European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - July 12, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse                                The High cheekbones such As those of the late actor Brandon Lee generally Are perceived As More attractive. Our sense of Beauty May be wired into our brains aces o the narrow lower face and full lips of Model Naomi Campbell Are part of the makeup of an attractive person studies indicate. Not by Jane e. Brody the new York times. Beauty is not As egalitarians like to think in the Eye of the beholder. Norfis it As strongly. Influenced by culture As Many have Long assumed. Rather an accumulating body of evidence indicates that concepts of attractiveness May be Universal and hard. Wired into the Hunan brain whether that brain serves a briton or a japanese. This Quot wiring Quot a built in genetic tendency that evolved Over millenniums through natural selection seems to prompt men to select As most attractive those a women whose facial characteristics Are associated with youth and Good health both of which Are important to reproductive viability. A a a. In the latest study published in the current Issue of the British journal nature both British and japanese men and women ranked women s faces As most attractive when certain features associated with youthfulness like Large eyes High cheekbones and a narrow jaw were exaggerated. A. A further the study found caucasians gave top ranking. To the same japanese faces that the japanese preferred leading the researchers to conclude in their report that there Are Quot greater similarities than differences in Cross cultural judgments of facial  Quot clearly we have an innate mechanism that sees a certain geometry of the face As Beautiful and attributes to that face other characteristics seen As most fit Quot said or. Nancy Etcoff a Neur psychologist at the Massachusetts general Hospital who wrote a commentary on the study previous studies bad shown that people rank As More attractive a computer derived composite face than the. Individual faces used to construct the composite. This prompted researchers to conclude that aft Quot average Quot face was More pleasing than faces with features that deviated from average. Sociologically the findings made sense since people feel safest and most comfortable around others who appear familiar and. Similar to themselves. ,. In the animal world however researchers from Charles Darwin on have shown that average Ness can be inadequate in the Competition for mates. Rather natural selection has sometimes favored those endowed with More extreme traits like the Peacock s stunning but physiologically impractical Tail. The new study directed by or. David Perrett at the University of St. Andrews in Fife Scotland strongly suggests that like peacocks people with facial features that Iare exaggerations of Ordinary attractiveness have by far the greatest Appeal. The researchers first had men and women rank in attractiveness 60 images of women s faces. Then they used a computer to construct two composite faces one the average of the 60 images and the other the average of the 15 images initially ranked As most attractive. A third composite was derived from the highly attractive composite by exaggerating the differences in shape Between the average face and the highly attractive face for example by making the Chin even narrower and the cheekbones higher. A new group of men and women shown Onty the three composite faces clearly ranked the highly attractive composite Over the average one and gave the highest ranking to the computer derived caricature of the second composite. Furthermore when caucasian men and women were asked to select the most attractive faces similarly derived from images of japanese women they ranked As most attractive the same face again with the exaggerated characteristics chosen by japanese men and women. In fact the researchers reported the facial characteristics that the computer generated averages showed to be the most appealing to caucasians in caucasian faces were also most appealing in japanese faces to both the japanese and the caucasians. The researchers also found a similar preference for composite male faces made from those ranked highest by participants. But they did not construct a caricature of the most attractive male faces As they had done with the female faces nor did they examine faces of japanese. Men v \ a a a a. Etcoff said Quot what this study shows is that there Are two different faces of Beauty. One is the average face comfortable and familiar and the other a deviation from average that is extremely attractive. \ Quot furthermore these choices Are not arbitrary they seem tied in actuality to disease resistance health Fertility and  she cited As Youthful and healthy looking those faces with full lips Large eyes narrow jaw and a lower face that is Small in comparison to the upper face. Perrett and his co authors concluded that these Quot attractive facial features May signal sexual maturity and Fertility emotional expressiveness or a cuteness generalized from parental protectiveness toward  or. Judith Langlois a psychologist at the University of Texas has concluded from her own work that this tendency to pick out attractive faces is already present in infancy rather than being Learned through experiences like exposure to photographs and films or the admiring comments of adults. Langlois who developed the technique of creating composite faces on computer found that infants As Young As 2 months old preferred to look at physically attractive faces. She flashed