- Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, and if you’re looking to land a date there are a few things you can do to make yourself more attractive to potential partners.
- Researchers have identified 12 science-backed tricks to appear more attractive, including smiling and wearing red.
- But it’s about more than just physical appearance. Pay attention to how you talk to people, who you hang out with, and the way you carry yourself.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Valentine’s Day is right around the corner and if you’re looking to land a first date, or just spend some time with a significant other, there are a few steps that experts suggest you take to make yourself appear more attractive.
But it’s about more than just your physical appearance. Attractiveness is impacted by the way you carry yourself, the folks you hang out with, and how you talk to people – plus a whole lot more.
Here are 12 science-backed strategies for appearing more attractive.
Yu Han contributed to a previous version of this article.
Make 'em laugh. Women are more attracted to men with a sense of humor.
In one study, men were more successful at getting women's numbers when they had recently told a joke to a group of friends.
In that study, a psychologist asked three men to tell (or not tell) a funny joke to their friends at a bar while a woman sat at a nearby table. Then those men were instructed to approach the woman and ask for her number. After the man had left, an experimenter approached the woman and asked her to rate the man on attractiveness and intelligence and to indicate how much she would want to date the man long-term.
Results showed that the guys who told jokes were three times as likely to get the woman's number as the men who didn't. They were also rated more attractive and intelligent.
"The effect of a great sense of humor on women's attractions might be partially explained by the fact that funny people are considered to be more social and more intelligent, things that women seek in a mate," anthropologist Gil Greengross writes.
Surround yourself with friends. People look better when they're in a group.
In one experiment featured in a 2013 study by researchers at the University of California-San Diego, 25 male and female undergrads looked at 300 photos of women's faces - once in a group photo and once in an isolated portrait. Another experiment repeated the same procedure with 18 undergrads looking at photos of men's faces. Results showed that participants rated both men and women significantly more attractive when they were pictured in a group. They call this the "cheerleader effect."
"Having a few wingmen or wingwomen may indeed be a good dating strategy, particularly if their facial features complement and average out one's unattractive idiosyncrasies," study authors Drew Walker and Edward Vul write.
Skip the small talk. People who ask deep questions feel more connected than people who talk about superficial topics.
In a 1997 study, State University of New York psychologist Arthur Aron and colleagues separated two groups of undergrads and paired them off, giving each duo 45 minutes to answer a set of questions.
One question set was small talk, and the other was increasingly probing. The people who asked deeper questions felt more connected. Two people who participated in the study even fell in love months later, which is an intriguing - though probably insignificant - result.
Be a leader.
For one study, researchers recruited 49 Wisconsin legislative aides to rate the attractiveness of different politicians. Sure enough, participants rated the leaders as more attractive if they aligned with their political commitments (Republican or Democrat).
"In contrast with research traditions that treat physical attractiveness as a static trait, our findings highlight the importance of group membership as a lens for perceiving familiar leaders' physical attractiveness," concluded lead author Kevin Kniffin and his colleagues.
Put on a happy face. Science says a cheerful facial expression may compensate for relative unattractiveness.
In two experiments, researchers in Switzerland examined the relationship between attractiveness and smiling.
They found that the stronger the smile, the more attractive a face looked.
Get a pet. Being a dog owner may signal that a man is nurturing and capable of making long-term commitments. It can also make someone appear more approachable.
In a 2014 experiment, 100 Israeli women read vignettes about men. Some of the men were described as "cads": they would cheat on their partner and get into fights. The other men were described as stereotypical "dads": they would work hard at their job and take good care of their kids.
Whenever the story featured a cad who owned a dog, women rated that man as a more suitable long-term partner than a cad who didn't own a dog. Cads with dogs were even rated slightly more attractive than dads with dogs.
Be nice. When people hear about how nice somebody is, they find the person's face more attractive.
In one 2014 study, 60 men and 60 women looked at 845 photos of other people in their 20s, all displaying neutral expressions. Some of those photos were accompanied by the Chinese words for "decent" and honest"; the others were accompanied by the Chinese words for "evil" and "mean"; still others weren't accompanied by any personality information.
Participants ended up rating people more attractive when they were described as nice than when they were described as mean or when there was no additional information about them.
"Personality characteristics may be linked to facial attractiveness, such that positive personality characteristics can promote facial attractiveness, whereas negative personality characteristics can reduce facial attractiveness," write authors Yan Zhang, Fanchang Kong, Yanli Zhong, and Hui Kou.
Live in a luxe apartment.
In one small study by researchers at Cardiff Metropolitan University, a man was photographed with a casual posture in a "high-status" luxury apartment and a "neutral-status" standard apartment context.
The men who appeared to be "high-status" received higher attractiveness rating from a group of 35 female undergrads.
Show off some musical skills. Playing good music can make men more attractive to women.
In a 2014 study, researchers asked about 1,500 women (with an average age of 28) to listen to simple and complex pieces of music and rate the attractiveness of the composer.
The results showed that women preferred the more complex music during "peak conception times," and the women said they would choose the composer of the more complex music as a long-term partner.
Cultivate mindfulness. Women find mindful men more attractive due to their increased attentiveness.
In 2015, Australian researchers studied undergrads participating in a speed-dating session, and found that mindful men tended to receive higher attractiveness ratings from women.
Before the session began, 91 students were asked to fill out a mindfulness questionnaire, in which they indicated how much they agreed with statements like, "I perceive my feelings and emotions without having to react to them."
After each interaction with an opposite-sex partner, students privately indicated how "sexy" they found their partner and how much they'd like to date that person.
Results showed that men were generally more drawn to physically attractive women. (Independent coders had rated the students' attractiveness beforehand.) But women were generally more attracted to mindful men.
The researchers suggest that mindful men may have been more attentive to partners during the brief interactions and may have done a better job at regulating their anxiety, which in turn made them more attractive.
Participate in an extreme sport, like deep-sea scuba diving or mountain biking.
A 2014 study led by researchers at the University of Alaska at Anchorage found that women are attracted to men who take what the researchers call "hunter-gatherer risks."
The researchers had 233 undergrads fill out questionnaires about how attractive they would find a partner who engaged in certain risky behaviors.
Hunter-gatherer risks included mountain biking, deep-sea scuba diving, and extreme rollerblading. "Modern" risks included plagiarizing an academic paper, casually handling chemicals in a lab, and not updating the virus-protection software on your computer.
Results showed that women said they would be more attracted to men who engaged in hunter-gatherer risks - the kinds that were similar to risks faced by ancestral humans. Women said they would be less attracted to men who engaged in modern risks, probably because those risks seem just plain dumb.
Wear red.
University of Rochester researchers found that women who wear red may be more attractive to men.
The study featured a series of experiments, in which groups of about 30 male undergrads looked at black-and-white headshots of a young woman standing against either a red, white, gray, green, or blue background.
Results showed that the men perceived women standing in front of a red background as more physically attractive and more sexually attractive. They were also more likely to want to date them.
Interestingly, when men were asked to indicate what factored into their attractiveness rating, few mentioned the background color, suggesting that the preference for red is subconscious.
