Handsome Forgettable
Something strange happens with handsome men. Women are more likely to stare at guys who look like George Clooney while visually ignoring those everyday Joe Schmoes like most of the rest of us.
Despite the substantial amount of visual attention that women bestow on handsome men, women are unable to distinguish the handsome guys they saw from those they’d never seen.
Over trials, though, any advantage for handsome men completely disappears, suggesting that those men did not make it into long-term memory. It is as if women process handsome men very briefly, and then promptly erase those handsome faces from downstream processing.
There’s another case of a negative memory bang for the attentional buck. We found the same disjunction for another category of people, those with facial disfigurements. When people are concerned about disease, they stare at disfigured faces, but do not remember them later.
It’s probably a different story for handsome men. Given that handsome men are preferred as mates, particularly for short-term relationships, women staring at handsome men might simply be sending a flirtation message. If the man doesn’t follow up by introducing himself, though, no further mental resources need be wasted.
Psychology Today
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