled to others through facial appearance. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Sequential effects in judgements of attractiveness: the influences of face race and sex.

PubMed

Kramer, Robin S S; Jones, Alex L; Sharma, Dinkar

2013-01-01

In perceptual decision-making, a person's response on a given trial is influenced by their response on the immediately preceding trial. This sequential effect was initially demonstrated in psychophysical tasks, but has now been found in more complex, real-world judgements. The similarity of the current and previous stimuli determines the nature of the effect, with more similar items producing assimilation in judgements, while less similarity can cause a contrast effect. Previous research found assimilation in ratings of facial attractiveness, and here, we investigated whether this effect is influenced by the social categories of the faces presented. Over three experiments, participants rated the attractiveness of own- (White) and other-race (Chinese) faces of both sexes that appeared successively. Through blocking trials by race (Experiment 1), sex (Experiment 2), or both dimensions (Experiment 3), we could examine how sequential judgements were altered by the salience of different social categories in face sequences. For sequences that varied in sex alone, own-race faces showed significantly less opposite-sex assimilation (male and female faces perceived as dissimilar), while other-race faces showed equal assimilation for opposite- and same-sex sequences (male and female faces were not differentiated). For sequences that varied in race alone, categorisation by race resulted in no opposite-race assimilation for either sex of face (White and Chinese faces perceived as dissimilar). For sequences that varied in both race and sex, same-category assimilation was significantly greater than opposite-category. Our results suggest that the race of a face represents a superordinate category relative to sex. These findings demonstrate the importance of social categories when considering sequential judgements of faces, and also highlight a novel approach for investigating how multiple social dimensions interact during decision-making.

Sequential Effects in Judgements of Attractiveness: The Influences of Face Race and Sex

PubMed Central

Kramer, Robin S. S.; Jones, Alex L.; Sharma, Dinkar

2013-01-01

In perceptual decision-making, a person’s response on a given trial is influenced by their response on the immediately preceding trial. This sequential effect was initially demonstrated in psychophysical tasks, but has now been found in more complex, real-world judgements. The similarity of the current and previous stimuli determines the nature of the effect, with more similar items producing assimilation in judgements, while less similarity can cause a contrast effect. Previous research found assimilation in ratings of facial attractiveness, and here, we investigated whether this effect is influenced by the social categories of the faces presented. Over three experiments, participants rated the attractiveness of own- (White) and other-race (Chinese) faces of both sexes that appeared successively. Through blocking trials by race (Experiment 1), sex (Experiment 2), or both dimensions (Experiment 3), we could examine how sequential judgements were altered by the salience of different social categories in face sequences. For sequences that varied in sex alone, own-race faces showed significantly less opposite-sex assimilation (male and female faces perceived as dissimilar), while other-race faces showed equal assimilation for opposite- and same-sex sequences (male and female faces were not differentiated). For sequences that varied in race alone, categorisation by race resulted in no opposite-race assimilation for either sex of face (White and Chinese faces perceived as dissimilar). For sequences that varied in both race and sex, same-category assimilation was significantly greater than opposite-category. Our results suggest that the race of a face represents a superordinate category relative to sex. These findings demonstrate the importance of social categories when considering sequential judgements of faces, and also highlight a novel approach for investigating how multiple social dimensions interact during decision-making. PMID:24349226

The Application of materials attractiveness in a graded approach to nuclear materials security

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Ebbinghaus, B.; Bathke, C.; Dalton, D.

2013-07-01

The threat from terrorist groups has recently received greater attention. In this paper, material quantity and material attractiveness are addressed through the lens of a minimum security strategy needed to prevent the construction of a nuclear explosive device (NED) by an adversary. Nuclear materials are placed into specific security categories (3 or 4 categories) , which define a number of security requirements to protect the material. Materials attractiveness can be divided into four attractiveness levels, High, Medium, Low, and Very Low that correspond to the utility of the material to the adversary and to a minimum security strategy that ismore » necessary to adequately protect the nuclear material. We propose a graded approach to materials attractiveness that recognizes for instance substantial differences in attractiveness between pure reactor-grade Pu oxide (High attractiveness) and fresh MOX fuel (Low attractiveness). In either case, an adversary's acquisition of a Category I quantity of plutonium would be a major incident, but the acquisition of Pu oxide by the adversary would be substantially worse than the acquisition of fresh MOX fuel because of the substantial differences in the time and complexity required of the adversary to process the material and fashion it into a NED.« less

Effects of facial attractiveness on personality stimuli in an implicit priming task: an ERP study.

PubMed

Zhang, Yan; Zheng, Minxiao; Wang, Xiaoying

2016-08-01

Using event-related potentials (ERPs) in a priming paradigm, this study examines implicit priming in the association of personality words with facial attractiveness. A total of 16 participants (8 males and 8 females; age range, 19-24 years; mean age, 21.30 years) were asked to judge the color (red and green) of positive or negative personality words after exposure to priming stimuli (attractive and unattractive facial images). The positive personality words primed by attractive faces or the negative personality words primed by unattractive faces were defined as congruent trials, whereas the positive personality words primed by unattractive faces or the negative personality words primed by attractive faces were defined as incongruent trials. Behavioral results showed that compared with the unattractive faces trials, the trials that attractive faces being the priming stimuli had longer reaction times and higher accuracy rates. Moreover, a more negative ERP deflection (N2) component was observed in the ERPs of the incongruent condition than in the ERPs of the congruent condition. In addition, the personality words presented after the attractive faces elicited larger amplitudes from the frontal region to the central region (P2 and P350-550 ms) compared with the personality words after unattractive faces as priming stimuli. The study provides evidence for the facial attractiveness stereotype ('What is beautiful is good') through an implicit priming task.

Own attractiveness and perceived relationship quality shape sensitivity in women's memory for other men on the attractiveness dimension.

PubMed

Watkins, Christopher D; Nicholls, Mike J; Batres, Carlota; Xiao, Dengke; Talamas, Sean; Perrett, David I

2017-06-01

Although recent work suggests that opposite-sex facial attractiveness is less salient in memory when individuals are in a committed romantic relationship, romantic relationship quality can vary over time. In light of this, we tested whether activating concerns about romantic relationship quality strengthens memory for attractive faces. Partnered women were exposed briefly to faces manipulated in shape cues to attractiveness before either being asked to think about a moment of emotional closeness or distance in their current relationship. We measured sensitivity in memory for faces as the extent to which they recognized correct versions of studied faces over versions of the same person altered to look either more or less-attractive than their original (i.e., studied) version. Contrary to predictions, high relationship quality strengthened hit rate for faces regardless of the sex or attractiveness of the face. In general, women's memories were more sensitive to attractiveness in women, but were biased toward attractiveness in male faces, both when responding to unfamiliar faces and versions of familiar faces that were more attractive than the original male identity from the learning phase. However, findings varied according to self-rated attractiveness and a psychometric measure of the quality of their current relationship. Attractive women were more sensitive to attractiveness in men, while their less-attractive peers had a stronger bias to remember women as more-attractive and men as less-attractive than their original image respectively. Women in better-quality romantic relationships had stronger positive biases toward, and false memories for, attractive men. Our findings suggest a sophisticated pattern of sensitivity and bias in women's memory for facial cues to quality that varies systematically according to factors that may alter the costs of female mating competition ('market demand') and relationship maintenance. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights

The efficacy of denaturing actinide elements as a means of decreasing materials attractiveness

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Hase, K.R.; Bathke, C.G.; Ebbinghaus, B.B.

2013-07-01

This study considers the concept of denaturing as applied to the actinide elements present in spent fuel as a means to reduce materials attractiveness. Highly attractive materials generally have low values of bare critical mass, heat content, and dose. To denature an attractive element, its spent-fuel isotopic composition (isotopic vector) is intentionally modified by introducing sufficient quantities of a significantly less attractive isotope to dilute the concentration of a highly attractive isotope so that the overall attractiveness of the element is reduced. The authors used FOM (Figure of Merit) formula as the material attractiveness metric for their parametric determination ofmore » the attractiveness of the Pu and U. Materials attractiveness needs to be considered in three distinct phases in the process to construct a nuclear explosive device (NED): the acquisition phase, processing phase, and utilization phase. The results show that denaturing uranium with {sup 238}U is actually an effective means of reducing the attractiveness. For uranium with a large minority of {sup 235}U, a mixture of 80% {sup 238}U to 20% {sup 235}U is required to reduce the attractiveness to low. For uranium with a large concentration of {sup 233}U, a mixture of 88% {sup 238}U to 12% {sup 233}U is required to reduce the attractiveness to low. The results also show that denaturing plutonium with {sup 238}Pu is less effective than denaturing uranium with {sup 238}U. Using {sup 238}Pu as the denaturing agent would require 80% or more by mass in order to reduce the attractiveness to low. No amount of {sup 240}Pu is enough to reduce the plutonium attractiveness below medium. The combination of {sup 238}Pu and {sup 240}Pu would require approximately 70% {sup 238}Pu and 25% {sup 240}Pu by mass to reduce the plutonium attractiveness to low.« less

Masculine somatotype and hirsuteness as determinants of sexual attractiveness to women.

PubMed

Dixson, Alan F; Halliwell, Gayle; East, Rebecca; Wignarajah, Praveen; Anderson, Matthew J

2003-02-01

Five questionnaire studies asked women to rate the attractiveness of outline drawings of male figures that varied in somatotype, body proportions, symmetry, and in distribution of trunk hair. In Study 1, back-posed figures of mesomorphic (muscular) somatotypes were rated as most attractive, followed by average, ectomorphic (slim), and endomorphic (heavily built) figures by both British and Sri Lankan women. In Study 2, computer morphing of somatotypes to produce an intergraded series resulted in a graded response in terms of perceived attractiveness which mirrored the findings of Study 1. In Study 3, back-posed figures were manipulated in order to change waist-to-hip ratios (WHR) and waist-to-shoulder ratios (WSR). A WHR of 0.8-0.9 and a WSR of 0.6 were rated as most attractive and these effects were more pronounced when modeling mesomorphic figures. In Study 4, symmetric figures of a mesomorphic somatotype were rated as less attractive than a normal (asymmetric) version of the same man. Study 5 showed that presence of trunk hair had a marked, positive effect upon women's ratings of attractiveness for both mesomorphic and endomorphic male figures. Women also judged figures with trunk hair as being older and they consistently rated endomorphic figures as being older than mesomorphs. These results are consistent with effects of sexual selection upon visual signals that advertise health, physical prowess, age, and underlying endocrine condition in the human male.

Blinded by Beauty: Attractiveness Bias and Accurate Perceptions of Academic Performance

PubMed Central

Talamas, Sean N.; Mavor, Kenneth I.; Perrett, David I.

2016-01-01

Despite the old adage not to ‘judge a book by its cover’, facial cues often guide first impressions and these first impressions guide our decisions. Literature suggests there are valid facial cues that assist us in assessing someone’s health or intelligence, but such cues are overshadowed by an ‘attractiveness halo’ whereby desirable attributions are preferentially ascribed to attractive people. The impact of the attractiveness halo effect on perceptions of academic performance in the classroom is concerning as this has shown to influence students’ future performance. We investigated the limiting effects of the attractiveness halo on perceptions of actual academic performance in faces of 100 university students. Given the ambiguity and various perspectives on the definition of intelligence and the growing consensus on the importance of conscientiousness over intelligence in predicting actual academic performance, we also investigated whether perceived conscientiousness was a more accurate predictor of academic performance than perceived intelligence. Perceived conscientiousness was found to be a better predictor of actual academic performance when compared to perceived intelligence and perceived academic performance, and accuracy was improved when controlling for the influence of attractiveness on judgments. These findings emphasize the misleading effect of attractiveness on the accuracy of first impressions of competence, which can have serious consequences in areas such as education and hiring. The findings also have implications for future research investigating impression accuracy based on facial stimuli. PMID:26885976

Simultaneous perceptual and response biases on sequential face attractiveness judgments.

