Is our brain being tricked into believing someone or something is beautiful?

    Beauty is a concept that has puzzled and amazed different cultures and societies since the beginning of time. Beauty has been the most commonly portrayed subject in many forms of art such as literature, painting, music, dance, etc. However, as we all know, beauty standards have constantly been evolving throughout the history of humankind, from admiring reproductive abilities to slimmer figures that are popular in our current era. We may think that we can trust our opinion and instinct on who we think is beautiful and why, that we are making this decision of our own volition, free from any biological or societal pressures. However, "Perception and Deception: Human Beauty and the Brain" by Daniel B. Yarosh examines the idea of deceit and trickery in beauty. The article puts forward the argument that beauty is controlled by biology, by evolution. People perceive individuals to be more beautiful if they fit the physical characteristics of guaranteeing reproductive success and the continual propagation of humans. Therefore, due to this pressure, individuals will also change certain aspects of their appearance to appear more reproductively successful, thus the idea of deceit comes in. Throughout the world, those who appear to be more reproductively successful and thus more attractive have greater acquisition of resources. This concept has a place in the brain. The brain has interconnected regions that judge facial attractiveness through three steps: identification, interpretation, and value. Important factors that are included in this judgment process include age, health, symmetry, face and body proportions, facial color, and texture. These elements can be summarized into health, youth, and body proportions. Depending on specific aspects of these criteria, our brain perceives someone as being reproductively successful and thus attractive or reproductively unsuccessful and thus unattractive. As these factors are crucial for reproduction, they are labeled as "Costly Signals"; in other words, they are difficult to change and trick people with. However, people change other aspects about them such as dying their hair, cosmetics, and clothing, to appear that they have changed their Costly Signals when they in fact have not. An interesting observation is that people often try to see when people are being fake when they themselves are attempting to deceive others as well, a fascinating juxtaposition. 

    

    Daniel B. Yarosh's article talked about deception in beauty and the reasons why people try to trick others into believing they are beautiful. "Is Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder or an Objective Truth? A Neuroscientific Answer" by Hassan Aleem, discusses the aspects of subjective and objective beauty. Subjective beauty is described with the concept of cultural differences and objective beauty uses the word "universal" to encompass its meaning. These two types are further explained as objective beauty having a place in evolution and so it is more universal and subjective beauty pertaining to reinforcement learning and thus it is more individualized. With both categories of beauty having neurological pathways, the article argues that unlike past historical arguments that argue that objective beauty is external and subjective beauty is internal, subjective and objective beauty are both internal, they both exist within the brain. To summarize, subjective and objective beauty both have places in the brain and they interact to create universal and individual aesthetic preferences. 

    There are numerous connections between these two articles, the most obvious one being that both articles discuss beauty, albeit different topics within that field. "Is Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder or an Objective Truth? A Neuroscientific Answer" by Hassan Aleem talks about how objective and subjective beauty both have places in the brain, while "Perception and Deception: Human Beauty and the Brain" by Daniel B. Yarosh talks about how people deceive themselves and each other to appear more reproductively attractive. The second connection that can be made is that the article by Daniel B. Yarosh describes the idea of beauty pertaining to the concept of reproduction. As reproductive success is tied to evolution and natural selection, this beauty can be connected with universal or objective beauty described in the article by Hassan Aleem. On the other hand, subjective or cultural-specific beauty discussed in the article by Hassan Aleem is more similar to the various tricks described in the article such as clothing style for instance, as these changes are more cultural-specific as these attempted changes of Costly Signals differ based on the society you live in; how one might change clothing changes based on where you live. The first contribution these articles can have to the field of beauty is that there are different types of beauty and that beauty is not only tied to neurological pathways but behaviors as well such as deception, an action that one may not directly think of when one thinks of beauty. Another contribution is that the connection between these two articles raises the question of whether there is a difference between deception and self-love. Is there any actual harm being done? Both articles which are focused on beauty have tried to provide neurological bases, a tangible place in our brain. I would like to argue that the societal and cultural influences are probably more important and outweigh the biological basis in our judgment of beauty. 

Works Cited 

Aleem, H., Pombo, M., Correa-Herran, I., Grzywacz, N.M. (2019). Is Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder or an Objective Truth? A Neuroscientific Answer. In: Contreras-Vidal, J., Robleto, D., Cruz-Garza, J., Azorín, J., Nam, C. (eds) Mobile Brain-Body Imaging and the Neuroscience of Art, Innovation and Creativity. Springer Series on Bio- and Neurosystems, vol 10. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24326-5_11

Yarosh DB. Perception and Deception: Human Beauty and the Brain. Behav Sci (Basel). 2019 Mar 29;9(4):34. doi: 10.3390/bs9040034. PMID: 30934856; PMCID: PMC6523404.