EP # 20 | Are Attractiveness Preferences Universal? | Lynda Boothroyd

Our appearance is very important to us. This is evident when we look at advertisements, online trends such as what the youth call “looksmaxxing”, or simply reflect on the amount of time we spend looking at a mirror in the morning. For decades, theories in evolutionary psychology state that humans are attracted to specific physical features: think of symmetrical faces. The story goes, that humans everywhere should share these appearance/attractiveness preferences as they are signals of health and fertility? Is this really the case? Are these universal preferences? Our guest today, Lynda Boothroyd, has long questioned the universality of these preferences by studying them in communities in Nicaragua.Lynda Boothroyd is a Professor of Psychology at Durham University. Her research focuses on Evolutionary and Cross-Cultural understandings of interpersonal attraction and sexual selection. She has recently focused on body ideals in rural Nicaragua alongside experimental work both in the laboratory and in the field on the impacts of visual experience on body size preferences. She has a multidisciplinary approach to her research, incorporating perspectives from Evolutionary Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Social Psychology and Biological Anthropology, and has incorporated a mixed-methods component in her current work.

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