Two proven ways to look better are a proper diet and sticking to an exercise routine. Unfortunately, these strategies need some time to produce results.
If you want to look good tonight in particular, or if you need to make an impression today, you’ll be happy to know that there are many ways to achieve actability.
Business Insider summarizes a few options that will make other people think you’re more attractive, and they don’t require much effort. Have you thought about changing the color of your outfit or smiling more?
Smile
In two experiments published in 2014 in the journal Cognition and Emotion, Swiss researchers explored the relationship between attractiveness and smiling. They found that the stronger the smile, the more attractive the face. They found that a happy facial expression seemed to compensate for relative unattractiveness.
Red
A 2010 cross-cultural study published in the journal Experimental Psychology: General, with participants from China, England, Germany and the US, found that men wearing red were more attractive to women. In one experiment from the study, 55 women viewed a photo of a man in a red and green shirt, and then rated the man’s attractiveness.
Sure enough, the man was rated as significantly more attractive when wearing a red shirt. The results were similar when the researchers compared the red shirt to other colored shirts.
Interestingly, the participants did not realize that the color of a man’s clothes influenced their perceptions of his attractiveness.
Laughter
Numerous studies have shown that men are more attracted to women if they can make them laugh.
In a small French study published in the journal Psychological Reports, a man tells a joke to two friends in a bar while a woman stands at a nearby table. After the joke ends, this man is instructed to approach the woman and ask for her number. In another version of the situation, one of the men listening to the joke asks for the woman’s number. (These scenarios are repeated about 60 times in all.)
After the “prankster” leaves, one of the experimenters turns to the woman and asks her to rate the men on attractiveness and intelligence and to indicate how she sees her relationship with them in the long run.
The results show that the joke teller is three times more likely to get the woman’s number. Plus he was rated as more attractive and intelligent.
High heels (ladies only)
Another French study published in 2015 in the Archives of ***ual Behavior found that women are more attractive to men when they wear high heels. An experiment confirms that wearing heels can influence men’s behaviour, on the one hand making them pay attention to a woman, and on the other making them more likely to comply with her opinion.
The scent
Just knowing that you are wearing a new fragrance can make you act more confident and even give you the feeling that you look more attractive to other people.
In a 2009 study published in the International Journal of Cosmetic Science, researchers gave one group of men a spray with antimicrobial ingredients and fragrance oil, and another group a spray without fragrance and antimicrobial ingredients.
Over the next few days, the men using the scented spray reported having greater self-confidence and perceived themselves as more attractive.
The weird part? When a group of women were shown videos without sound of the men, they found that those wearing the scented spray were more attractive to them, even though they obviously couldn’t smell them. The researchers found that men using the scented spray displayed more confident behaviour, which in turn made them more attractive.