Month: June 2021

The cheerleader effect is that people appear more attractive in a group. It is explained by the averaging effect of the group.

The so-called ‘cheerleader effect’ is the phenomenon that people seem more attractive when they are in a group than when they are alone.

At least, so urban legend has it.

But now the cheerleader effect has scientific backing from a study published recently in Psychological Science (Walker & Vul, 2013).

In fact, the study finds that both men and women are perceived as more attractive when they are in a group than when alone.

Explaining the cheerleader effect

The effect is the result of the way we look at groups and what people, on average, deem an attractive face.

Generally people find ‘average’ faces most attractive.

When psychologists say ‘average’ in this sense, they mean if you average out the faces of lots of different people.

They don’t mean people who are average-looking.

Lead author of the study, Drew Walker, explains:

“Average faces are more attractive, likely due to the averaging out of unattractive idiosyncrasies.

Perhaps it’s like Tolstoy’s families: Beautiful people are all alike, but every unattractive person is unattractive in their own way.”

The cheerleader effect comes about, then, because when we look at a group of people, we see them as a group, and our brains average out their facial features.

In the study, people’s faces were shown to participants either alone or in group photos.

Sure enough, both men and women were rated more highly when presented in a group than when alone.

The effect was small but still noticeable.

The study’s co-author, Edward Vul, joked:

“The effect is definitely small, but some of us need all the help we can get.”

This leads to the idea that you might try to hang out with people whose ‘less average’ features complement your own.

The authors hint at some future research:

“If the average is more attractive because unattractive idiosyncrasies tend to be averaged out, then individuals with complementary facial features — one person with narrow eyes and one person with wide eyes, for example — would enjoy a greater boost in perceived attractiveness when seen together, as compared to groups composed of individuals who have more similar features.”  (Walker & Vul, 2013).

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Analysis of the 42 facial muscles which create emotional expressions reveals how many emotions there are.

How many basic human emotions are there?

Well, it depends who you believe.

Robert Plutchik, whose theories on the emotions were influential, thought there were eight primary emotions:

1. anger
2. fear
3. sadness
4. disgust
5. surprise
6. anticipation
7. trust
8. joy

He arranged them in a wheel to emphasise the idea that emotions can blend with each other, like colours, to create new emotions.

On the wheel shown below, the most intense emotions are in the middle, with milder emotions towards the outside.

Six basic emotions

Until recently many psychologists went along with the idea that there are six basic emotions:

1. happiness
2. sadness
3. fear
4. disgust
5. anger
6. surprise

This theory is largely down to psychologist Paul Eckman who came up with the scheme in the 1970s.

It is based on research finding that across different and varied cultures these six emotions are universally recognised.

Later on, though, Eckman added many more emotions to the list including amusement, awe, contentment, desire, embarrassment, pain, relief and sympathy.

Four basic emotions

More recent research from the University of Glasgow has challenged the established view that there are six basic emotions: anger, fear, surprise, disgust, happiness and sadness.

Instead there may only be four.

To reach their conclusions, Jack et al. (2014) looked at how the muscles in the face move when expressing a variety of emotions.

They found that fear and surprise shared a common signal — the eyes are wide open — suggesting they only constitute one basic emotion, not two.

Similarly, for anger and disgust they found that the nose initially wrinkles.

Anger and disgust may, therefore, constitute only one basic emotion.

No anger and disgust?

None of this is to say that anger and disgust don’t exist as separate emotions, of course they do.

Rather it’s to suggest that anger and disgust only become obvious after the facial emotion has been given time to evolve, even if this development typically only takes a fraction of a second.

The authors argue that the facial expression associated with the basic emotions have an evolutionary function.

Lead author Dr. Rachael Jack said:

“First, early danger signals confer the best advantages to others by enabling the fastest escape.

Secondly, physiological advantages for the expresser–the wrinkled nose prevents inspiration of potentially harmful particles, whereas widened eyes increases intake of visual information useful for escape–are enhanced when the face movements are made early.”

Building blocks of emotion

The theory is that there are four biologically basic emotions — anger, fear, happiness and sadness — on top of which have evolved much more complex varieties of emotion over the millennia.

This doesn’t suggest that our emotions are any less complex, just that the basic building blocks could be four rather than six.

After all, the full complexity of life on earth is made possible from a sequence of just four nucleobases in DNA, commonly abbreviated to the letters G, A, T and C (guanine, adenine, thymine, and cytosine).

It’s the development of facial emotions over time that gives them their complexity:

“What our research shows is that not all facial muscles appear simultaneously during facial expressions, but…

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B12 deficiency is relatively easy to correct with a change in diet or supplementation.

A poor memory can be a sign of vitamin B12 deficiency, studies find.

People with a vitamin B12 deficiency sometimes have worse memories for both events and ideas.

Indeed, low levels of vitamin B12 and folate have both been linked to a higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

Folates include vitamin B9, folacin and folic acid.

Memory problems are one of the key symptoms of Alzheimer’s.

This link has been observed by researchers for more than three decades.

A deficiency in B12 or folate can cause higher levels of the amino acid homocysteine in the body.

Homocysteine has a neurotoxic effect and could lead to neurological conditions, such as Alzheimer’s.

One study followed 370 people over 75-years-old for three years.

In that time, 78 had developed Alzheimer’s disease, with more than half having a vitamin B12 or folate deficiency.

Dr Hui-Xin Wang, the study’s first author, said:

“In our study, we found that low levels of either of these two vitamins were related to an increased Alzheimer’s disease risk.

Monitoring B12 and folate levels is important in order to avoid unfavorable conditions, even for those elderly people who are quite healthy in terms of cognition.”

The good news is that B12 deficiency is relatively easy to correct with a change in diet or supplementation.

Good sources of vitamin B12 include liver, beef, fish, poultry, eggs and low-fat milk.

Fortified breakfast cereals also contain vitamin B12.

People who may have difficulty getting enough vitamin B12 include vegetarians and vegans, older people and those with some digestive disorders, such as Crohn’s disease.

If taking supplements, be careful not to have more than 2 mg per day — any more could be harmful.

The study was published in the journal Neurology (Wang et al., 2019).

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