I expect that most people are biased when it comes to judging how attractive they are. Asking people probably doesn’t help too much, since people are likely to be nice, and close friends probably also have a biased view of ones attractiveness. So is there a good way to calibrate your perception of how good you look?
You gawk a lot at people and develop an eye for what attractiveness means. Don’t ask people, that’s almost always useless, unless you happen to run into an expert on this. See what your eye responds positively to. Then evaluating yourself is as easy as keeping a reference feature in your mind up for comparison when you look at yourself. Keep in mind that attractive people are not all identical; there are attractive and unattractive versions and combinations of any trait.
There are also some things you could do to get an eye-opening perspective of yourself – ever looked at yourself through a second mirror forming an acute angle to the first mirror, so you can see yourself from the side view? I guarantee that the first time you do it you’ll feel very surprised. Same thing when you’re filmed talking and then watch the footage. Images that are flipped horizontally relative to your mirror image also help you notice asymmetries. The point is that the eye notices a lot more when the image is even slightly unfamiliar.
Most people don’t have a strong operational definition of what “how attractive” means—it’s not so much that people are biased, but that the question is incoherent. Even the visual components of attraction between two people have a lot of dimensions, which different viewers will combine differently.
Depending on why you want to know, I can suggest a few different paths:
1) seek professional opinion—ask people at modeling agencies whether you have looks that will sell product.
2) seek crowd opinion—there are sites where you can post a photo and see how many responses you get.
3) find ways to measure the common components of beauty (symmetry, ratios between features, etc.). 4) find ways to identify (and enhance) attractiveness to specific people rather than in general.
None of these are objective. Give that up—beauty isn’t actually objective (though there are components that correlate strongly with majority subjective reporting). Also, you don’t say “physical attractiveness”, nor “sexual attractiveness”, so perhaps you intend to mean the total package of likeability for all purposes—if so, ignore 1-3; #4 is the one which acknowledges the idiosyncratic nature of human attraction.
Most people don’t have a strong operational definition of what “how attractive” means—it’s not so much that people are biased, but that the question is incoherent.
I am not sure why do you think so—conditional on specifying a (sub)culture, most people have little trouble saying “X looks more attractive than Y”. Of course, that’s just ranking, not assigning some numerical estimate. It’s easy to pick a pair of faces which 95%+ of respondents will rank in attractiveness the same way.
I recently got a beard and had conversations with a few people about whether I look more attractive with it.
When talking with one girl she said that the effect of the beard was that I look more mature and that the question is whether that’s the image that I want to project.
In some situations looking more mature will be helpful and attractive while in other it won’t. That information will get lost when you focus on a single scale of attractiveness.
Despite matureness other qualities such as friendliness, trustworthiness and openness can also be communicate through looks and some people will count them into attractiveness while other won’t.
Perhaps a rating system based on proportions, symmetry, and skin health. However, I’m not convinced this is that (it is a large factor in decisions, yes, but it’s not one you can change much beyond style and hygiene, unless you’re willing to undergo plastic surgery) important, except in the realm of Tinder-esque situations.
If you happen to live somewhere where random people will complement you or flirt with you, I suppose number of incidents/number of people exposed to over a large span of time could be a metric.
If you happen to live somewhere where random people will complement you or flirt with you, I suppose number of incidents/number of people exposed to over a large span of time could be a metric.
I think that has more to do with how approachable you look than with how attractive you look.
If there was a large dataset of faces shot in a similar way and rated for attractiveness somewhere, you could take a photo of yourself, look for people in the set who look like you (possibly with some sort of face recognition program) and see how they are rated.
I expect that most people are biased when it comes to judging how attractive they are. Asking people probably doesn’t help too much, since people are likely to be nice, and close friends probably also have a biased view of ones attractiveness. So is there a good way to calibrate your perception of how good you look?
Can’t you just post a photo on a relevant website? okCupid has a rating system, I think HotOrNot is still around, etc.
You gawk a lot at people and develop an eye for what attractiveness means. Don’t ask people, that’s almost always useless, unless you happen to run into an expert on this. See what your eye responds positively to. Then evaluating yourself is as easy as keeping a reference feature in your mind up for comparison when you look at yourself. Keep in mind that attractive people are not all identical; there are attractive and unattractive versions and combinations of any trait.
There are also some things you could do to get an eye-opening perspective of yourself – ever looked at yourself through a second mirror forming an acute angle to the first mirror, so you can see yourself from the side view? I guarantee that the first time you do it you’ll feel very surprised. Same thing when you’re filmed talking and then watch the footage. Images that are flipped horizontally relative to your mirror image also help you notice asymmetries. The point is that the eye notices a lot more when the image is even slightly unfamiliar.
Most people don’t have a strong operational definition of what “how attractive” means—it’s not so much that people are biased, but that the question is incoherent. Even the visual components of attraction between two people have a lot of dimensions, which different viewers will combine differently.
Depending on why you want to know, I can suggest a few different paths: 1) seek professional opinion—ask people at modeling agencies whether you have looks that will sell product. 2) seek crowd opinion—there are sites where you can post a photo and see how many responses you get. 3) find ways to measure the common components of beauty (symmetry, ratios between features, etc.).
4) find ways to identify (and enhance) attractiveness to specific people rather than in general.
None of these are objective. Give that up—beauty isn’t actually objective (though there are components that correlate strongly with majority subjective reporting). Also, you don’t say “physical attractiveness”, nor “sexual attractiveness”, so perhaps you intend to mean the total package of likeability for all purposes—if so, ignore 1-3; #4 is the one which acknowledges the idiosyncratic nature of human attraction.
I am not sure why do you think so—conditional on specifying a (sub)culture, most people have little trouble saying “X looks more attractive than Y”. Of course, that’s just ranking, not assigning some numerical estimate. It’s easy to pick a pair of faces which 95%+ of respondents will rank in attractiveness the same way.
I recently got a beard and had conversations with a few people about whether I look more attractive with it. When talking with one girl she said that the effect of the beard was that I look more mature and that the question is whether that’s the image that I want to project.
In some situations looking more mature will be helpful and attractive while in other it won’t. That information will get lost when you focus on a single scale of attractiveness.
Despite matureness other qualities such as friendliness, trustworthiness and openness can also be communicate through looks and some people will count them into attractiveness while other won’t.
What exactly do you want to know about your looks? In what way would an answer to the question help you?
Perhaps a rating system based on proportions, symmetry, and skin health. However, I’m not convinced this is that (it is a large factor in decisions, yes, but it’s not one you can change much beyond style and hygiene, unless you’re willing to undergo plastic surgery) important, except in the realm of Tinder-esque situations.
If you happen to live somewhere where random people will complement you or flirt with you, I suppose number of incidents/number of people exposed to over a large span of time could be a metric.
I think that has more to do with how approachable you look than with how attractive you look.
If there was a large dataset of faces shot in a similar way and rated for attractiveness somewhere, you could take a photo of yourself, look for people in the set who look like you (possibly with some sort of face recognition program) and see how they are rated.