Works (273)

Works can belong to more than one series. In some cases, as with Chronicles of Narnia , disagreements about order necessitate the creation of more than one series. If the series has an order, add a number or other descriptor in parenthesis after the series title eg. By default, it sorts by the number, or alphabetically if there is no number.

If you want to force a particular order, use the character to divide the number and the descriptor. So, " 0 prequel " sorts by 0 under the label "prequel. Series was designed to cover groups of books generally understood as such see Wikipedia: Like many concepts in the book world, "series" is a somewhat fluid and contested notion. A good rule of thumb is that series have a conventional name and are intentional creations , on the part of the author or publisher. For now, avoid forcing the issue with mere "lists" of works possessing an arbitrary shared characteristic, such as relating to a particular place.

Avoid series that cross authors, unless the authors were or became aware of the series identification eg. Also avoid publisher series, unless the publisher has a true monopoly over the "works" in question. So, the Dummies guides are a series of works. But the Loeb Classical Library is a series of editions, not of works.

Home Groups Talk Zeitgeist. The 12 Days of LT scavenger hunt is going on. Can you solve the clues? I Agree This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and if not signed in for advertising. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms. Common Knowledge Series Issues. Women chose slimmer than average figures for both choices. When American men were independently asked to choose the female build most attractive to them, the men chose figures of average build.

This indicates that women may be misled as to how thin men prefer women to be. East Asians have historically preferred women whose bodies had small features. For example, during the Spring and Autumn period of Chinese history, women in Chinese harems wanted to have a thin body in order to be attractive for the Chinese emperor. Later, during the Tang Dynasty , a less thin body type was seen as most attractive for Chinese women. In the Victorian era , women who adhered to Victorian ideals were expected to limit their food consumption to attain the ideal slim figure.

A WHR of 0. Women within the 0. Both men and women judge women with smaller waist-to-hip ratios more attractive. In Chinese, the phrase "willow waist" Chinese: In the Victorian era , a small waist was considered the main trait of a beautiful woman. Most men tend to be taller than their female partners.

Having said this, height is a more important factor for a woman when choosing a man than it is for a man choosing a woman. In Middle English literature, 'tallness' is a characteristic of ideally beautiful women. A study by Swami et al. Marco Bertamini criticized the Swami et al. Using this data, he similarly found that men usually have slightly proportionately longer legs than women or that differences in leg length proportion may not exist between men and women.

These findings made him rule out the possibility that a preference for women with proportionately longer legs than men is due proportionately longer legs being a secondary sex characteristic of women. According to some studies, most men prefer women with small feet, [] [] such as in ancient China where foot binding was practiced. In Jewish Rabbinic literature , the rabbis considered small feet to be the ideal type of feet for women. Men have been found to prefer long-haired women.

Hair therefore indicates health and nutrition during the last 2—3 years. Lustrous hair is also often a cross-cultural preference. A component of the female beauty ideal in Persian literature is for women to have black hair, [] which was also preferred in Arabian society in the Middle Ages. The way an individual moves can indicate health and even age and influence attractiveness. Similarly, the perceived attractiveness of males doubled when they moved with a swagger in their shoulders.

A preference for lighter-skinned women has been documented among certain populations. Skin radiance or glowing skin may influence perception of beauty and physical attractiveness. There are some subtle changes in women's perceived attractiveness across the menstrual cycle. During their most fertile phase , we can observe some changes in women's behavior and physiology. A study conducted by G. Miller examined the amount of tip earnings by lap dancers across the menstrual cycle.

He found that dancers received nearly 15 USD more when they were near ovulation than during the rest of the month. This suggests that women either are more attractive during ovulation phase, or they experience a significant change in their behavior. Bobst and Lobmaier created 20 prototyped photographs, some of a female during ovulation and some during the luteal phase.