PubMed

Pegors, Teresa K; Mattar, Marcelo G; Bryan, Peter B; Epstein, Russell A

2015-06-01

Face attractiveness is a social characteristic that we often use to make first-pass judgments about the people around us. However, these judgments are highly influenced by our surrounding social world, and researchers still understand little about the mechanisms underlying these influences. In a series of 3 experiments, we use a novel sequential rating paradigm that enables us to measure biases in attractiveness judgments from the previous face and the previous rating. Our results reveal 2 simultaneous and opposing influences on face attractiveness judgments that arise from past experience of faces: a response bias in which attractiveness ratings shift toward a previously given rating and a stimulus bias in which attractiveness ratings shift away from the mean attractiveness of the previous face. Further, we provide evidence that the contrastive stimulus bias (but not the assimilative response bias) is strengthened by increasing the duration of the previous stimulus, suggesting an underlying perceptual mechanism. These results demonstrate that judgments of face attractiveness are influenced by information from our evaluative and perceptual history and that these influences have measurable behavioral effects over the course of just a few seconds. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Simultaneous perceptual and response biases on sequential face attractiveness judgments

PubMed Central

Pegors, Teresa K.; Mattar, Marcelo G.; Bryan, Peter B.; Epstein, Russell A.

2015-01-01

Face attractiveness is a social characteristic that we often use to make first-pass judgments about the people around us. However, these judgments are highly influenced by our surrounding social world, and researchers still understand little about the mechanisms underlying these influences. In a series of three experiments, we used a novel sequential rating paradigm that enabled us to measure biases on attractiveness judgments from the previous face and the previous rating. Our results revealed two simultaneous and opposing influences on face attractiveness judgments that arise from our past experience of faces: a response bias in which attractiveness ratings shift towards a previously given rating, and a stimulus bias in which attractiveness ratings shift away from the mean attractiveness of the previous face. Furthermore, we provide evidence that the contrastive stimulus bias (but not the assimilative response bias) is strengthened by increasing the duration of the previous stimulus, suggesting an underlying perceptual mechanism. These results demonstrate that judgments of face attractiveness are influenced by information from our evaluative and perceptual history and that these influences have measurable behavioral effects over the course of just a few seconds. PMID:25867223

Are Happy Faces Attractive? The Roles of Early vs. Late Processing

PubMed Central

Sun, Delin; Chan, Chetwyn C. H.; Fan, Jintu; Wu, Yi; Lee, Tatia M. C.

2015-01-01

Facial attractiveness is closely related to romantic love. To understand if the neural underpinnings of perceived facial attractiveness and facial expression are similar constructs, we recorded neural signals using an event-related potential (ERP) methodology for 20 participants who were viewing faces with varied attractiveness and expressions. We found that attractiveness and expression were reflected by two early components, P2-lateral (P2l) and P2-medial (P2m), respectively; their interaction effect was reflected by LPP, a late component. The findings suggested that facial attractiveness and expression are first processed in parallel for discrimination between stimuli. After the initial processing, more attentional resources are allocated to the faces with the most positive or most negative valence in both the attractiveness and expression dimensions. The findings contribute to the theoretical model of face perception. PMID:26648885

Evaluation of Nasonov Pheromone Dispensers for Pollinator Attraction in Apple, Blueberry, and Cherry.

PubMed

Williamson, J; Adams, C G; Isaacs, R; Gut, L J

2018-04-23

Declines in the number of commercial honey bees (Apis mellifera L.) (Hymenoptera: Apidae) and some wild bee species around the world threaten fruit, nut, and vegetable production and have prompted interest in developing methods for gaining efficiencies in pollination services. One possible approach would be to deploy attractants within the target crop to increase the number of floral visits. In this study, we evaluate two new pollinator attractants, Polynate and SPLAT Bloom, for their ability to increase pollinator visitation and fruit set in apple (Malus pumila Mill.), highbush blueberry (Vaccinium sp. L.), and tart cherry (Prunus cerasus L.). Polynate is a plastic twin-tube dispenser loaded with a mixture of floral scent and Nasonov pheromone. SPLAT Bloom contains the same chemical formula as Polynate, but is applied as a 3 g wax dollop directly onto the tree or bush. The objectives of this study were to determine if Polynate and SPLAT Bloom increase the number of honey bee foragers and fruit set in apples, highbush blueberries, and tart cherries. We conducted replicated evaluations of 32 fields or orchards with and without putative attractants over three growing seasons. Both products failed to provide a measurable increase in pollinator visits or fruit set in these crops, indicating no return on investment for either product.

Effects of religious veiling on Muslim men's attractiveness ratings of Muslim women.

PubMed

Pazhoohi, Farid; Hosseinchari, Masoud

2014-08-01

Hijab and other Islamic veiling clothing are important social and political symbols for Muslim women's identity. Although recently there has been a large body of literature on the social and political aspects of hijab in Western countries, there has been no investigation of the origin and function of veiling itself. This article hypothesized that religious veiling, which eliminates the estrogen-induced body curves of reproductive age women, decreases men's perceptions of women's physical attractiveness, thereby serving mate guarding functions against rival men. To test this hypothesis. Measures of the motivational appeal and self-reported perceived attractiveness of women exhibiting different degrees of veiling were obtained from 80 Muslim male participants. The results showed that men were more motivated to view women exhibiting the less veiling and rated them more attractive than those women whose bodily curves were less apparent. These results support veiling serving a mate guarding function and reinforcing the marital bond.

THE ATTRACTIVENESS OF MATERIAS ASSOCIATED WITH THORIUM-BASED NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLES FOR PHWRS

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Prichard, Andrew W.; Niehus, Mark T.; Collins, Brian A.

2011-07-17

This paper reports the continued evaluation of the attractiveness of materials mixtures containing special nuclear materials (SNM) associated with thorium based nuclear fuel cycles. Specifically, this paper examines a thorium fuel cycle in which a pressurized heavy water reactor (PHWR) is fueled with mixtures of natural uranium/233U/thorium. This paper uses a PHWR fueled with natural uranium as a base fuel cycle, and then compares material attractiveness of fuel cycles that use 233U/thorium salted with natural uranium. The results include the material attractiveness of fuel at beginning of life (BoL), end of life (EoL), and the number of fuel assemblies requiredmore » to collect a bare critical mass of plutonium or uranium. This study indicates what is required to render the uranium as having low utility for use in nuclear weapons; in addition, this study estimates the increased number of assemblies required to accumulate a bare critical mass of plutonium that has a higher utility for use in nuclear weapons. This approach identifies that some fuel cycles may be easier to implement the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards approach and have a more effective safeguards by design outcome. For this study, approximately one year of fuel is required to be reprocessed to obtain one bare critical mass of plutonium. Nevertheless, the result of this paper suggests that all spent fuel needs to be rigorously safeguarded and provided with high levels of physical protection. This study was performed at the request of the United States Department of Energy /National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA). The methodology and key findings will be presented.« less

Perceptions of health and attractiveness: the effects of body fat, muscularity, gender, and ethnicity.

PubMed

Yanover, Tovah; Thompson, J Kevin

2010-10-01

Three hundred and thirty-three participants rated the health and attractiveness of schematic figures varying in muscularity, adiposity, gender, and race. In general, overweight and underweight figures were rated as less healthy and attractive. However, overweight figures with high levels of muscularity were rated more highly on these dimensions than figures with less muscularity. Females assigned higher attractiveness ratings than males; African Americans provided higher ratings than Caucasians and Hispanics for female figures and lower ratings than Caucasian and Hispanic raters for male figures. Theoretical explanations and applied implications are offered.

Attractive potential around a thermionically emitting microparticle.

PubMed

Delzanno, G L; Lapenta, G; Rosenberg, M

2004-01-23

We present a simulation study of the charging of a dust grain immersed in a plasma, considering the effect of thermionic electron emission from the grain. It is shown that the orbit motion limited theory is no longer reliable when electron emission becomes large: screening can no longer be treated within the Debye-Huckel approach and an attractive potential well can form, leading to the possibility of attractive forces on other grains with the same polarity. We suggest to perform laboratory experiments where emitting dust grains could be used to create nonconventional dust crystals or macromolecules.

Effects of attractiveness and status in dating desire in homosexual and heterosexual men and women.

PubMed

Ha, Thao; van den Berg, Judith E M; Engels, Rutger C M E; Lichtwarck-Aschoff, Anna

2012-06-01

The present study examined partner preferences of homosexual and heterosexual men and woman, focusing on attractiveness and status. Homosexual (N=591 men; M age=28.87 years, SD=10.21; N=249 women; M age=33.36 years, SD=13.12) and heterosexual participants (N=346 men; M age=39.74 years, SD=14.26; N=400 women; M age=35.93 years, SD=13.72) rated the importance of attractiveness and social status of potential partners and then, in a vignette test, expressed their desire to date hypothetical potential partners based on photographs that varied in attractiveness and status-related profiles. With ratings, heterosexual men valued attractiveness the most, followed by homosexual men, heterosexual women, and homosexual women. Heterosexual women rated social status as most important. When status profiles were manipulated and accompanied with photographs of faces, the pattern of differences between homosexuals and heterosexuals supported the self-reported results. Overall, homosexual men and women have similar mate preferences to heterosexual men and women by showing more dating desire for attractive and high social status persons. Compared to attractiveness, status played a smaller role in dating desire.

The Influence of Averageness on Adults' Perceptions of Attractiveness: The Effect of Early Visual Deprivation.

PubMed

Vingilis-Jaremko, Larissa; Maurer, Daphne; Rhodes, Gillian; Jeffery, Linda

2016-08-03

Adults who missed early visual input because of congenital cataracts later have deficits in many aspects of face processing. Here we investigated whether they make normal judgments of facial attractiveness. In particular, we studied whether their perceptions are affected normally by a face's proximity to the population mean, as is true of typically developing adults, who find average faces to be more attractive than most other faces. We compared the judgments of facial attractiveness of 12 cataract-reversal patients to norms established from 36 adults with normal vision. Participants viewed pairs of adult male and adult female faces that had been transformed 50% toward and 50% away from their respective group averages, and selected which face was more attractive. Averageness influenced patients' judgments of attractiveness, but to a lesser extent than controls. The results suggest that cataract-reversal patients are able to develop a system for representing faces with a privileged position for an average face, consistent with evidence from identity aftereffects. However, early visual experience is necessary to set up the neural architecture necessary for averageness to influence perceptions of attractiveness with its normal potency. © The Author(s) 2016.

