To accompany feature “What makes a pretty face?”

TOPIC: SCIENCE

Before Reading:

1.         What features do you think make someone beautiful?

2.         Do you think you treat good-looking people differently than others?

During Reading:

1.         What does it mean for a face to be “symmetrical”?

2.         What does it mean for a face to be “average”?

3.         How did babies in Judith Langlois’s experiment show a preference for pretty faces?

4.         What difference did Coren Apicella find between British and Hazda subjects’ preferences for digitally averaged faces?

5.         How are beauty and health linked in people?

6.         Why might some female swordtail fish prefer males that are less symmetrical?

7.         How are health and “beauty” connected in peacocks?

8.         What is EEG?

9.         How do our brains process attractive faces differently than others? What about average faces?

10.       What did researchers find when they asked people to describe women’s personalities based on their photos?

After Reading:

1.         What are some of the biological reasons that we might prefer attractive faces?

2.         How might a bias toward attractive faces hurt people?