color slides of 16 women s faces before two groups of infants one group being 6 to 8 months old and the other group 2 to 3 months old. Eight of the faces had been judged by College students  moderately attractive and the other eight moderately unattractive. Langlois and her colleagues found that 71 percent of the. Older infants and 63 percent of the younger ones looked longer at the attractive faces than at the unattractive . The Texas psychologist said her findings challenged current thinking about the Quot origins of physical attractiveness preferences and stereotypes and the Quot assumptions that preferences for physical attractiveness Are culturally  instead she says Quot a Universal Standard of attractiveness May  Etcoff noted that although some qualities of Beauty like body weight and shape May be culturally dependent and vary with time and place others like facial characteristics Quot May be timeless and transcend  in other words the faces favored by the ancient creeks and egyptians remain today what people worldwide still consider Beautiful a fact she added that helps to keep cosmetics companies and plastic surgeons in business. £0lh Century Fox Michelle Pfeiffer ant Tom cruise Are considered among Hollywood s most attractive stars. Paramount by Mary to Dilonardo Cincinnati Post time flies even if you re not having fun. Ask any scientist. Studies have shown it s not your imagination the older you get the faster time passes. Psychologists Call it Quot the subjective acceleration of time with  put an adult arid a child in a room without a clock for one minute. The adult might think Only 40 seconds have passed. To the child it was More like five minutes3. To a kid it takes an eternity for Christmas to  an adult the holidays seem to sneak up out of nowhere. One simple theory is that As you age each year is a smaller fraction of your life. For a 10-year-old, for. Example a year is one tenth 10 percent of his life so far. For a 40-year-old, a year is Only one Fortieth 21/2 percent of his life. Robert Lemlich a retired professor of chemical engineering at the University of Cincinnati published a paper in 1975 on time perception. Lemlich s equation divided the 10 years into the 40 years then took the Square Root of the result ending up with the number 2. So he concluded a 40-year-old sees time go by twice As fast As a 10-year-old. Which is All Fine and Good of you understand the intricacies of math and science. Lemlich a who does t profess to be an expert in psychology a offers this easier to understand explanation. When you re a child one Dollar is a lot of Money. As you grow older you collect More dollars so a single Dollar in t As big a Deal. Memories Are the same. Quot As time goes on you amass memories you amass recollections. So every event is of less importance Quot said Lemlich. Quot with the passage of time the memory Banks become More and More filled so each succeeding memory impresses us less just As each succeeding Dollar impresses us  1 that theory could also explain Why it seems to take longer to get to a new place than it does to get Home. On the Way there you see lots of new things. On the Way Back those things Are no longer new and Don t impress you As much. Back to time perception. An individual s Altitude also comes into play said Earl Kronenberger a retired Xavier University psychology / professor. A. A. Quot if the person wants time to go fast it does a. Especially nursing Home residents. If they feel time is going quickly and they have things to do. Time. Goes very . ,. Kronenberger likens it to children who feel the summer months go so much faster than months during the school year. Quot the reason Why is they re playing and having fun. It s the same for adults Quot he said Quot for those people that also have a very vibrant past where they be a had a lot of things going on life goes very quickly in. The  one thing that could influence How humans perceive time is How fast the mind actually works said Vince a Schulte professor of psychology at Northern Kentucky r University. /. Quot a younger person thinks faster and shifts from thought to thought quickly Quot he said Quot for an older person things slow Down for you and that seems to make time go  though plenty of psychologists have views As to Why time seems to Fly theft Aren t any universally accepted. Theories. \ a a Quot undoubtedly something going on in the brain is responsible for that but we re not sure what that is Quot said Schulte. Quot most psychologists realize that it does occur simply by the fact that older people constantly remark How quickly time   perception studies have been done for both Short intervals seconds minutes and Calendar time year resulting in two main theories said Joel warm a University of Cincinnati psychology professor. During Short intervals a physiological theory says that a person s body temperature and metabolism affect his perception of time. Studies have shown for example that time seems to go slower for a person with a fever. Few studies have been done with Calendar time. Quot there really in t a solid understanding of Why time perception changes with age Quot said warm who offers some theories. Quot people see their life As coming to a close. It s a distasteful end so time to that close seems to Rush  Quot or As you get older the things that you have to attend to and accomplish become More and More numerous. As a result you never seem to get it done As you would like and time seems to go . A Scripps Howard news service a. 16 the stars and stripes tuesday july 12, 1994 the stars and stripes 17