Men were asked to choose the more attractive, the more caring and the more flirtatious faces. They found a significant preference for the follicular phase ovulation. This suggests that subtle shape differences in faces occurring during the female's ovulation phase are sufficient to attract men more. Men and women had to judge photographs of women's faces taken during their fertile phase. They were all rated more attractive than during non-fertile phase. They are some subtle visible cues to ovulation in women's faces, and they are perceived as more attractive, leading to the idea that it could be an adaptive mechanism to raise a female's mate value at that specific time when probability of conception is at its highest.

Women's attractiveness, as perceived by men and women, slightly differs across her menstrual cycle, being at peak when she is in her ovulation phase. They explained that the function of the effects of menstrual cycle phase on preferences for apparent health and self-resemblance in faces is to increase the likelihood of pregnancy. Similarly, female prefer the scent of symmetrical men and masculine faces during fertile phases as well as stereotypical male displays such as social presence, and direct intrasexual competitiveness.

During the follicular phase fertile , females prefer more male's traits testosterone dependent traits such as face shape than when in non-fertile phase. But not only females' preferences vary across cycle, their behaviours as well. Effectively, men respond differently to females when they are on ovulatory cycle, [] because females act differently.

Women in the ovulatory phase are flirtier with males showing genetic fitness markers than in low fertile phase. High estrogen level women may also be viewed as healthier or to have a more feminine face. Similarly, a study investigated the capacity of women to select high quality males based on their facial attractiveness.

They found that facial attractiveness correlated with semen quality good, normal, or bad depending on sperm morphology and motility. The more attractive a man's face is, linked to his sperm being of better quality. Sexual ornaments are seen in many organisms; in humans, females have sexual ornamentation in the form of breasts and buttocks. The physical attraction to sexual ornaments is associated with gynoid fat, as opposed to android fat, which is considered unattractive. The activation of estrogen receptors around the female skeletal tissue causes gynoid fat to be deposited in the breasts, buttocks, hips and thighs, producing an overall typical female body shape.

Sexual ornaments are considered attractive features as they are thought to indicate high mate value, fertility, [] and the ability to provide good care to offspring. They are sexually selected traits present for the purpose of honest signalling and capturing the visual attention of the opposite sex, most commonly associated with females capturing the visual attention of males. It has been proposed that these ornaments have evolved in order to advertise personal quality and reproductive value. The evolution of these ornaments is also associated with female-female competition in order to gain material benefits provided by resourceful and high status males.

It is thought that this is associated with the long-term pair bonding humans engage in; human females engage in extended sexual activity outside of their fertile period. In other animal species, even other primate species, these advertisements of reproductive value are not permanent. Usually, it is the point at which the female is at her most fertile, she displays sexual swellings. Adolescence is the period of time whereby humans experience puberty , and experience anatomical changes to their bodies through the increase of sex hormones released in the body. Adolescent exaggeration is the period of time at which sexual ornaments are maximised, and peak gynoid fat content is reached.

Female breasts develop at this stage not only to prepare for reproduction, but also due to competition with other females in displaying their reproductive value and quality to males. For both men and women, there appear to be universal criteria of attractiveness both within and across cultures and ethnic groups. Some evolutionary psychologists, including David Buss, have argued that this long-term relationship difference may be a consequence of ancestral humans who selected partners based on secondary sexual characteristics , as well as general indicators of fitness which allowed for greater reproductive success as a result of higher fertility in those partners, [] although a male's ability to provide resources for offspring was likely signaled less by physical features.

Studies have shown that women pay greater attention to physical traits than they do directly to earning capability or potential to commit, [] including muscularity, fitness and masculinity of features; the latter preference was observed to vary during a woman's period, with women preferring more masculine features during the late-follicular fertile phase of the menstrual cycle.

Heterosexual men were only aroused by women. This study verified arousal in the test subjects by connecting them to brain imaging devices. Bonnie Adrian's book, Framing the Bride , discusses the emphasis Taiwanese brides place on physical attractiveness for their wedding photographs. Globalization and western ideals of beauty have spread and have become more prevalent in Asian societies where brides go through hours of hair and makeup to "transform everyday women with their individual characteristics into generic look-alike beauties in three hours' time.

