Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ll have noticed that beards have come sprouting back into fashion, at least in the UK and US. To psychologists, this phenomenon raises several inter-related questions, such as – are these men just copying each other; what does a beard do to a man’s attractiveness; does it make him look more macho; and given the answers to the previous, should I grow one too? Well, that last question might apply only to male psychologists. Anyhow, here to help you untangle these issues, we present the latest in our world-famous series of special features: the psychology of beards, digested.
除非你一直躲在岩石下面,否则你会注意到胡子已经重新流行起来了,至少在英国和美国是这样。对心理学家来说,这一现象引发了几个相互关联的问题,例如:这些男人只是互相模仿吗?胡子对男人的吸引力有什么作用?这是否会使他看起来更具男子气概?为了回答前面的问题,我是否也应该留胡子?那么,最后一个问题可能只适用于男性心理学家。总之,来帮助你解决这些问题,在我们的举世闻名的最新特刊中,向大家呈现了研究精华:胡子心理学.
Beards make men look more attractive (except when they don’t)
胡子使男人看起来更有魅力(除非他们不留胡子)
One influential theory is that men’s beards are an adornment, like a peacock’s tail, which make them more attractive, especially to the opposite sex. Yet the research on whether men with beards are more attractive is contradictory.
一个有影响的理论是,男人的胡须是一种装饰物,就像是孔雀的尾巴,使它们更具吸引力,尤其是对于异性。然而,留胡子的男人真的更具吸引力么?对于这个话题的研究是矛盾的。
This paper from 1973 that involved undergrads rating men’s faces found that bearded men were considered better-looking (not to mention more masculine, mature, dominant, self-confident, courageous, liberal, nonconforming, industrious, and older). That was the hairy 70s you say, but this study published this very month in Archives of Sexual Behaviour also found that hundreds of women recruited online consistently rated bearded men, regardless of amount of beard growth, as more sexually attractive than their clean-shaven counterparts.