Beyond size–number trade-offs: clutch size as a maternal effect

PubMed Central

Brown, Gregory P.; Shine, Richard

2009-01-01

Traditionally, research on life-history traits has viewed the link between clutch size and offspring size as a straightforward linear trade-off; the product of these two components is taken as a measure of maternal reproductive output. Investing more per egg results in fewer but larger eggs and, hence, offspring. This simple size–number trade-off has proved attractive to modellers, but our experimental studies on keelback snakes (Tropidonophis mairii, Colubridae) reveal a more complex relationship between clutch size and offspring size. At constant water availability, the amount of water taken up by a snake egg depends upon the number of adjacent eggs. In turn, water uptake affects hatchling size, and therefore an increase in clutch size directly increases offspring size (and thus fitness under field conditions). This allometric advantage may influence the evolution of reproductive traits such as growth versus reproductive effort, optimal age at female maturation, the body-reserve threshold required to initiate reproduction and nest-site selection (e.g. communal oviposition). The published literature suggests that similar kinds of complex effects of clutch size on offspring viability are widespread in both vertebrates and invertebrates. Our results also challenge conventional experimental methodologies such as split-clutch designs for laboratory incubation studies: by separating an egg from its siblings, we may directly affect offspring size and thus viability. PMID:19324614

The Effect of Mediated Camera Angle on Receiver Evaluations of Source Credibility, Dominance, Attraction and Homophily.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beverly, Robert E.; Young, Thomas J.

Two hundred forty college undergraduates participated in a study of the effect of camera angle on an audience's perceptual judgments of source credibility, dominance, attraction, and homophily. The subjects were divided into four groups and each group was shown a videotape presentation in which sources had been videotaped according to one of four…

Physical attractiveness stereotype and memory.

PubMed

Rohner, Jean-Christophe; Rasmussen, Anders

2011-08-01

Three experiments examined explicit and implicit memory for information that is congruent with the physical attractiveness stereotype (i.e. attractive-positive and unattractive-negative) and information that is incongruent with the physical attractiveness stereotype (i.e. attractive-negative and unattractive-positive). Measures of explicit recognition sensitivity and implicit discriminability revealed a memorial advantage for congruent compared to incongruent information, as evident from hit and false alarm rates and reaction times, respectively. Measures of explicit memory showed a recognition bias toward congruent compared to incongruent information, where participants tended to call congruent information old, independently of whether the information had been shown previously or not. This recognition bias was unrelated to reports of subjective confidence in retrieval. The present findings shed light on the cognitive mechanisms that might mediate discriminatory behavior towards physically attractive and physically unattractive individuals. © 2011 The Authors. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology © 2011 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.

African perceptions of female attractiveness.

PubMed

Coetzee, Vinet; Faerber, Stella J; Greeff, Jaco M; Lefevre, Carmen E; Re, Daniel E; Perrett, David I

2012-01-01

Little is known about mate choice preferences outside Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic societies, even though these Western populations may be particularly unrepresentative of human populations. To our knowledge, this is the first study to test which facial cues contribute to African perceptions of African female attractiveness and also the first study to test the combined role of facial adiposity, skin colour (lightness, yellowness and redness), skin homogeneity and youthfulness in the facial attractiveness preferences of any population. Results show that youthfulness, skin colour, skin homogeneity and facial adiposity significantly and independently predict attractiveness in female African faces. Younger, thinner women with a lighter, yellower skin colour and a more homogenous skin tone are considered more attractive. These findings provide a more global perspective on human mate choice and point to a universal role for these four facial cues in female facial attractiveness.

Attractive faces temporally modulate visual attention

PubMed Central

Nakamura, Koyo; Kawabata, Hideaki

2014-01-01

Facial attractiveness is an important biological and social signal on social interaction. Recent research has demonstrated that an attractive face captures greater spatial attention than an unattractive face does. Little is known, however, about the temporal characteristics of visual attention for facial attractiveness. In this study, we investigated the temporal modulation of visual attention induced by facial attractiveness by using a rapid serial visual presentation. Fourteen male faces and two female faces were successively presented for 160 ms, respectively, and participants were asked to identify two female faces embedded among a series of multiple male distractor faces. Identification of a second female target (T2) was impaired when a first target (T1) was attractive compared to neutral or unattractive faces, at 320 ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA); identification was improved when T1 was attractive compared to unattractive faces at 640 ms SOA. These findings suggest that the spontaneous appraisal of facial attractiveness modulates temporal attention. PMID:24994994

Fuzzy Risk Evaluation in Failure Mode and Effects Analysis Using a D Numbers Based Multi-Sensor Information Fusion Method.

PubMed

Deng, Xinyang; Jiang, Wen

2017-09-12

Failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) is a useful tool to define, identify, and eliminate potential failures or errors so as to improve the reliability of systems, designs, and products. Risk evaluation is an important issue in FMEA to determine the risk priorities of failure modes. There are some shortcomings in the traditional risk priority number (RPN) approach for risk evaluation in FMEA, and fuzzy risk evaluation has become an important research direction that attracts increasing attention. In this paper, the fuzzy risk evaluation in FMEA is studied from a perspective of multi-sensor information fusion. By considering the non-exclusiveness between the evaluations of fuzzy linguistic variables to failure modes, a novel model called D numbers is used to model the non-exclusive fuzzy evaluations. A D numbers based multi-sensor information fusion method is proposed to establish a new model for fuzzy risk evaluation in FMEA. An illustrative example is provided and examined using the proposed model and other existing method to show the effectiveness of the proposed model.

Fuzzy Risk Evaluation in Failure Mode and Effects Analysis Using a D Numbers Based Multi-Sensor Information Fusion Method

PubMed Central

Deng, Xinyang

2017-01-01

Failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) is a useful tool to define, identify, and eliminate potential failures or errors so as to improve the reliability of systems, designs, and products. Risk evaluation is an important issue in FMEA to determine the risk priorities of failure modes. There are some shortcomings in the traditional risk priority number (RPN) approach for risk evaluation in FMEA, and fuzzy risk evaluation has become an important research direction that attracts increasing attention. In this paper, the fuzzy risk evaluation in FMEA is studied from a perspective of multi-sensor information fusion. By considering the non-exclusiveness between the evaluations of fuzzy linguistic variables to failure modes, a novel model called D numbers is used to model the non-exclusive fuzzy evaluations. A D numbers based multi-sensor information fusion method is proposed to establish a new model for fuzzy risk evaluation in FMEA. An illustrative example is provided and examined using the proposed model and other existing method to show the effectiveness of the proposed model. PMID:28895905

Ordinal Position, Approval Motivation, and Interpersonal Attraction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nowicki, Stephen, Jr.

1971-01-01

Results of the study suggest that birth-order effects might be included within the wider framework of approval-dependency theory. Females tend to account for a significant share of birth-order effects. More particularly, firstborn females accounted for much of the differences in expressed attraction as well as need for social approval. (Author)

Assertiveness and Physical Attractiveness.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kleim, David M.; And Others

Earlier research investigating the relationship between physical attractiveness and assertiveness found that physically attractive females were more assertive than other females. To investigate this relationship further and to broaden the scope of the study, 69 students were videotaped in groups of five to ten while responding to open-ended…

Mosquito repellent attracts Culicoides imicola (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae).

PubMed

Braverman, Y; Chizov-Ginzburg, A; Mullens, B A

1999-01-01

A plant-derived mosquito repellent, based on the oil of Eucalyptus maculata var. citriodora Hook, was evaluated against the biting midge Culicoides imicola Kieffer. Suction black light-traps covered with repellent-impregnated polyester mesh and deployed near horses attracted large numbers of C. imicola, which were seen near the treated net within a few minutes of the start of the experiment. Initial collections in the traps were approximately 3 times as large as those in control traps with untreated mesh. Numbers collected in treated traps were similar to untreated control traps after 4 h. Traps with mesh treated with DEET or another plant-derived (Meliaceae) proprietary product, AG1000, acted as repellents relative to the control. The differential activity of repellents against blood-feeding Diptera is discussed.

Discovery of mosquito attractants and attraction-inhibitors invited talk on attractants and repellents

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has developed repellents and insecticides for the U.S. military since 1942. A small component of this research program has aimed at the discovery of attractants that can be used to produce potent lures for haematophagous arthropods, with a primary f...

Familiarity does indeed promote attraction in live interaction.

PubMed

Reis, Harry T; Maniaci, Michael R; Caprariello, Peter A; Eastwick, Paul W; Finkel, Eli J

2011-09-01

Does familiarity promote attraction? Prior research has generally suggested that it does, but a recent set of studies by Norton, Frost, and Ariely (2007) challenged that assumption. Instead, they found that more information about another person, when that information was randomly selected from lists of trait adjectives, using a trait evaluation paradigm, promoted perceptions of dissimilarity and, hence, disliking. The present research began with the assumption that natural social interaction involves contexts and processes not present in Norton et al.'s research or in the typical familiarity experiment. We theorized that these processes imply a favorable impact of familiarity on attraction. Two experiments are reported using a live interaction paradigm in which two previously unacquainted same-sex persons interacted with each other for varying amounts of time. Findings strongly supported the "familiarity leads to attraction" hypothesis: The more participants interacted, the more attracted they were to each other. Mediation analyses identified three processes that contribute to this effect: perceived responsiveness, increased comfort and satisfaction during interaction, and perceived knowledge. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved.

Effects of different diets on the dietary attractability and selectivity of Chinese shrimp, Fenneropenaeus chinensis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Huang, Guoqiang; Dong, Shuanglin; Wang, Fang

2005-01-01

Attractabilities of different diets and dietary selectivity of Chinese shrimp, Fenneropenaeus chinensis were studied through behavior observation and feeding experiment, respectively. The five diets used in the experiment are: Fish Flesh (FF), Shrimp Flesh (SF), Clam Foot (CF), Polychaete Worm (PW), and Formulated Diet (FD). No significant differences of attractability exist between any two different diets when every two natural diets or all five diets are provided simultaneously. On the other hand, significant differences of attractability exist between FD and every single natural diet when they are provided simultaneously. Results of behavioral observation indicate that natural diets are more attractive than FD. In feeding experiment, Chinese shrimp has distinct selectivity on different diets. It positively selects CF and PW, negatively selects FF and SF, and excludes FD absolutely. The results of the present studies indicate that the dietary selectivity of shrimp was based not only on the attractabilities of the diets, but also on the responses such as growth and food conversion.

Computer-mediated communication and interpersonal attraction: an experimental test of two explanatory hypotheses.

PubMed

Antheunis, Marjolijn L; Valkenburg, Patti M; Peter, Jochen

2007-12-01

The aims of this study were (a) to investigate the influence of computer-mediated communication (CMC) on interpersonal attraction and (b) to examine two underlying processes in the CMC-interpersonal attraction relationship. We identified two variables that may mediate the influence of CMC on interpersonal attraction: self-disclosure and direct questioning. Focusing on these potential mediating variables, we tested two explanatory hypotheses: the CMC-induced direct questioning hypothesis and the CMC-induced self-disclosure hypothesis. Eighty-one cross-sex dyads were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: text-only CMC, visual CMC, and face-to-face communication. We did not find a direct effect of CMC on interpersonal attraction. However, we did find two positive indirect effects of text-only CMC on interpersonal attraction: text-only CMC stimulated both self-disclosure and direct questioning, both of which in turn enhanced interpersonal attraction. Results are discussed in light of uncertainty reduction theory and CMC theories.

In the Eye of the Betrothed: Perceptual Downgrading of Attractive Alternative Romantic Partners.