According to strategic pluralism theory, men may have correspondingly evolved to pursue reproductive strategies that are contingent on their own physical attractiveness. More physically attractive men accrue reproductive benefits from spending more time seeking multiple mating partners and relatively less time investing in offspring. In contrast, the reproductive effort of physically less attractive men, who therefore will not have the same mating opportunities, is better allocated either to investing heavily in accruing resources, or investing in their mates and offspring and spending relatively less time seeking additional mates.

Several studies have suggested that people are generally attracted to people who look like them , [] and they generally evaluate faces that exhibit features of their own ethnic or racial group as being more attractive. However, this effect can be reversed. This might depend on how attractiveness is conceptualized: Again, findings are more ambiguous when looking for the desiring, pleasure related component of attractiveness. A study by R.

Hall in , which examined determinations of physical attractiveness by having subjects look at the faces of women, found that race was sometimes a factor in these evaluations. Perceptions of physical attractiveness contribute to generalized assumptions based on those attractions. Individuals assume that when someone is beautiful, then they have many other positive attributes that make the attractive person more likeable.

This could lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy , as, from a young age, attractive people receive more attention that helps them develop these characteristics. It was explained that people pay closer attention to those they find physically beautiful or attractive, and thus perceiving attractive individuals with greater distinctive accuracy. The study believes this accuracy to be subjective to the eye of the beholder. Even though connections and confounds with other variables could not be excluded, the effects of attractiveness in this study were the same size as the ones for other demographic variables.

In developed western societies, women tend to be judged for their physical appearance over their other qualities and the pressure to engage in beauty work is much higher for women than men. However, attractiveness varies by society; in ancient China foot binding was practiced by confining young girls' feet in tightly bound shoes to prevent the feet from growing to normal size causing the women to have an attractive "lotus gait".

In England, women used to wear corsets that severely constricted their breathing and damaged vital internal organs, in order to achieve a visual effect of an exaggeratedly low waist-to-hip ratio. People make judgments of physical attractiveness based on what they see, but also on what they know about the person. Specifically, perceptions of beauty are malleable such that information about the person's personality traits can influence one's assessment of another person's physical beauty.

A study had participants first rate pictures for attractiveness. After doing distracting math problems, participants saw the pictures again, but with information about the person's personality. When participants learned that a person had positive personality characteristics e. This was true for both females and males. A person may be perceived as being more attractive if they are seen as part of a group of friends, rather than alone, according to one study.

Physical attractiveness can have various effects. A survey conducted by London Guildhall University of 11, people showed that those who subjectively describe themselves as physically attractive earn more income than others who would describe themselves as less attractive. According to further research done on the correlation between looks and earnings in men, the punishment for unattractiveness is greater than the benefits of being attractive. However, in women the punishment is found to be equal to the benefits.

Differences in income due to attractiveness was much more pronounced for men rather than women, and held true for all ranges of income. One writer speculated that "the distress created in women by the spread of unattainable ideals of female beauty" might possibly be linked to increasing incidence of depression. Many have asserted that certain advantages tend to come to those who are perceived as being more attractive, including the ability to get better jobs and promotions; receiving better treatment from authorities and the legal system ; having more choices in romantic or platonic partners and, therefore, more power in relationships; and marrying into families with more money.

Also, attractive individuals behave more positively than those who are unattractive. They also consider these students to be more popular. This is also known as the halo effect. Research suggests that those who are physically attractive are thought to have more socially desirable personalities and lead better lives in general. Some researchers conclude that little difference exists between men and women in terms of sexual behavior. They are also prone to infidelity and are more likely to have open relationships. Therefore, their physical characteristics are most likely to be inherited by future generations.

