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.