PubMed

Cole, Shana; Trope, Yaacov; Balcetis, Emily

2016-07-01

People in monogamous relationships can experience a conflict when they interact with an attractive individual. They may have a desire to romantically pursue the new person, while wanting to be faithful to their partner. How do people manage the threat that attractive alternatives present to their relationship goals? We suggest that one way people defend their relationships against attractive individuals is by perceiving the individual as less attractive. In two studies, using a novel visual matching paradigm, we found support for a perceptual downgrading effect. People in relationships perceived threatening attractive individuals as less attractive than did single participants. The effect was exacerbated among participants who were highly satisfied with their current relationships. The studies provide evidence for a perceptual bias that emerges to protect long-term goals. We discuss the findings within the context of a broader theory of motivated perception in the service of self-control. © 2016 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

Individual differences in valuing mates' physical attractiveness.

PubMed

Mathes, Eugene W; Bielser, Abby; Cassell, Ticcarra; Summers, Sarah; Witowski, Aggie

2006-10-01

To investigate correlates of valuing physical attractiveness in a mate, it was hypothesized that valuing physical attractiveness in a mate would correlate with sex and valuing promiscuous sex, status, personal physical attractiveness, beauty, and order. Men and women college students completed measures of the extent to which they valued physical attractiveness in a mate and other variables. Valuing physical attractiveness in a mate was correlated with sex (men valued physical attractiveness in a mate more than did women) and valuing promiscuous sex and status, and, for women, valuing personal physical attractiveness. The results were explained in terms of evolutionary theory.

Intelligence and Physical Attractiveness

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kanazawa, Satoshi

2011-01-01

This brief research note aims to estimate the magnitude of the association between general intelligence and physical attractiveness with large nationally representative samples from two nations. In the United Kingdom, attractive children are more intelligent by 12.4 IQ points (r=0.381), whereas in the United States, the correlation between…

Ubiquitous water-soluble molecules in aquatic plant exudates determine specific insect attraction.

PubMed

Sérandour, Julien; Reynaud, Stéphane; Willison, John; Patouraux, Joëlle; Gaude, Thierry; Ravanel, Patrick; Lempérière, Guy; Raveton, Muriel

2008-10-08

Plants produce semio-chemicals that directly influence insect attraction and/or repulsion. Generally, this attraction is closely associated with herbivory and has been studied mainly under atmospheric conditions. On the other hand, the relationship between aquatic plants and insects has been little studied. To determine whether the roots of aquatic macrophytes release attractive chemical mixtures into the water, we studied the behaviour of mosquito larvae using olfactory experiments with root exudates. After testing the attraction on Culex and Aedes mosquito larvae, we chose to work with Coquillettidia species, which have a complex behaviour in nature and need to be attached to plant roots in order to obtain oxygen. This relationship is non-destructive and can be described as commensal behaviour. Commonly found compounds seemed to be involved in insect attraction since root exudates from different plants were all attractive. Moreover, chemical analysis allowed us to identify a certain number of commonly found, highly water-soluble, low-molecular-weight compounds, several of which (glycerol, uracil, thymine, uridine, thymidine) were able to induce attraction when tested individually but at concentrations substantially higher than those found in nature. However, our principal findings demonstrated that these compounds appeared to act synergistically, since a mixture of these five compounds attracted larvae at natural concentrations (0.7 nM glycerol, <0.5 nM uracil, 0.6 nM thymine, 2.8 nM uridine, 86 nM thymidine), much lower than those found for each compound tested individually. These results provide strong evidence that a mixture of polyols (glycerol), pyrimidines (uracil, thymine), and nucleosides (uridine, thymidine) functions as an efficient attractive signal in nature for Coquillettidia larvae. We therefore show for the first time, that such commonly found compounds may play an important role in plant-insect relationships in aquatic eco-systems.

Placemaking: Attracting and Retaining Today's Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Knight, Brent

2016-01-01

Research suggests that the appearance of a college campus--both inside and out--is a significant criterion in college selection. As community colleges are finding it increasingly important to attract and retain students, placemaking is becoming an effective and efficient platform to support recruitment and retention. Placemaking is imagining and…

Marginal rigidity and history dependence in packings of attractive athermal emulsions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bargteil, Dylan; Pontani, Lea-Laetitia; Brujic, Jasna

2014-03-01

The geometry and stress through particulate packings depends on the method of preparation and the interaction potential between the particles. Previously, we discovered that creaming frictionless, athermal emulsions with a short-range depletion attraction leads to an initial increase in the packing density above random close packing, followed by a monotonic decrease in density (Jorjadze et al, PNAS, 2011). This decrease is because the attractive force stabilizes loose voids, thus reducing the average coordination number, , of the packing. In order to understand the mechanism of packing creation, we investigate whether the final density is influenced by the polydispersity or the initial volume fraction of droplets, as it is in frictional packings. Finally, we compress the attractive packings by centrifugation to probe the scaling laws of pressure versus density and and compare them with those found in repulsive packings (Jorjadze et al, PRL, 2013).

Medfly Responses to Natural Essential Oils: Electroantennography and Long-Range Attraction

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Secondary metabolites emitted from plants and natural essential oils are suspected to attract males of the Mediterranean fruit fly to their calling sites. We investigated the differential attractiveness of six essential oils that have either been shown to have aromatherapy effects and/or that differ...

Fatal Attraction of Short-Tailed Shearwaters to Artificial Lights

PubMed Central

Rodríguez, Airam; Burgan, Graeme; Dann, Peter; Jessop, Roz; Negro, Juan J.; Chiaradia, Andre

2014-01-01

Light pollution is increasing around the world and altering natural nightscapes with potential ecological and evolutionary consequences. A severe ecological perturbation caused by artificial lights is mass mortalities of organisms, including seabird fledglings that are attracted to lights at night on their first flights to the sea. Here, we report on the number of fledging short-tailed shearwaters Ardenna tenuirostris found grounded in evening and morning rescue patrols conducted at Phillip Island, Australia, during a 15-year period (1999–2013). We assessed factors affecting numbers of grounded birds and mortality including date, moon phase, wind direction and speed, number of visitors and holiday periods. We also tested experimentally if birds were attracted to lights by turning the lights off on a section of the road. Of 8871 fledglings found, 39% were dead or dying. This mortality rate was 4–8 times higher than reported elsewhere for other shearwater species, probably because searching for fledglings was part of our systematic rescue effort rather than the opportunistic rescue used elsewhere. Thus, it suggests that light-induced mortality of seabirds is usually underestimated. We rescued more birds (dead and alive) in peak fledging, moonless and windy nights. Mortality increased through the fledging period, in the mornings and with increased traffic on holiday periods. Turning the road lights off decreased the number of grounded birds (dead and alive). While moon, wind and time are uncontrolled natural constraints, we demonstrated that reduction of light pollution and better traffic management can mitigate artificial light-induced mortality. PMID:25334014

Relational Motives Reduce Attentional Adhesion to Attractive Alternatives in Heterosexual University Students in China.

PubMed

Zhang, Qiuli; Maner, Jon K; Xu, Yin; Zheng, Yong

2017-02-01

In heterosexual individuals, attention is automatically captured by physically attractive members of the opposite sex. Although helpful for selecting new mates, attention to attractive relationship alternatives can threaten satisfaction with and commitment to an existing romantic relationship. The current study tested the hypothesis that although a mating prime would increase selective attention to attractive opposite-sex targets (relative to less attractive targets) among single participants, this effect would be reduced among people already committed to a long-term romantic partner. Consistent with hypotheses, whereas single participants responded to a mating prime with greater attentional adhesion to physically attractive opposite-sex targets (relative to less attractive targets), participants in a committed romantic relationship showed no such effect. These findings extend previous research suggesting the presence of relationship maintenance mechanisms that operate at early stages of social cognition.

Effects of bark beetle pheromones on the attraction of Monochamus alternatus to pine volatiles

Treesearch

Jian-Ting Fan; Daniel Miller; Long-Wa Zhang; Jiang-Hua Sun

2010-01-01

We evaluated the attraction of Monochamus alternatus Hope (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae), Dryocoetes luteus Blandford and Orthotomicus erosusWollaston (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Scolytinae) to multiple-funnel traps baited with the pine volatiles, ethanol and (+)-α-pinene and the bark beetle pheromones, ipsenol and ipsdienol. M. alternatus were attracted to traps baited...

Influence of anteroposterior mandibular positions on facial attractiveness in Japanese adults.

PubMed

Kuroda, Shingo; Sugahara, Takako; Takabatake, Souichirou; Taketa, Hiroaki; Ando, Ryoko; Takano-Yamamoto, Teruko

2009-01-01

Our aims in this study were to determine the anteroposterior facial relationship that is regarded as most attractive by Japanese laypersons in a questionnaire survey and to evaluate which analysis of the soft-tissue profile is most suitable for Japanese people. We showed 262 Japanese laypersons (121 male, 141 female) 9 morphed profile images with Point B and menton anteriorly or distally moved by software and asked them to number them sequentially according to their attractiveness. To examine which analysis best reflects facial attractiveness as judged by laypersons, we made 5 types of analyses of the facial profile with 11 variables in the 9 images. The normal face was judged favorably; however, an attractive profile might be different for each subject. The 3 highest ranking profiles (normal face and moderate mandibular retrusions) were often favorites, and 2 profiles (severe mandibular protrusions) were liked the least for most subjects. However, the other images showed a wide range of distribution. Mandibular retrusion was generally more favored than mandibular protrusion and bimaxillary protrusion (severe chin retrusion) had a high attractiveness ranking and was well accepted in the Japanese population. To evaluate the profiles of Japanese subjects, it is important to evaluate not only the esthetic line defined by the nose and chin, but also the balance of the upper and lower lips defined by the posterior reference line--ie, Burstone's Sn-Pog' line.

Electrophysiological response and attraction of emerald ash borer to green leaf volatiles (GLVs) emitted by host foliage

Treesearch

Peter de Groot; Gary G. Grant; Therese M. Poland; Roger Scharbach; Linda Buchan; Reginald W. Nott; Linda Macdonald; Doug Pitt

2008-01-01

Green leaf volatiles (GLVs) function as host attractants, pheromone synergists, or sexual kairomones for a number of coleopteran folivores. Hence, we focused on host GLVs to determine if they were attractive to adults of the emerald ash borer, Agrilus planipennis (Coleoptera: Buprestidae), which feeds on ash (Fraxinus) foliage....

Attraction of Plecia nearctica (dipter:bibionidae) to floral lures containing phenylacetaldehyde

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

We observed that the floral odorant, phenylacetaldehyde (PAA), was attractive to both sexes of adult lovebugs (Plecia nearctica, Diptera: Bibionidae) in central and southern Florida. The addition of ß-myrcene and methyl salicylate to PAA did not improve the numbers of P. nearctica caught in delta tr...

The number of recent sex partners among bisexual men in the United States.