Concern for improving physical attractiveness has led many persons to consider alternatives such as cosmetic surgery. It has led scientists working with related disciplines such as computer imaging and mathematics to conduct research to suggest ways to surgically alter the distances between facial features in order to make a face conform more closely to the "agreed-upon standards of attractiveness" of an ideal face by using algorithms to suggest an alternative which still resembles the current face.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Venus de Milo at the Louvre has been described as a "classical vision of beauty". Heterozygote advantage and Major histocompatibility complex and sexual selection. Age disparity in sexual relationships. Cultural history of the buttocks. Retrieved August 5, The New York Times. That lady of renowned beauty The classical vision of beauty exemplified in Greek art, such as the 2nd century B. Venus de Milo a. Aphrodite of Milos , was an ideal carried through millennia, laying the basis for much of Western art's depictions of the human form.

American Journal of Archaeology. Illustrated Dictionary of Mythology. Biblical and Near Eastern Essays: Studies in Honour of Kevin J. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Evolutionary approaches to health perception.

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In Sheppard E, Haque S. A Collection of Critical Essays. Peter Lang International Publishers. Retrieved July 15, Evolutionary psychologists claim there is an underlying standard script for beauty — a foundation for what we find appealing that transcends culture and ethnicity. There are various absolutes. For instance, to judge someone beautiful, the eye requires symmetry. Archives of Sexual Behavior. Helen's face is said to have launched a thousand ships, while Medusa's could turn men to stone. And even today we talk about individuals with "a face that can stop a clock. Archived from the original on November 10, Symmetry is one trait we find attractive but only if the face is right-side up: Art historians, anthropologists and human psychologists in general agree that it is the symmetry of a face, its perfect proportion, or indeed its averageness — where no feature stands out — that has consistently down the ages been deemed attractive.

The beauty in imperfection". Retrieved December 27, Absolute flawlessness, it's long been observed, is disturbing. It offers no point of connection, and may help explain the "uncanny valley" effect, where almost-lifelike robots trigger revulsion in humans. Evolution taught us to lust after symmetry — a nicely balanced body and face — because asymmetry signals past illness or injury. We therefore define beauty quite elegantly, right down to the most ideal ratio of hips to breasts and upper lip to lower lip.

Singh says one study showed that people were able to gauge beauty at a subliminal level, when shown pictures for a mere one-hundredth of a second. Another study showed babies prefer pretty faces. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. Evidence from an fMRI study". Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.

Skin Deep: Debating Body Image

Retrieved June 12, Annual Review of Psychology. Retrieved November 4, American Journal of Human Biology. Journal of Endocrinological Investigation. The contribution of masculine face shape to male attractiveness in humans". Men and Masculinities in Contemporary China. Power and Masculinity in Chinese Culture.

Hong Kong University Press. Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology. Stroking was divided equally between the centre, left, and right side of the torso. Participant view through the head mounted display of the male mannequin in the small b and large c body conditions. Both subjects in the figure have given written informed consent, as outlined in the PLOS consent form, to publication of their photograph.

The Dove Beauty Project: debating social media and self-esteem

For synchronous trials the experimenter stroked the mannequin torso and the corresponding position on the participant's torso in complete temporal synchrony. The stroking pattern was kept irregular to avoid predictability effects. There were two body size conditions: Both body size conditions were completed with synchronous and asynchronous stroking making a total of four conditions: Out of a total of 16 trials, the first 12 three per condition measured skin conductance response to a knife threat as an objective measure of the illusion.

Following 60 s of stroking the experimenter attacked the mannequin with a knife whilst measuring SCR. The knife approached the mannequin torso from the left and was drawn across the body from left to right being in view for approximately two seconds and in contact with the mannequin for approximately one second. These trials were conducted in a random order with a minimum of one two-minute break every four trials in which participants removed the HMDs.

The questionnaire consisted of seven statements, three aimed at the strength of the illusion and two control questions based on [19] see Figure 2 , with an additional two questions asking directly about perceived body size see below. All questionnaire items were presented to the participant in a random order via the HMDs with numeric responses given verbally to the experimenter.

Breaks of at least two minutes in which the participant removed the HMDs were given between each trial. The duration of the entire experiment was approximately 50 minutes. Similarly, subjective responses were only taken once per condition to prevent participants from guessing the aim of the experiment and thus reducing the possibility of demand characteristics.

