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.