PubMed

Jeffries, William L

2011-09-01

Little is known regarding bisexual men's number of recent sex partners, a risk factor for HIV and other STDs. Furthermore, it is unclear if bisexual men have more partners than heterosexual or homosexual men, and whether partner number varies by measures of sexual behavior, identity and attraction. Sexual orientation-defined separately by sexual behavior during the past year, identity and attraction-was assessed for 3,875 sexually active men aged 15-44 who had participated in the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth. Chi-square and t tests examined differences in background characteristics, behavioral risk factors and number of past-year sex partners by sexual orientation according to each definition. Multivariate ordinary least-squares regression was used to assess predictors of the number of partners. When sexual identity and attraction were controlled for, behaviorally bisexual men were predicted to have had 3.1 more past-year partners than behaviorally heterosexual men and 2.6 more than behaviorally homosexual men. After controlling for sexual identity and behavior, bisexual-attracted men had had 0.7 fewer partners than homosexual-attracted men. In a model including background characteristics and behavioral risk factors, behaviorally bisexual men were predicted to have had 2.5-2.6 more partners than others. Neither bisexual identity nor bisexual attraction independently predicted the number of recent partners. The way in which bisexuality relates to men's number of recent sex partners depends on how sexual orientation is measured. Interventions to reduce behaviorally bisexual men's number of partners will likely lessen their risk for HIV and other STDs. Copyright © 2011 by the Guttmacher Institute.

The Effects of Sensation Seeking, Physical Attractiveness of Stimuli, and Exposure Frequency on Liking

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Horai, Joann

1976-01-01

Males (N=54) and 46 females who scored high or low on a sensation seeking scale were exposed to slides of physically attractive or unattractive person stimuli. High sensation seekers both liked and expected to recognize the physically attractive persons in the future more than the physically unattractive persons. (Author)

The attractive lip: A photomorphometric analysis.

PubMed

Penna, V; Fricke, A; Iblher, N; Eisenhardt, S U; Stark, G B

2015-07-01

Throughout literature, there are different parameters defining the ideal shape of the lip and lower third of the face. This study was conducted to clarify what it is that makes lips attractive - and whether there are gender-related differences of an attractive lip and lower third of the face. Pictures of the lip and chin region of 176 patients were photographed in a standardised way and evaluated by 250 voluntary judges through an internet presentation by means of an analogue Likert scaling system. We found a significant higher ratio of upper vermillion height/mouth-nose distance in frontal-view images of attractive compared to unattractive female (p < 0.001) and male (p < 0.05) perioral regions. Furthermore, the ratio of upper vermillion height/chin-nose distance was significantly higher in attractive than in unattractive female (p < 0.005) and male (p < 0.05) lip and chin regions. The nasolabial angle was significantly sharper in attractive compared to unattractive female perioral regions (p < 0.001). Moreover, attractive female lip and chin regions showed a wider mentolabial angle compared to unattractive female lip and chin regions (p < 0.05). Comparing men and women, we found that attractive female perioral regions showed a higher ratio of lower vermillion height/chin-mouth distance (p < 0.05) and lower vermillion height/chin-nose distance than attractive male perioral regions (p < 0.05). We were able to define certain parameters of the lip and lower third of the face that seem to add to the attractivity of female and male individuals and prove that there are gender-related differences in form and shape of an attractive lower third of the face. Copyright © 2015 British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Raman non-coincidence effect of boroxol ring: The interplay between repulsion and attraction forces in the glassy, supercooled and liquid state

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kalampounias, Angelos G.; Papatheodorou, George N.

2018-06-01

Temperature dependent Raman spectra of boric oxide have been measured in a temperature range covering the glassy, supercooled and liquid state. The shift of the isotropic band assigned to boroxol rings relative to the anisotropic component upon heating the glass is measured and attributed to the Raman non-coincidence effect. The measured shift is associated with the competition between attraction and repulsion forces with increasing temperature. The relation of dephasing and orientational relaxation times to the non-coincidence effect of the condensed phases has been examined. We discuss our results in the framework of the current phenomenological status of the field in an attempt to separate the attraction and repulsion contributions corresponding to the observed non-coincidence effect.

Attractive versus repulsive interactions in the Bose-Einstein condensation dynamics of relativistic field theories

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Berges, J.; Boguslavski, K.; Chatrchyan, A.; Jaeckel, J.

2017-10-01

We study the impact of attractive self-interactions on the nonequilibrium dynamics of relativistic quantum fields with large occupancies at low momenta. Our primary focus is on Bose-Einstein condensation and nonthermal fixed points in such systems. For a model system, we consider O (N ) -symmetric scalar field theories. We use classical-statistical real-time simulations as well as a systematic 1 /N expansion of the quantum (two-particle-irreducible) effective action to next-to-leading order. When the mean self-interactions are repulsive, condensation occurs as a consequence of a universal inverse particle cascade to the zero-momentum mode with self-similar scaling behavior. For attractive mean self-interactions, the inverse cascade is absent, and the particle annihilation rate is enhanced compared to the repulsive case, which counteracts the formation of coherent field configurations. For N ≥2 , the presence of a nonvanishing conserved charge can suppress number-changing processes and lead to the formation of stable localized charge clumps, i.e., Q balls.

Nitrate analogs as attractants for soybean cyst nematode.

PubMed

Hosoi, Akito; Katsuyama, Tsutomu; Sasaki, Yasuyuki; Kondo, Tatsuhiko; Yajima, Shunsuke; Ito, Shinsaku

2017-08-01

Soybean cyst nematode (SCN) Heterodera glycines Ichinohe, a plant parasite, is one of the most serious pests of soybean. In this paper, we report that SCN is attracted to nitrate and its analogs. We performed attraction assays to screen for novel attractants for SCN and found that nitrates were attractants for SCN and SCN recognized nitrate gradients. However, attraction of SCN to nitrates was not observed on agar containing nitrate. To further elucidate the attraction mechanism in SCN, we performed attraction assays using nitrate analogs ([Formula: see text], [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text]). SCN was attracted to all nitrate analogs; however, attraction of SCN to nitrate analogs was not observed on agar containing nitrate. In contrast, SCN was attracted to azuki root, irrespective of presence or absence of nitrate in agar media. Our results suggest that the attraction mechanisms differ between plant-derived attractant and nitrate.

Fish attraction to artificial reefs not always harmful: a simulation study.

PubMed

Smith, James A; Lowry, Michael B; Suthers, Iain M

2015-10-01

The debate on whether artificial reefs produce new fish or simply attract existing fish biomass continues due to the difficulty in distinguishing these processes, and there remains considerable doubt as to whether artificial reefs are a harmful form of habitat modification. The harm typically associated with attraction is that fish will be easier to harvest due to the existing biomass aggregating at a newly deployed reef. This outcome of fish attraction has not progressed past an anecdotal form, however, and is always perceived as a harmful process. We present a numerical model that simulates the effect that a redistributed fish biomass, due to an artificial reef, has on fishing catch per unit effort (CPUE). This model can be used to identify the scenarios (in terms of reef, fish, and harvest characteristics) that pose the most risk of exploitation due to fish attraction. The properties of this model were compared to the long-standing predictions by Bohnsack (1989) on the factors that increase the risk or the harm of attraction. Simulations revealed that attraction is not always harmful because it does not always increase maximum fish density. Rather, attraction sometimes disperses existing fish biomass making them harder to catch. Some attraction can be ideal, with CPUE lowest when attraction leads to an equal distribution of biomass between natural and artificial reefs. Simulations also showed that the outcomes from attraction depend on the characteristics of the target fish species, such that transient or pelagic species are often at more risk of harmful attraction than resident species. Our findings generally agree with Bohnsack's predictions, although we recommend distinguishing "mobility" and "fidelity" when identifying species most at risk from attraction, as these traits had great influence on patterns of harvest of attracted fish biomass.

On Being "Attractive" With Resistant Clients.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Miller, Mark J.; Wells, Don

1990-01-01

Calls client resistance a frequent occurrence within the helping profession. Defines client resistance, provides a brief review of related literature, and offers counselor attractiveness as one way of addressing the issue. Identifies attractive counselor behaviors and attitudes and presents case study illustrating specific attractive counselor…

Electron attraction mediated by Coulomb repulsion.

PubMed

Hamo, A; Benyamini, A; Shapir, I; Khivrich, I; Waissman, J; Kaasbjerg, K; Oreg, Y; von Oppen, F; Ilani, S

2016-07-21

One of the defining properties of electrons is their mutual Coulomb repulsion. However, in solids this basic property may change; for example, in superconductors, the coupling of electrons to lattice vibrations makes the electrons attract one another, leading to the formation of bound pairs. Fifty years ago it was proposed that electrons can be made attractive even when all of the degrees of freedom in the solid are electronic, by exploiting their repulsion from other electrons. This attraction mechanism, termed 'excitonic', promised to achieve stronger and more exotic superconductivity. Yet, despite an extensive search, experimental evidence for excitonic attraction has yet to be found. Here we demonstrate this attraction by constructing, from the bottom up, the fundamental building block of the excitonic mechanism. Our experiments are based on quantum devices made from pristine carbon nanotubes, combined with cryogenic precision manipulation. Using this platform, we demonstrate that two electrons can be made to attract each other using an independent electronic system as the 'glue' that mediates attraction. Owing to its tunability, our system offers insights into the underlying physics, such as the dependence of the emergent attraction on the underlying repulsion, and the origin of the pairing energy. We also demonstrate transport signatures of excitonic pairing. This experimental demonstration of excitonic pairing paves the way for the design of exotic states of matter.

Electron attraction mediated by Coulomb repulsion

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hamo, A.; Benyamini, A.; Shapir, I.; Khivrich, I.; Waissman, J.; Kaasbjerg, K.; Oreg, Y.; von Oppen, F.; Ilani, S.

2016-07-01

One of the defining properties of electrons is their mutual Coulomb repulsion. However, in solids this basic property may change; for example, in superconductors, the coupling of electrons to lattice vibrations makes the electrons attract one another, leading to the formation of bound pairs. Fifty years ago it was proposed that electrons can be made attractive even when all of the degrees of freedom in the solid are electronic, by exploiting their repulsion from other electrons. This attraction mechanism, termed ‘excitonic’, promised to achieve stronger and more exotic superconductivity. Yet, despite an extensive search, experimental evidence for excitonic attraction has yet to be found. Here we demonstrate this attraction by constructing, from the bottom up, the fundamental building block of the excitonic mechanism. Our experiments are based on quantum devices made from pristine carbon nanotubes, combined with cryogenic precision manipulation. Using this platform, we demonstrate that two electrons can be made to attract each other using an independent electronic system as the ‘glue’ that mediates attraction. Owing to its tunability, our system offers insights into the underlying physics, such as the dependence of the emergent attraction on the underlying repulsion, and the origin of the pairing energy. We also demonstrate transport signatures of excitonic pairing. This experimental demonstration of excitonic pairing paves the way for the design of exotic states of matter.

Heritability of Attractiveness to Mosquitoes

PubMed Central

Fernández-Grandon, G. Mandela; Gezan, Salvador A.; Armour, John A. L.; Pickett, John A.; Logan, James G.

2015-01-01

Female mosquitoes display preferences for certain individuals over others, which is determined by differences in volatile chemicals produced by the human body and detected by mosquitoes. Body odour can be controlled genetically but the existence of a genetic basis for differential attraction to insects has never been formally demonstrated. This study investigated heritability of attractiveness to mosquitoes by evaluating the response of Aedes aegypti (=Stegomyia aegypti) mosquitoes to odours from the hands of identical and non-identical twins in a dual-choice assay. Volatiles from individuals in an identical twin pair showed a high correlation in attractiveness to mosquitoes, while non-identical twin pairs showed a significantly lower correlation. Overall, there was a strong narrow-sense heritability of 0.62 (SE 0.124) for relative attraction and 0.67 (0.354) for flight activity based on the average of ten measurements. The results demonstrate an underlying genetic component detectable by mosquitoes through olfaction. Understanding the genetic basis for attractiveness could create a more informed approach to repellent development. PMID:25901606

Robust determination of effective atomic numbers for electron interactions with TLD-100 and TLD-100H thermoluminescent dosimeters

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Taylor, M. L.