This approach has been used by previous similar studies e. Median illusion and control questionnaire scores for both female a and male b participants. Greater agreement was found following synchronous open bars compared to asynchronous filled bars stroking for the illusion but not control questions. Error bars show interquartile range. Greater amplitudes were found following synchronous stroking. Error bars show standard errors. Experiment two aimed to investigate affective responses to illusory ownership over both LB and SB body sizes using a new cohort of participants. To control for possible confounding variables that may effect body satisfaction, additional measures and screening were completed for this sample see table 1 , table S2 , and below.

Social economic status was measured with years of education as an index; all participants had a minimum of 12 years education i. Self-esteem was measured using the Rosenberg self esteem scale [31].

Issue Description

A global score of 2. The experimental set-up was identical to that used for experiment one without SCR. An additional task, perceptual judgments of hip size, was measured using a cm ruler. The BISS is a six-item scale designed to measure body satisfaction at a particular instance in time. The BISS correlates with other body satisfaction measures and demonstrates internal consistency and construct validity [34].

Higher BISS scores represent higher body satisfaction. The FRS consists of nine numbered silhouetted bodies ranging from emaciated to obese. Participants select images that represent both their ideal and current body size. The FRS has good test-retest reliability [35]. The questionnaire consists of items rated on a seven-point Likert scale, except six items asking about frequency of behaviour.

The questionnaire can be divided into four subscales dietary restraint, eating concern, weight concern, and shape concern , or a single global measure. Because the global score was used to define clinical cut-off [33] it was this score that was used for all subsequent analysis. Additional measures were also taken to examine individual differences; details can be found in methods S1.

The full body illusion over wider LB and slimmer SB body types was performed as in experiment one. However, to prevent the experiment being too long and to limit the number of repetitions of the subjective questionnaires, only synchronous conditions were used. Due to the small size manipulations in the illusion, the cognitive knowledge of being in an experiment, as well as other individual characteristics that may influence emotion, affective responses were hypothesized to be much smaller than any perceptual changes. Therefore, when measuring body satisfaction a longer duration of stroking was given s , compared to when measuring perceptual responses, for the participants to be fully immersed in the illusion.

Thus allowing more time not only for the perceptual recalibration, but also for the subsequent hypothesized affective response. In addition, the longer duration also provided a longer period between repetition of the BISS and FRS, reducing the likelihood of participants simply repeating remembered responses. The questions were delivered through the HMDs in a random order with the responses given verbally. To protect participant confidentiality the experimenter could not see the questions and reverse scoring was implemented. Next, participants were asked to make perceptual judgments of their own hip size, for which the HMD screens were blank so that the participants had no vision of either their own body or that of the mannequin.

Participants were required to hold a cm ruler using the index finger and thumb of both hands with their arms outstretched in front of them. Participants then adjusted the distance between their index fingers to correspond with the perceived actual distance between their own hips. Whilst making the judgments participants could only move their right hand, with their left hand held in position by the experimenter preventing them from aligning their hands with sides of their body. For each trial, three separate judgments were made before and after each period of 60 s stroking, bringing their hands to their sides between each judgment.

This was repeated three times to gain sufficient power for reliable statistical analysis. It was made clear to participants that these judgments were to reflect perceived width of their own body and not that of the mannequin. Finally, after an additional 60 s of stroking, participants answered a modified version of the illusion questionnaire see table S1.

Each participant completed the entire procedure s stroking with pre and post-illusion BISS and FRS responses, three trials of 60 s stroking each with three pre and three post illusion hip size judgments and 60 s of stroking followed by the ownership questionnaire for both LB and SB conditions separated by minute break.

The order of conditions was counterbalanced across participants. The duration of the entire experiment was approximately 90 minutes including the minute break in between body size conditions. Experiment one established equally strong illusions of ownership with the large and small mannequins for both male and female participants. For the questionnaire data an illusion score was calculated by averaging across all three illusion questions.

