Random Features Science Says You Are Attracted To Without Even Knowing (14 items)

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  (#9) A Rested Face Is A More Appealing Face

  It's probably not surprising that you find it unattractive when someone has a terrible night and looks like a ghoul in the morning, but being rested is more attractive even when the effect is hardly noticeable. A Swedish study found that we notice a lot of minor facial cues in people who have underslept, considering them less healthy and less attractive than well-rested people. (The authors point out that observers only saw photographs of the participants for six seconds, so the total effect of sleeplessness on your attractiveness in real life would probably be even more significant.) Even a few hours of sleep deprivation will produce noticeable facial changes (paler skin, dark undereye circles, and down-turned mouths). The effect is cumulative over a lifetime, too; consistent sleep deprivation ages your skin and interferes with its ability to recover from sun damage.
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  (#3) The Smell Of An Immune System That's Different From Your Own Gets You Hot And Bothered

  It might sound crazy, but each person's immune system is totally unique and has the capability to assess the similarities and differences it has to the immune systems of those around it. The "major histocompatibility complex" (MHC) is the thing your immune system uses to distinguish its own cells from other cells. Everyone's is unique. Studies have found that humans are attracted to people whose MHC is most unlike their own - or, at least, they prefer how they smell. One study had male students sleep in t-shirts for two nights and then asked female students to rate the shirts' scents; the women most preferred the smell of men who had the most dissimilar MHCs. A separate study reached the same conclusions in reverse - men preferred the scent of women who had immune systems unlike their own.
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  (#6) Averageness Is An Aphrodisiac

  Descriptions of beauty always focus on someone's outstanding features: her big, soulful eyes or his chiseled jaw. Nobody ever writes an attractive character by saying "Well, to be honest, most of her was pretty unremarkable." But all of a person's ordinary features, the ones that don't really stand out, are actually pretty important. Several studies have demonstrated that, the less a person's features differ from the norm in a given population, the more attractive his or her face is. One study found that averaging together random faces into a composite image resulted in a more attractive face than any of the individual source faces. 
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  (#7) Immune System Strength Is A Turn On

  Given that human immune systems have the ability to distinguish between their own cells and the cells of another person, it shouldn't come as a surprise that one of the unseen forces of attraction is the health of someone's immune system. British researchers tested the immune systems of male subjects by measuring their antibody responses to a vaccine for Hepatitis B. They then showed photographs of the men's faces to 94 female study participants, who went on to rate the men with the strongest immune systems as more attractive than their peers. (The men rated as most attractive also had higher testosterone levels and lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol.) Incidentally, this seems like it may be a one-way correlation; a similar study by the same researchers found that men also preferred the faces of women with low cortisol, but their immune systems weren't significant to facial attractiveness ratings.
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  (#8) Men Love A Long-Armed Woman

  A study in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology found that some aspects of attractiveness were to be expected, and they persisted across different cultures. When asked to rate images of various women for attractiveness, a group of Australian participants pretty much agreed with a group of Hong Kong participants in their ratings; both groups prioritized things that indicate youth and health. Both groups preferred taller women with a low BMI and a high hip-to-waist ratio. Surprisingly, though, both groups also indicated a preference for women with longer arms; leg size had no effect on their ratings.
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  (#1) A Resemblance To Your Parents Is A Turn On

  To some degree, your whole concept of attractiveness is based on formative experiences from your infancy. One British study found that the age of a person's parents determined their level of attraction to various age-based facial characteristics. Women who were born when their parents were older (over 30) were less impressed by youthful features than women with younger parents, and, indeed, the women born to the older set tended to prefer older male faces. Similarly, men's preferences were influenced by their mothers' ages. Another study found that, regardless of whether or not we mean to - or even realize it - we wind up with partners who have features in common with our parents; in fact, the strongest predictor of your spouse's eye color is the eye color of your opposite-sex parent.

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