2011-04-01

Lithium fluoride thermoluminescent dosimeters (TLD) are the most commonly implemented for clinical dosimetry. The small physical magnitude of TLDs makes them attractive for applications such as small field measurement, in vivo dosimetry and measurement of out-of-field doses to critical structures. The most broadly used TLD is TLD-100 (LiF:Mg,Ti) and, for applications requiring higher sensitivity to low-doses, TLD-100H (LiF:Mg,Cu,P) is frequently employed. The radiological properties of these TLDs are therefore of significant interest. For the first time, in this study effective atomic numbers for radiative, collisional and total electron interaction processes are calculated for TLD-100 and TLD-100H dosimeters over the energy range 1 keV-100 MeV. This is undertaken using a robust, energy-dependent method of calculation rather than typical power-law approximations. The influence of dopant concentrations and unwanted impurities is also investigated. The two TLDs exhibit similar effective atomic numbers, ranging from approximately 5.77-6.51. Differences arising from the different dopants are most pronounced in low-energy radiative effects. The TLDs have atomic numbers approximately 1.48-2.06 times that of water. The effective atomic number of TLD-100H is consistently higher than that of TLD-100 over a broad energy range, due to the greater influence of the higher- Z dopants on the electron interaction cross sections. Typical variation in dopant concentration does not significantly influence the effective atomic number. The influence on TLD-100H is comparatively more pronounced than that on TLD-100. Contrariwise, unwanted hydroxide impurities influence TLD-100 more than TLD-100H. The effective atomic number is a key parameter that influences the radiological properties and energy response of TLDs. Although many properties of these TLDs have been studied rigorously, as yet there has been no investigation of their effective atomic numbers for electron interactions. The

Physical Attractiveness, Age, and Sex as Determinants of Reactions to Resumes.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Quereshi, M. Y.; Kay, Janet P.

1986-01-01

Physical attractiveness, age, and sex were manipulated to determine their effect on the evaluation of 54 hypothetical applicants' resumes for three different jobs by 60 Master's in Business Administration students. Physical attractiveness favorably influenced the suitability ratings for all jobs; raters' sex and age were not significant but…

The range of attraction for light traps catching Culicoides biting midges (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae).

PubMed

Kirkeby, Carsten; Græsbøll, Kaare; Stockmarr, Anders; Christiansen, Lasse E; Bødker, René

2013-03-15

Culicoides are vectors of e.g. bluetongue virus and Schmallenberg virus in northern Europe. Light trapping is an important tool for detecting the presence and quantifying the abundance of vectors in the field. Until now, few studies have investigated the range of attraction of light traps. Here we test a previously described mathematical model (Model I) and two novel models for the attraction of vectors to light traps (Model II and III). In Model I, Culicoides fly to the nearest trap from within a fixed range of attraction. In Model II Culicoides fly towards areas with greater light intensity, and in Model III Culicoides evaluate light sources in the field of view and fly towards the strongest. Model II and III incorporated the directionally dependent light field created around light traps with fluorescent light tubes. All three models were fitted to light trap collections obtained from two novel experimental setups in the field where traps were placed in different configurations. Results showed that overlapping ranges of attraction of neighboring traps extended the shared range of attraction. Model I did not fit data from any of the experimental setups. Model II could only fit data from one of the setups, while Model III fitted data from both experimental setups. The model with the best fit, Model III, indicates that Culicoides continuously evaluate the light source direction and intensity. The maximum range of attraction of a single 4W CDC light trap was estimated to be approximately 15.25 meters. The attraction towards light traps is different from the attraction to host animals and thus light trap catches may not represent the vector species and numbers attracted to hosts.

Using attractiveness model for actors ranking in social media networks.

PubMed

Qasem, Ziyaad; Jansen, Marc; Hecking, Tobias; Hoppe, H Ulrich

2017-01-01

Influential actors detection in social media such as Twitter or Facebook can play a major role in gathering opinions on particular topics, improving the marketing efficiency, predicting the trends, etc. This work aims to extend our formally defined T measure to present a new measure aiming to recognize the actor's influence by the strength of attracting new important actors into a networked community. Therefore, we propose a model of the actor's influence based on the attractiveness of the actor in relation to the number of other attractors with whom he/she has established connections over time. Using an empirically collected social network for the underlying graph, we have applied the above-mentioned measure of influence in order to determine optimal seeds in a simulation of influence maximization. We study our extended measure in the context of information diffusion because this measure is based on a model of actors who attract others to be active members in a community. This corresponds to the idea of the IC simulation model which is used to identify the most important spreaders in a set of actors.

Miscalibrations in judgements of attractiveness with cosmetics.

PubMed

Jones, Alex L; Kramer, Robin S S; Ward, Robert

2014-10-01

Women use cosmetics to enhance their attractiveness. How successful they are in doing so remains unknown--how do men and women respond to cosmetics use in terms of attractiveness? There are a variety of miscalibrations where attractiveness is concerned--often, what one sex thinks the opposite sex finds attractive is incorrect. Here, we investigated observer perceptions about attractiveness and cosmetics, as well as their understanding of what others would find attractive. We used computer graphic techniques to allow observers to vary the amount of cosmetics applied to a series of female faces. We asked observers to optimize attractiveness for themselves, for what they thought women in general would prefer, and what they thought men in general would prefer. We found that men and women agree on the amount of cosmetics they find attractive, but overestimate the preferences of women and, when considering the preferences of men, overestimate even more. We also find that models' self-applied cosmetics are far in excess of individual preferences. These findings suggest that attractiveness perceptions with cosmetics are a form of pluralistic ignorance, whereby women tailor their cosmetics use to an inaccurate perception of others' preferences. These findings also highlight further miscalibrations of attractiveness ideals.

Does computer-synthesized speech manifest personality? Experimental tests of recognition, similarity-attraction, and consistency-attraction.

PubMed

Nass, C; Lee, K M

2001-09-01

Would people exhibit similarity-attraction and consistency-attraction toward unambiguously computer-generated speech even when personality is clearly not relevant? In Experiment 1, participants (extrovert or introvert) heard a synthesized voice (extrovert or introvert) on a book-buying Web site. Participants accurately recognized personality cues in text to speech and showed similarity-attraction in their evaluation of the computer voice, the book reviews, and the reviewer. Experiment 2, in a Web auction context, added personality of the text to the previous design. The results replicated Experiment 1 and demonstrated consistency (voice and text personality)-attraction. To maximize liking and trust, designers should set parameters, for example, words per minute or frequency range, that create a personality that is consistent with the user and the content being presented.

The rheology and microstructure of aging thermoreversible colloidal gels & attractive driven glasses

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wagner, Norman; Gordon, Melissa; Kloxin, Christopher

The properties of colloidal gels and glasses are known to change with age, but the particle-level mechanisms by which aging occurs is are fully understood, which limits our ability to predict macroscopic behavior in these systems. In this work, we quantitatively relate rheological aging to structural aging of a model, homogenous gel and attractive driven glass by simultaneously measuring the bulk properties and gel microstructure using rheometry and small angle neutron scattering (Rheo-SANS), respectively. Specifically, we develop a quantitative and predictive relationship between the macroscopic properties and the underlying microstructure (i . e . , the effective strength of attraction) of an aging colloidal gel and attractive driven glass and study it as a function of the thermal and shear history. Analysis with mode coupling theory is consistent with local particle rearrangements as the mechanism of aging, which lead to monotonically increasing interaction strengths in a continuously evolving material and strongly supports aging as a trajectory in the free energy landscape dominated by local particle relaxations. The analyses and conclusions of this study may be 1) industrially relevant to products that age on commercial timescales, such as paints and pharmaceuticals, 2) applicable to other dynamically arrested systems, such as metallic glasses, and 3) used in the design of new materials. NIST Center for Neutron Research CNS cooperative agreement number #70NANB12H239 and NASA Grant No. NNX15AI19H.

The effect of skin surface topography and skin colouration cues on perception of male facial age, health and attractiveness.

PubMed

Fink, B; Matts, P J; Brauckmann, C; Gundlach, S

2018-04-01

Previous studies investigating the effects of skin surface topography and colouration cues on the perception of female faces reported a differential weighting for the perception of skin topography and colour evenness, where topography was a stronger visual cue for the perception of age, whereas skin colour evenness was a stronger visual cue for the perception of health. We extend these findings in a study of the effect of skin surface topography and colour evenness cues on the perceptions of facial age, health and attractiveness in males. Facial images of six men (aged 40 to 70 years), selected for co-expression of lines/wrinkles and discolouration, were manipulated digitally to create eight stimuli, namely, separate removal of these two features (a) on the forehead, (b) in the periorbital area, (c) on the cheeks and (d) across the entire face. Omnibus (within-face) pairwise combinations, including the original (unmodified) face, were presented to a total of 240 male and female judges, who selected the face they considered younger, healthier and more attractive. Significant effects were detected for facial image choice, in response to skin feature manipulation. The combined removal of skin surface topography resulted in younger age perception compared with that seen with the removal of skin colouration cues, whereas the opposite pattern was found for health preference. No difference was detected for the perception of attractiveness. These perceptual effects were seen particularly on the forehead and cheeks. Removing skin topography cues (but not discolouration) in the periorbital area resulted in higher preferences for all three attributes. Skin surface topography and colouration cues affect the perception of age, health and attractiveness in men's faces. The combined removal of these features on the forehead, cheeks and in the periorbital area results in the most positive assessments. © 2018 Society of Cosmetic Scientists and the Société Française de Cosmétologie.

Development of an attract-and-kill co-formulation containing Saccharomyces cerevisiae and neem extract attractive towards wireworms.

PubMed

Humbert, Pascal; Vemmer, Marina; Mävers, Frauke; Schumann, Mario; Vidal, Stefan; Patel, Anant V

2018-07-01

Wireworms (Coleoptera: Elateridae) are major insect pests of worldwide relevance. Owing to the progressive phasing-out of chemical insecticides, there is great demand for innovative control options. This study reports on the development of an attract-and-kill co-formulation based on Ca-alginate beads, which release CO 2 and contain neem extract as a bioinsecticidal compound. The objectives of this study were to discover: (1) whether neem extract can be immobilized efficiently, (2) whether CO 2 -releasing Saccharomyces cerevisiae and neem extract are suitable for co-encapsulation, and (3) whether co-encapsulated neem extract affects the attractiveness of CO 2 -releasing beads towards wireworms. Neem extract was co-encapsulated together with S. cerevisiae, starch and amyloglucosidase with a high encapsulation efficiency of 98.6% (based on measurement of azadirachtin A as the main active ingredient). Even at enhanced concentrations, neem extract allowed growth of S. cerevisiae, and beads containing neem extract exhibited CO 2 -emission comparable with beads without neem extract. When applied to the soil, the beads established a CO 2 gradient of >15 cm. The co-formulation containing neem extract showed no repellent effects and was attractive for wireworms within the first 24 h after exposure. Co-encapsulation of S. cerevisiae and neem extract is a promising approach for the development of attract-and-kill formulations for the control of wireworms. This study offers new options for the application of neem extracts in soil. © 2017 Society of Chemical Industry. © 2017 Society of Chemical Industry.

Countries' Biomedical Publications and Attraction Scores. A PubMed-based assessment.