Similarly, a control score was calculated by averaging across the two control questions. The data were ordinal and not normally distributed Shapiro-Wilk test so were analysed using non-parametric Wilcoxon signed rank tests, for which effect size is indicated by the probability of superiority for dependent measures PS dep. Wilcoxon signed rank tests revealed a significant effect of synchrony in the LB condition for both sexes Males: The same was true of the SB condition Males: A further two questions were included in the questionnaire asking directly about the perceptual effects of the illusion: Effect size is indicated by partial eta squared np 2.

Although this may reflect a slight heightened response to seeing a knife for females, lack of a significant interaction suggests that this was not modulated by the illusion. Therefore, experiment one demonstrates equivalent illusion strength between males and females as well as for both body size conditions. These results mean that the paradigm is suitable to examine possible links to emotional experience experiment two as the conditions are matched in terms of vividness of the illusion.

Physical attractiveness - Wikipedia

After confirming the suitability of the paradigm, the second experiment then aimed to establish affective responses with pre and post-illusion body satisfaction measures. For additional results see table S1 and results S1. The effects on perceived body size were measured using perceptual hip size judgments that were calculated as the distance between the inner edge of left and right index fingers on the ruler.

This was then converted into a percentage of actual hip size for each participant in each condition with actual hip distance taken as the distance between the outer edges of the body at the hipbones. The data were normally distributed Shapiro-Wilk test , but violated homogeneity assumptions, which was not rectified by transformation.

Thus, illusory ownership of a slimmer body caused decreases in perceived actual body width. Sex differences were analysed using a change in hip judgment score described below.


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Medians of pre and post-illusion hip judgments for the large a and small b body conditions Error bars show interquartile range. Medians of pre and post-illusion body satisfaction BISS scores for the large c and small b body conditions. Scores of male participants are depicted by open triangles and females by filled circles. The emotional effects of the illusion were calculated by comparing pre and post-illusion body satisfaction scores.

These were calculated for each participant in each condition by taking a mean of the six BISS responses after reverse scoring. As the data were not normally distributed Shapiro-Wilk test and ordinal Wilcoxon signed rank tests were used. Importantly, these results provide the first experimental evidence for a direct link between affective and perceptual body representations using multisensory illusions, demonstrating increases in body satisfaction following illusory ownership over a slimmer body.

A change in BISS score was calculated by subtracting pre from post-illusion scores such that positive and negative values represented increases and decreases in body satisfaction respectively and did not represent an absolute change. For additional results see table S2 and results S2. Further supplementary analysis was conducted to investigate the possible effects of condition order results S3 and participant height results S4 on each of the experimental measures. The current study was the first to experimentally manipulate perceived body size using multisensory illusions demonstrating a direct link between perceptual and affective body representations.

After determining that neither sex of the participant nor illusory body size affected illusion strength it was shown that ownership over a slimmer body significantly decreases perceived body width and increases body satisfaction. Linking the body to emotional experience is not a new concept. For example, experiments investigating embodied cognition demonstrate that bodily posture and action not only express current emotional state but also facilitate it [37]. Our results extend these ideas, demonstrating that perception of our own body size can have a direct influence on emotional experience.

Neural networks associated with body perception including posterior parietal [38] and premotor areas [39] , have previously been investigated independently from networks involved with emotional experience that incorporate the insula and the anterior cingulate cortex [40]. Identification of emotional changes driven by altered body perception, however, suggests these networks to be functionally connected. Indeed, reduced grey matter volume in both networks has been found in ED patients [41].

Moreover, these areas are also found to be activated during tasks requiring body size comparison with media images using healthy controls [42]. The absence of asynchronous conditions in experiment two meant that a direct comparison of the effects of illusory ownership to a non-ownership control condition was not possible. Therefore, simply viewing an ideal body without ownership is more likely to elicit decreases in body satisfaction rather than the increases observed in the current study. However, these previous body comparison studies use images taken from a third person perspective and thus are not directly comparable to the current study, in which the mannequin body was seen from a first person perspective.