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It's 1878.
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Sir Francis Galton
gives a remarkable talk.
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He's speaking to the Anthropologic
Instisitute of Great Britain and Ireland.
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Known for his pioneering work
in human intelligence,
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Dalton is a brilliant polymath.
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He's an explorer,
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and antrhopologist,
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a sociologist,
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a psychologist,
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and a statistician.
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He's also a Eugenist.
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In this talk,
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he presents a new technique
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by which he can combine photographs
and produce composite portraits.
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This technique could be used
to characterize different types of people.
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Dalton thinks that if he combines
photographs of violent criminals,
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he will discover the face of criminality.
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But to his surprise,
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the composite portrait that he produces
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is beautiful.
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Galton's surprising finding
raises deep questions.
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What is beauty?
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Why do certain configurations of line
and color and form excite us so?
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For most of human hisotiry,
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these questions have been approached
using logic and speculation,
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but in the last few decades,
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scientists have addressed
the question of beauty
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using ideas from evolutionary psychology
and tools of neuroscience.
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We're beginning to glimpse
the why and the how of beauty,
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at least in terms of what it means
for the human face and form.
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And in the process,
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we're stumbling upon some surprises.
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When it comes to seeing
beauty in each other,
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while this decision is certainly
subjective for the individual,
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it's sculpted by factors that contribute
to the survival of the group.
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Many experiments have shown
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that a few basic parameters contribute
to what makes a face attractive.
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These include averaging, symmetry
and the effects of hormones.
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And let's take each one of these in turn.
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Galton's finding
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that composite or average faces
are typically more attractive
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than each individual face
that contributes to the average
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has been replicated many times.
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This laboratory finding fits
with many people's intuitions.
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Average faces represent the central
tendencies of a group.
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People with mixed features
represent different populations,
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and presumably harbor
rare genetic diversity
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and adaptibility to the environment.
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Many people find
mixed-race individuals attractive
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and inbred families less so.
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The second factor that contributes
to beauty is symmetry.
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People generally find symmetic faces
more attractive than asymmetic ones.
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Developmental abnormalities
are often associated with asymmetries,
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and in plants, animal and humans,
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asymmetries often arise
from parasitic infections.
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Symmetry it turns out,
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is also an indicator of health.
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In the 1930s,
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a man named MAximallian Fector Rowis
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recognized the importance
of symmetry for beauty
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when he designed the beauty micrometer.
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With this device,
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he could measure minor, asymmetric flaws
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which he could then make up for
with products he sold from his company,
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named brilliantly after himself:
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Max Factor,
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which as you know is one of the world's
most famous brands for makeup.
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The third factor that contributes
to facial attractiveness
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is the effect of hormones.
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And here, I need to apologize
for confining my comments
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to heterosexual norms.
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But estrogen and testosterone
play important roles
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in shaping features
that we find attractive.
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Estrogen produces features
that signal fertility.
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Men typically find woman attractive
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who have elements of both
youth and maturity.
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A face that's too baby-like might
mean that the girl is not yet fertile,
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so men find women attractive
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who have large eyes, full lips
and narrow chins
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as indicators of youth,
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and high cheekbones as an
indicator of maturity.
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Now, testosterone produces features
that we regard as typically masculine.
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These include heavier brows,
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thinner cheeks
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and bigger, squared-off jaws.
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But here's a fascinating irony.
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In many species,
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if anything,
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testosterone suppresses the immune system.
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So the idea that testosterone-infused
features are a fitness indicator
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doesn't really make a whole lot of sense.
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Here, the logic is turned on its head.
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Instead of a fitness indicator,
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scientists invoke a handicap principle.
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The most commonly cited
example of a handicap
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is a peacock's tail.
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This beautiful but cumbersome tail
doesn't exactly help the peacock
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avoid predators and approach peahens.
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Why should such an extravagant
appendage evolve?
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Even Charles Darwin,
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in an 1860 letter to Asa Gray wrote
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that the sight of the peacock's tail
made him physcially illl.
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He couldn't explain it with his
theory of natural selection,
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and out of this frustration,
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he developed a theory of sexual selection.
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On this account,
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the display of the peacock's tail
is about sexual enticement,
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and this enticement means
that it's more likely
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that the peacock will mate
and have offspring.
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Now, the modern twist on this
display argument
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is that the peacock is also
advertising its health to the peahen.
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Only especially fit organisms
can afford to divert resources
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to maintaining such
an extravagant appendage.
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Only espeically fit men can afford
the price that testorone levies
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on their immune system.
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And by anaology,
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think of the fact that only very
rich men can afford
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to pay more than $10,000 for a watch
as a display of their financial fitness.
