Signs of wit and creativity in average-looking women may actually hurt their chances of getting a date more than if they stayed silent, according to a new study published in Royal Society Open Science.
Meanwhile, the opposite is true for men. "Creative guys with less attractive faces were almost identical in attractiveness to really good looking guys who were not as creative," study author Christopher Watkins explains. "Creative women with less attractive faces seem to be perhaps penalized in some way." For the study, volunteers were asked to rate the looks of male and female headshots without being given any background context on the people in the images.
Different volunteers were then asked to rate the individuals' attractiveness, but were given information about each person's personality. Shockingly, average-looking women described as creative scored lower than they would without any indication of their personality. Meanwhile, creative men scored nearly as high as their more attractive counterparts. Watkins suggests that these judgements are often involuntary and subconscious, and can be attributed to evolutionary biology.
Source: News Hub