The Body Language of Glasses – Are Faces More Attractive With Glasses? What Your Glasses Say About You
Christopher Philip
Chinese researchers led by Cheng-Hung Lo Department of Industrial Design, College of Management , Chang-Gung University looked at the effects of glasses on facial symmetry and facial attractiveness. They found that glasses generally improve facial symmetry, that is, glasses helped make the face appear more even from the left to the right, but this effect was not enough to enhance overall facial attractiveness.
The experimental design was simple enough. Subjects aged 18-22, male and female, were fitted with various styles of glasses and then judged. The style of the glasses were also rated by observers over categories including: Gender connotation: Feminine-Masculine; Popularity: Common-Special; Design specialty: Original-Dull; Reflected value: Magnificent-Rough and Structural firmness: Robust-Fragile.
The results showed that the corners of the eyeglasses rims have a consistent effect on the gender connotation. That is, frames with larger “rim aspect ratio”, bigger frames, with square corners tend to increase the masculinity of the face.
The researchers found that the female face looks most masculine when wearing the vertically symmetrical frames and the diagonally symmetrical frames enhance the masculinity of the male face.
The frames with the large rims bring highest popularity to the faces and those with fully symmetrical rims reduce popularity.
However, the glasses with larger rims are rated as having more design specialty whereas those with fully symmetrical rims show lower design specialty.
Frames with the smallest rim aspect ratio and horizontally symmetrical rim corners produce the highest level of reflected value whereas the diagonally symmetrical design had the lowest.
The more robust the frame, the more masculine the glasses tend to be rated. Those with the more symmetrical rims are also rated more robust and diagonally symmetrical rims more fragile.
Overall, the researchers conclude that “although the results confirm that symmetrically designed glasses frames can strengthen a participant’s perception of facial symmetry they show a weak correlation between the symmetry and attractiveness, i.e. the facial symmetry enhanced by wearing glasses does not guarantee an enhancement of facial attractiveness”
However, the biggest factor in influencing our perception of glasses stem from the rim aspect. The participants preferred the frames with the small rim aspect ratio.
A much earlier study has show the embodiment link between eye glasses and perceived intelligence.
Image Credit: Helga Weber
Resources
Cheng-Hung Lo; Chao-Yang Yang; Po-Tsang Lin; Kuo-Jung Hsieh: Ying-Chieh Liu and Wen-Ko Chiou. Are Human Faces More Attractive With Glasses?, Journal of the Chinese Institute of Industrial Engineers. 2019. 29(2): 125-135, DOI:10.1080/10170669.2019.662917
Keiierman, Joan M. and James D. Laird. The Effect of Appearance on Self Perception. Journal of Personality. 1982; 50: 3.