A Touch of Realism

A team at the University of Aberdeen has put together some pictures of men and women looking happy and disgusted, and has discovered the sordid, hidden truth behind romantic passion: "if you smile at people and you maintain eye contact, it makes you more attractive". According to a Dr Ben Jones, of the Face Research Laboratory, this "challenges most previous studies of facial attractiveness". Apparently these previous studies "focused on physical characteristics, such as a preference for symmetrical faces or masculine versus feminine features" without taking facial expressions into account. Specialists are wonderful creatures sometimes.

Dr Jones claims that sexual attraction is "a sort of narcissistic thing. People are attracted to people who are attracted to them", which doubtless explains why there is no such thing as unrequited love; and that "at the most basic level ... people like faces with direct gaze more than they like the same faces with averted gaze", which is why shyness is so unattractive a trait as to render romantic pursuit and conquest, at the most basic level, such a thoroughly unpopular pastime.