You know the drill: You meet someone cute, dig up their photo online (thanks to your detective degree from Google University), and your friends and family are soon oohing and ahhing like you. The likely reason? They think like you!
In a Brandeis University study, close friends, siblings and spouses tended to agree about which strangers they found attractive, suggesting that attractiveness has a social component.
Interestingly, people who have already formed a romantic relationship think their sweetie is cute no matter what others think. Your partner’s pronounced nose? You love it more than the average onlooker. But—just when things were getting all “love is blind” and romantic—the same study suggested that the spell is over when you break up. You soon take off your rose-colored glasses and see what the world sees: a big-nosed ex. Oh, the humanity!