PubMed

Xu, Qinyi; Boggio, Andrea; Ballabeni, Andrea

2014-01-01

Studying publication volumes at the country level is key to understanding and improving a country's research system. PubMed is a public search engine of publications in all life sciences areas. Here, we show how this search engine can be used to assess the outputs of life science-related research by country. We have measured the numbers of publications during different time periods based on the country of affiliation of the first authors. Moreover, we have designed scores, which we have named Attraction Scores, to appraise the relative focus either toward particular types of studies, such as clinical trials or reviews, or toward specific research areas, such as public health and pharmacogenomics, or toward specific topics, for instance embryonic stem cells; we have also investigated a possible use of these Attraction Scores in connection with regulatory policies. We have weighed the statistics against general indicators such as country populations and gross domestic products (GDP). During the 5-year period 2008-2012, the United States was the country with the highest number of publications and Denmark the one with the highest number of publications per capita. Among the 40 countries with the highest GDPs, Israel had the highest publications-to-GDP ratio. Among the 20 countries with the most publications, Japan had the highest Attraction Score for induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells and Italy the highest proportion of review publications. More than 50% of publications in English were from countries in which English is not the primary language. We show an assorted and extensive collection of rankings and charts that will inform scholars and policymakers in studying and improving the research systems both at the national and international level.

The effect of canine characteristics and symmetry on perceived smile attractiveness when canine teeth are substituted for lateral incisors.

PubMed

Rayner, Wendy Jane; Barber, Sophy K; Spencer, Richard James

2015-03-01

To determine the effect of canine tooth characteristics and symmetry on perceived smile attractiveness when maxillary canine teeth are substituted for missing lateral incisors. Prospective, cross-sectional study. Non-clinical study undertaken from Leeds Dental Institute, UK. A composite full-face image of a smiling female was used to display various dentitions; a control image with an 'ideal' smile, plus six further images substituting the maxillary lateral incisors with canine teeth either unilaterally or bilaterally with varying size, shape, colour and gingival margin level. The seven images were shown to orthodontists (n = 30), dentists (n = 30) and lay people (n = 30) who were asked to rate smile attractiveness using a visual analogue scale. Dental professionals rated smiles with canine substitution for lateral incisor agenesis to be significantly less attractive than an ideal smile unless the substituted canine teeth approximated the lateral incisor in terms of size, shape, colour and gingival margin. Lay people did not find smiles where canine teeth were substituted for lateral incisors significantly more or less attractive than an ideal smile regardless of the canine tooth characteristics. Dental professionals were significantly more perceptive than lay people to the deviation from ideal smile aesthetics due to canine substitution. Smiles with unilateral canine substitution were not found to be significantly less attractive than bilateral canine substitution by all groups. Canine characteristics and observer status will affect how canine substitution for lateral incisor agenesis is viewed in terms of aesthetic outcome.

Effect of Common Species of Florida Landscaping Plants on the Efficacy of Attractive Toxic Sugar Baits Against Aedes albopictus.

PubMed

Seeger, Kelly E; Scott, Jodi M; Muller, Gunter C; Qualls, Whitney A; Xue, Rui-De

2017-06-01

Attractive toxic sugar bait (ATSB) was applied to 5 different types of commonly found plants in landscaping of northeastern Florida. The ATSB applications were assessed for possible plant effects and preference against Aedes albopictus in semifield evaluations. Positive and negative controls consisted of plants sprayed with attractive sugar bait (no toxicant) and plants with nothing applied. Bioassays were conducted on stems with leaf clippings and on full plants to assess any difference in mosquito mortality on the different plants. Plants utilized in these evaluations were Indian hawthorne, Yaupon holly, Japanese privet, Loropetalum ruby, and podocarpus. In both assays, no significant difference was observed in the effect of ATSBs on adult female mosquitoes based on the type of plant. ATSB could be applied to common landscape plants for adult Ae. albopictus control.

Effects of gender diversity management on perceptions of organizational attractiveness: the role of individual differences in attitudes and beliefs.

PubMed

Martins, Luis L; Parsons, Charles K

2007-05-01

In this study, the authors examined how individual gender-related attitudes and beliefs affect the reactions of men and women to gender diversity management programs in organizations. They found that whereas there were no significant between-sex differences in the effects of gender diversity management on organizational attractiveness, there were strong within-sex differences based on individual attitudes and beliefs. Specifically, within the sexes, centrality of one's gender identity, attitudes toward affirmative action for women, and the belief that women are discriminated against in the workplace moderated the effects of gender diversity management on organizational attractiveness. The findings, combined with prior research, suggest that it is critical for organizations to incorporate efforts to manage perceptions of gender diversity management programs into their diversity management strategies. 2007 APA, all rights reserved

Reynolds Number Effects in Transonic Flow

DTIC Science & Technology

1988-12-01

the asme one as used for the results shown in figure 3.5-10 and -11). Also the corrals - tion between shock Mach number and Reynolds number at the flow...hypercritical, was derived from the conditions on the cylinder in normal flow utilizing the relation for the effective Reynolds number K= Reef /Re0 (see

Response of Phlebotomus papatasi to visual, physical and chemical attraction features in the field.

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

In this study, 27 CDC traps were modified with various attractive features and compared with a CDC trap with no light source or baits to evaluate the effects on attraction to Phlebotomus papatasi (Scopoli). Attractive features included CO2, lights, colored trap bodies, heat, moisture, chemical lures...

Effective numbers in the partitioning of biological diversity.

PubMed

Gregorius, Hans-Rolf

2016-11-21

Admissible measures of diversity allow specification of the number of types (species, alleles, etc.) that are "effectively" involved in producing the diversity (the "diversity effective number", also referred to as "true diversity") of a community or population. In metacommunities, effective numbers additionally serve in partitioning the total diversity (symbolized by γ) into one component summarizing the diversity within communities (symbolized by α) and an independent component summarizing the differences between communities (symbolized by β). There is growing consensus that the β-component should be treated in terms of an effective number of "distinct" communities in the metacommunity. Yet, the notion of distinctness is shown in the present paper to remain conceptually ambiguous at least with respect to the diversity within the "distinct" communities. To overcome this ambiguity and to provide the means for designing further desirable effective numbers, a new approach is taken that involves a generalized concept of effective number. The approach relies on first specifying the distributional characteristics of partitioning diversity among communities (among which are differentiation, where the same types tend to occur in the same communities, and apportionment, where different types tend to occur in different communities), then developing the indices which measure these characteristics, and finally inferring the effective numbers from these indices. (1) The β-component reflects apportionment characteristics of metacommunity structure and is quantified by the "apportionment effective number" of communities (number of effectively monomorphic communities). Since differentiation between communities arises only as a side effect of apportionment, the common interpretation of the β-component in terms of differentiation is unwarranted. (2) Multiplicative as well as additive methods of partitioning the total type diversity (γ) involve apportionment effective numbers

Laws of attraction: from perceptual forces to conceptual similarity.

PubMed

Ziemkiewicz, Caroline; Kosara, Robert

2010-01-01

Many of the pressing questions in information visualization deal with how exactly a user reads a collection of visual marks as information about relationships between entities. Previous research has suggested that people see parts of a visualization as objects, and may metaphorically interpret apparent physical relationships between these objects as suggestive of data relationships. We explored this hypothesis in detail in a series of user experiments. Inspired by the concept of implied dynamics in psychology, we first studied whether perceived gravity acting on a mark in a scatterplot can lead to errors in a participant's recall of the mark's position. The results of this study suggested that such position errors exist, but may be more strongly influenced by attraction between marks. We hypothesized that such apparent attraction may be influenced by elements used to suggest relationship between objects, such as connecting lines, grouping elements, and visual similarity. We further studied what visual elements are most likely to cause this attraction effect, and whether the elements that best predicted attraction errors were also those which suggested conceptual relationships most strongly. Our findings show a correlation between attraction errors and intuitions about relatedness, pointing towards a possible mechanism by which the perception of visual marks becomes an interpretation of data relationships.

Aging modulates cuticular hydrocarbons and sexual attractiveness in Drosophila melanogaster

PubMed Central

Kuo, Tsung-Han; Yew, Joanne Y.; Fedina, Tatyana Y.; Dreisewerd, Klaus; Dierick, Herman A.; Pletcher, Scott D.

2012-01-01

SUMMARY Attractiveness is a major component of sexual selection that is dependent on sexual characteristics, such as pheromone production, which often reflect an individual’s fitness and reproductive potential. Aging is a process that results in a steady decline in survival and reproductive output, yet little is known about its effect on specific aspects of attractiveness. In this report we asked how aging impacts pheromone production and sexual attractiveness in Drosophila melanogaster. Evidence suggests that key pheromones in Drosophila are produced as cuticular hydrocarbons (CHC), whose functions in attracting mates and influencing behavior have been widely studied. We employed gas chromatography/mass spectrometry and laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry to show that the composition of D. melanogaster CHC is significantly affected by aging in both sexes and that these changes are robust to different genetic backgrounds. Aging affected the relative levels of many individual CHC, and it shifted overall hydrocarbon profiles to favor compounds with longer chain lengths. We also show that the observed aging-related changes in CHC profiles are responsible for a significant reduction in sexual attractiveness. These studies illuminate causal links among pheromones, aging and attractiveness and suggest that CHC production may be an honest indicator of animal health and fertility. PMID:22323204

Exploring Cross-National Attraction in Education: Some Historical Comparisons of American and Chinese Attraction to Japanese Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rappleye, Jeremy

2007-01-01

This book attempts to theorize cross-national attraction by comparing American and Chinese attraction to Japanese education. The study takes a long historical view--spanning roughly from the Meiji Restoration (1868) to today--to determine when and why Japanese education has become attractive to these two countries. It uses a combination of…

The range of attraction for light traps catching Culicoides biting midges (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae)

PubMed Central

2013-01-01

Background Culicoides are vectors of e.g. bluetongue virus and Schmallenberg virus in northern Europe. Light trapping is an important tool for detecting the presence and quantifying the abundance of vectors in the field. Until now, few studies have investigated the range of attraction of light traps. Methods Here we test a previously described mathematical model (Model I) and two novel models for the attraction of vectors to light traps (Model II and III). In Model I, Culicoides fly to the nearest trap from within a fixed range of attraction. In Model II Culicoides fly towards areas with greater light intensity, and in Model III Culicoides evaluate light sources in the field of view and fly towards the strongest. Model II and III incorporated the directionally dependent light field created around light traps with fluorescent light tubes. All three models were fitted to light trap collections obtained from two novel experimental setups in the field where traps were placed in different configurations. Results Results showed that overlapping ranges of attraction of neighboring traps extended the shared range of attraction. Model I did not fit data from any of the experimental setups. Model II could only fit data from one of the setups, while Model III fitted data from both experimental setups. Conclusions The model with the best fit, Model III, indicates that Culicoides continuously evaluate the light source direction and intensity. The maximum range of attraction of a single 4W CDC light trap was estimated to be approximately 15.25 meters. The attraction towards light traps is different from the attraction to host animals and thus light trap catches may not represent the vector species and numbers attracted to hosts. PMID:23497628

Casimir effect for perfect electromagnetic conductors (PEMCs): a sum rule for attractive/repulsive forces

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rode, Stefan; Bennett, Robert; Yoshi Buhmann, Stefan

2018-04-01

We discuss the Casimir effect for boundary conditions involving perfect electromagnetic conductors, which interpolate between perfect electric conductors and perfect magnetic conductors. Based on the corresponding reciprocal Green’s tensor we construct the Green’s tensor for two perfectly reflecting plates with magnetoelectric coupling (non-reciprocal media) within the framework of macroscopic quantum electrodynamics. We calculate the Casimir force between two arbitrary perfect electromagnetic conductor plates, resulting in a universal analytic expression that connects the attractive Casimir force with the repulsive Boyer force. We relate the results to a duality symmetry of electromagnetism.