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Now, many people hear these kinds
of evoulutionary claims
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and think they mean that we somehow
are unconciously seeking mates
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who are healthy,
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and I htink this idea
is probably not right.
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Teenagers and young adults are not
exactly known for making decisions
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that are predicated on health concerns.
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But they don't have to be,
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and let me explain why.
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Imaging a population in which people
have three different types of preferences:
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for green, for orange and for red.
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From their point of view,
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their preferences have nothing
to do with health,
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they just like what they like.
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But if it were also the case
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that these preferences are associated
with the different likelihood
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of producing offspring,
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let's say in a ration of three
to two to one,
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then in the first generation,
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there would be three greens
to two organges to one red,
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and in each subsequent generation,
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the proportion of greens increase
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so that intention rations 98 percent
of this population has a green preference.
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Now, scientists coming in
and sampling this population
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disover that green
preferences are universal,
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so the point about this little
abstract example
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is that while preferences for
specific phsyical features
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can be arbitrary for the individual,
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if those features are hertiable
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and they are associated
with a reproductive advangtage,
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over time,
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they become universal for the group.
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So what happens in the brain
when we see beautiful people?
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Attractive faces activate parts of our
visual cortex in the back of the brain.
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An area called the [fusiform gyrus]
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that is especially attuned
to processing faces,
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and an adjacent area called
the lateral occipidal complex
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that is especially attuned
to processing objects.
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In addition,
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attractive faces activate parts
of our reward and pleasure centers
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in the front and deep in the brain,
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and these include areas that have
complicated names,
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like the ventral staiatum,
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the orber frontal cortex
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and the ventrimedial prefontol cortex.
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Our official brain that is attuned
to processing faces
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interacts with our pleasure centers
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to underpin the experience of beauty.
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Amazingly, while we all
engage with beauty,
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without our knowledge,
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beauty also engages us.
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Our brains respond to attractive faces
even when we're not thinking about beauty.
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We conducted an experiement in which
people saw a series of faces,
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and in one condition,
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they had to decide if a pair of faces
were the same or a different person.
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Even in this condition,
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attractive faces drove neural activity
robustly in their visual cortex
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despite the fact that they were thinking
about a person's identity
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and not their beauty.
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Another group similarly found
automatic responses to beauty
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within our pleasure centers.
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So taken together,
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these studies suggest that our brain
automatically responds to beauty
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by linking vision and pleasure.
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These beauty detectors,
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it seems,
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ping ever time we see beauty
regardless of whatever else
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we might be thinking.
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We also have a beauty is good stereotype
embedded in the brain.
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Within the orber frontal cortex,
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there's overlapping neaural activity
in response to beauty and to goodness,
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and this happens even when people
aren't expllicitly thinking
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about beauty or goodness.
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Our brains seem to reflexively
associate beauty and good.
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And this reflexive association may be
the biologic trigger
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for the many social effects of beauty.
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Attractive people receive all kinds
of advantages in life.
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They're regarded as more intelligent,
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more trustworthy,
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they're given higher pay
and lesser punishments,
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even when such judgments
are not warranted.
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These kinds of observations reveal
beauty's ugly side.
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In my lab,
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we recently found that people with minor
facial anomalies and disfigurements
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are regarded as less good, less kind,
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less intelligent, less competent
and less hardworking.
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Unfortunately, we also have
a disfigured-is-bad stereotype.
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This stereotype is probably
exploited and magnified
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by images in the popular media
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in which facial disfigurement
is often used as a shorthand
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to make someone a villianous character.
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We need to undersand
these kinds of implicit biases
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if we are to overcome them,
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and aim for a society in which
we treat people fairly,
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based on their behavior and not
on the happenstance of their looks.
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Let me leave you with one final thought.
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Beauty is a work in progress.
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The so-called universal
attributes of beauty
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were selected for --
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during the almost two million
years of the [plystascne?]
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Life was nasty, brutish
and a very long time ago.
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The selection criteria for reproductive
success from that time
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doesn't really apply today.
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For example,
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death by parasite is not one
of the top ways that people die,
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at least not in the
technologically-developed world.
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From antibiotics to surgery,
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birth control to invitrofertilization,
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the filters for reproductive
success are being relaxed,
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and under these relaxed conditions,
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preference and trait
combinations are free to drift
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and become more variable.
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Even as we are profoundly
effecting our environment,
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modern medicine and technological
innovation is profoundly effecting
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the very essence of what
it means to look beautiful.
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The universal nature of beauty is changing
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even as we're changing the universe.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)