Attractiveness is, of course, not the same as sexual desire. For example, a heterosexual man might judge another man to be attractive without feeling any sexual desire towards him. In one experiment, heterosexual women did not show a change in pupil size (an index of desire) on viewing an image of a woman whom they described as attractive (Laeng and Falkenberg, 2007). However, an effect seen across cultures is that normally a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for someone to elicit strong sexual wanting is that they would be judged as ‘attractive’ (Ford and Beach, 1951). Physical appearance (‘attractiveness’) is valued highly by both men and women in terms of what triggers desire (Regan and Berscheid, 1999). There is a sex difference in that men tend to find women more attractive than women find men attractive (Istvan et al., 1983).

Features and qualities

The quality of attractiveness is not simply a product of Hollywood and the advertising industry, though doubtless this has a role in promoting certain stereotypes. In experiments, even human infants as young as 2–3 months of age spend more timing looking at those women’s faces which were judged by adults as attractive (Langlois et al., 1990). By 12 months of age, they spend more time interacting with strangers wearing attractive masks as compared to unattractive masks.