Attractiveness Compensates for Low Status Background in the Prediction of Educational Attainment.

PubMed

Bauldry, Shawn; Shanahan, Michael J; Russo, Rosemary; Roberts, Brent W; Damian, Rodica

2016-01-01

People who are perceived as good looking or as having a pleasant personality enjoy many advantages, including higher educational attainment. This study examines (1) whether associations between physical/personality attractiveness and educational attainment vary by parental socioeconomic resources and (2) whether parental socioeconomic resources predict these forms of attractiveness. Based on the theory of resource substitution with structural amplification, we hypothesized that both types of attractiveness would have a stronger association with educational attainment for people from disadvantaged backgrounds (resource substitution), but also that people from disadvantaged backgrounds would be less likely to be perceived as attractive (amplification). This study draws on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health-including repeated interviewer ratings of respondents' attractiveness-and trait-state structural equation models to examine the moderation (substitution) and mediation (amplification) of physical and personality attractiveness in the link between parental socioeconomic resources and educational attainment. Both perceived personality and physical attractiveness have stronger associations with educational attainment for people from families with lower levels of parental education (substitution). Further, parental education and income are associated with both dimensions of perceived attractiveness, and personality attractiveness is positively associated with educational attainment (amplification). Results do not differ by sex and race/ethnicity. Further, associations between perceived attractiveness and educational attainment remain after accounting for unmeasured family-level confounders using a sibling fixed-effects model. Perceived attractiveness, particularly personality attractiveness, is a more important psychosocial resource for educational attainment for people from disadvantaged backgrounds than for people from advantaged

Attractiveness of working in home care: An online focus group study among nurses.

PubMed

De Groot, Kim; Maurits, Erica E M; Francke, Anneke L

2018-01-01

Many western countries are experiencing a substantial shortage of home-care nurses due to the increasing numbers of care-dependent people living at home. In-depth knowledge is needed about what home-care nurses find attractive about their work in order to make recommendations for the recruitment and retention of home-care nursing staff. The aims of this explorative, qualitative study were to gain in-depth knowledge about which aspects home-care nurses find attractive about their work and to explore whether these aspects vary for home-care nurses with different levels of education. Discussions were conducted with six online focus groups in 2016 with a total of 38 Dutch home-care nurses. The transcripts were analysed using the principles of thematic analysis. The findings showed that home-care nurses find it attractive that they are a "linchpin", in the sense of being the leading professional and with the patient as the centre of care. Home-care nurses also find having autonomy attractive: autonomy over decision-making about care, freedom in work scheduling and working in a self-directed team. Variety in patient situations and activities also makes their work attractive. Home-care nurses with a bachelor's degree did not differ much in what they found attractive aspects from those with an associate degree (a nursing qualification after completing senior secondary vocational education). It is concluded that autonomy, variety and being a "linchpin" are the attractive aspects of working in home care. To help recruit and retain home-care nursing staff, these attractive aspects should be emphasised in nursing education and practice, in recruitment programmes and in publicity material. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Effects of Subject Self-Esteem, Test Performance Feedback, and Counselor Attractiveness on Influence in Counseling

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sell, John M.

1974-01-01

Counselor attractiveness, subject self-esteem, and subject receipt of test performance feedback were manipulated in a counseling analogue experiment. The results demonstrated no relationship between the independent variables and counselor influence, although the experimental induction of attractiveness was successful. Implications for a theory of…

Evaluating the Risk and Attractiveness of Romantic Partners When Confronted with Contradictory Cues

PubMed Central

Hennessy, Michael; Fishbein, Martin; Curtis, Brenda; Barrett, Daniel W.

2010-01-01

Research shows that people engage in “risky” sex with “safe” partners and in “safer” sex with “riskier” partners. How is the determination of “risky” or “safe” status made? Factorial survey methodology was used to randomly construct descriptions of romantic partners based on attractive and/or risky characteristics. Respondents evaluated 20 descriptions for attractiveness, health risk, likelihood of going on a date, likelihood of unprotected sex, and likelihood of STD/HIV infection. Respondents were most attracted to and perceived the least risk from attractive descriptions and were least attracted to and perceived the most risk from the risky descriptions. The differences between the “conflicting information” descriptions are attributable to a primacy effect: descriptions that began with attractiveness information but end with risk information were evaluated more positively than those that began with risk and ended with attractive information. PMID:17028997

How Do You Attract and Keep General Music Students in Your Music Program?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Teaching Music, 2007

2007-01-01

This article discusses a number of techniques that can help teachers attract and keep general music students in their music program. These include: (1) a piano lab; (2) a chime group; and (3) intensive contact with the community.

Translocation of polymers into crowded media with dynamic attractive nanoparticles.

PubMed

Cao, Wei-Ping; Ren, Qing-Bao; Luo, Meng-Bo

2015-07-01

The translocation of polymers through a small pore into crowded media with dynamic attractive nanoparticles is simulated. Results show that the nanoparticles at the trans side can affect the translocation by influencing the free-energy landscape and the diffusion of polymers. Thus the translocation time τ is dependent on the polymer-nanoparticle attraction strength ɛ and the mobility of nanoparticles V. We observe a power-law relation of τ with V, but the exponent is dependent on ɛ and nanoparticle concentration. In addition, we find that the effect of attractive dynamic nanoparticles on the dynamics of polymers is dependent on the time scale. At a short time scale, subnormal diffusion is observed at strong attraction and the diffusion is slowed down by the dynamic nanoparticles. However, the diffusion of polymers is normal at a long time scale and the diffusion constant increases with the increase in V.

Using eye tracking to test for individual differences in attention to attractive faces

PubMed Central

Valuch, Christian; Pflüger, Lena S.; Wallner, Bernard; Laeng, Bruno; Ansorge, Ulrich

2015-01-01

We assessed individual differences in visual attention toward faces in relation to their attractiveness via saccadic reaction times. Motivated by the aim to understand individual differences in attention to faces, we tested three hypotheses: (a) Attractive faces hold or capture attention more effectively than less attractive faces; (b) men show a stronger bias toward attractive opposite-sex faces than women; and (c) blue-eyed men show a stronger bias toward blue-eyed than brown-eyed feminine faces. The latter test was included because prior research suggested a high effect size. Our data supported hypotheses (a) and (b) but not (c). By conducting separate tests for disengagement of attention and attention capture, we found that individual differences exist at distinct stages of attentional processing but these differences are of varying robustness and importance. In our conclusion, we also advocate the use of linear mixed effects models as the most appropriate statistical approach for studying inter-individual differences in visual attention with naturalistic stimuli. PMID:25698993

Using eye tracking to test for individual differences in attention to attractive faces.

PubMed

Valuch, Christian; Pflüger, Lena S; Wallner, Bernard; Laeng, Bruno; Ansorge, Ulrich

2015-01-01

We assessed individual differences in visual attention toward faces in relation to their attractiveness via saccadic reaction times. Motivated by the aim to understand individual differences in attention to faces, we tested three hypotheses: (a) Attractive faces hold or capture attention more effectively than less attractive faces; (b) men show a stronger bias toward attractive opposite-sex faces than women; and (c) blue-eyed men show a stronger bias toward blue-eyed than brown-eyed feminine faces. The latter test was included because prior research suggested a high effect size. Our data supported hypotheses (a) and (b) but not (c). By conducting separate tests for disengagement of attention and attention capture, we found that individual differences exist at distinct stages of attentional processing but these differences are of varying robustness and importance. In our conclusion, we also advocate the use of linear mixed effects models as the most appropriate statistical approach for studying inter-individual differences in visual attention with naturalistic stimuli.

Facial aesthetics: babies prefer attractiveness to symmetry.

PubMed

Samuels, Curtis A; Butterworth, George; Roberts, Tony; Graupner, Lida; Hole, Graham

2013-01-01

The visual preferences of human infants for faces that varied in their attractiveness and in their symmetry about the midline were explored. The aim was to establish whether infants' visual preference for attractive faces may be mediated by the vertical symmetry of the face. Chimeric faces, made from photographs of attractive and unattractive female faces, were produced by computer graphics. Babies looked longer at normal and at chimeric attractive faces than at normal and at chimeric unattractive faces. There were no developmental differences between the younger and older infants: all preferred to look at the attractive faces. Infants as young as 4 months showed similarity with adults in the 'aesthetic perception' of attractiveness and this preference was not based on the vertical symmetry of the face.

Penis size interacts with body shape and height to influence male attractiveness.

PubMed

Mautz, Brian S; Wong, Bob B M; Peters, Richard A; Jennions, Michael D

2013-04-23

Compelling evidence from many animal taxa indicates that male genitalia are often under postcopulatory sexual selection for characteristics that increase a male's relative fertilization success. There could, however, also be direct precopulatory female mate choice based on male genital traits. Before clothing, the nonretractable human penis would have been conspicuous to potential mates. This observation has generated suggestions that human penis size partly evolved because of female choice. Here we show, based upon female assessment of digitally projected life-size, computer-generated images, that penis size interacts with body shape and height to determine male sexual attractiveness. Positive linear selection was detected for penis size, but the marginal increase in attractiveness eventually declined with greater penis size (i.e., quadratic selection). Penis size had a stronger effect on attractiveness in taller men than in shorter men. There was a similar increase in the positive effect of penis size on attractiveness with a more masculine body shape (i.e., greater shoulder-to-hip ratio). Surprisingly, larger penis size and greater height had almost equivalent positive effects on male attractiveness. Our results support the hypothesis that female mate choice could have driven the evolution of larger penises in humans. More broadly, our results show that precopulatory sexual selection can play a role in the evolution of genital traits.

Penis size interacts with body shape and height to influence male attractiveness

PubMed Central

Mautz, Brian S.; Wong, Bob B. M.; Peters, Richard A.; Jennions, Michael D.

2013-01-01

Compelling evidence from many animal taxa indicates that male genitalia are often under postcopulatory sexual selection for characteristics that increase a male’s relative fertilization success. There could, however, also be direct precopulatory female mate choice based on male genital traits. Before clothing, the nonretractable human penis would have been conspicuous to potential mates. This observation has generated suggestions that human penis size partly evolved because of female choice. Here we show, based upon female assessment of digitally projected life-size, computer-generated images, that penis size interacts with body shape and height to determine male sexual attractiveness. Positive linear selection was detected for penis size, but the marginal increase in attractiveness eventually declined with greater penis size (i.e., quadratic selection). Penis size had a stronger effect on attractiveness in taller men than in shorter men. There was a similar increase in the positive effect of penis size on attractiveness with a more masculine body shape (i.e., greater shoulder-to-hip ratio). Surprisingly, larger penis size and greater height had almost equivalent positive effects on male attractiveness. Our results support the hypothesis that female mate choice could have driven the evolution of larger penises in humans. More broadly, our results show that precopulatory sexual selection can play a role in the evolution of genital traits. PMID:23569234