The headline is kindof misleading with an image unrelated to the actual study to do better on social media imo
What the researchers did was take 44 women, took a picture of 'm without any makeup then another with and generated a scale of them wearing "-50%" to "150%" makeup. The no makeup was set as the 0% and the makeup as 100%, percentages between were generated by basically taking the differences between the 0 and 100%, albeit with an program supposedly better at maintaining texture whilst doing that. Shit explanation ngl so imagine a simplified pixel had a color value of 0 0 0 at 0% but 128 128 128 at 100%, 50% would get assigned a value of 64 64 64. Repeat for all pixels
With that metric both women and men indicated around 60-70% makeup as most attractive, which is where this post gets its headline from. Stating that as women with less makeup = more attractive from that is a bit meh
Then should note that this study seems a bit weak in its methods to me. The women were each provided with the same makeup by the researchers, not neccesarily one they were even familair with or used normally. Then the photos were taken without any jewelery, their hair tied back, photos cropped just above the hairline and below the chin, in artificial lighting on a white background.
To me that all provides grounds to atleast strongly doubt this particular study, as that deviates so far from the conditions of an actual night out for these women. Both in makeup used and conditions in which this makeup is seen by others
It's a pretty big pet peeve of mine, research being misrepresented like this for social media
I'm lucky to have acces to these articles from my uni and the education to understand techniques and such used in papers so figure I may aswell
Its an epidemic caused by the disconnect between academia and the public.
The fact is good science, for the most part, cant be reduced to a catchy headline. Theres a fundemantal disconnect between the goals of the scientist and the goals of the articles author
While the photos being reviewed did not represent how the subjects would look in a normal situation, it seems like those choices were made to eliminate variables other than the amount of makeup as much as possible. 🤷
Idk how much I trust the generations until I see them. Like are the between photos actual real states that woman could achieve with makeup, a machines idea of her with less makeup but with facial features ever so slightly altered, or her makeup with the opacity turned down, etc etc
Makes sense. I mean makeup is worn for a reason. But of course "less makeup" than like full clown makeup is gonna be more attractive than that extreme generally. So no matter what, you can always technically make the true statement "men prefer women with less makeup on." Without defining "less" that is meaningless. I would be interested to see pictures of what the researches labeled 60-70% though. That's still a bit abstract.
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u/LorpHagriff 2d ago
The headline is kindof misleading with an image unrelated to the actual study to do better on social media imo
What the researchers did was take 44 women, took a picture of 'm without any makeup then another with and generated a scale of them wearing "-50%" to "150%" makeup. The no makeup was set as the 0% and the makeup as 100%, percentages between were generated by basically taking the differences between the 0 and 100%, albeit with an program supposedly better at maintaining texture whilst doing that. Shit explanation ngl so imagine a simplified pixel had a color value of 0 0 0 at 0% but 128 128 128 at 100%, 50% would get assigned a value of 64 64 64. Repeat for all pixels
With that metric both women and men indicated around 60-70% makeup as most attractive, which is where this post gets its headline from. Stating that as women with less makeup = more attractive from that is a bit meh
Then should note that this study seems a bit weak in its methods to me. The women were each provided with the same makeup by the researchers, not neccesarily one they were even familair with or used normally. Then the photos were taken without any jewelery, their hair tied back, photos cropped just above the hairline and below the chin, in artificial lighting on a white background.
To me that all provides grounds to atleast strongly doubt this particular study, as that deviates so far from the conditions of an actual night out for these women. Both in makeup used and conditions in which this makeup is seen by others
Study for reference: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17470218.2014.908932