Queen's University professor Nikolaus Troje (Psychology, Biology, School of Computing) believes that it is the consistency of the whole appearance rather than the attractiveness of the parts. 
 
 "Most previous work on attractiveness focused on the effect of isolated features." says Dr. Troje. "The current study demonstrates how important it is that these features fit together well." 
 
 Participants were shown schematic point-light displays that depict a person using 15 moving dots. The representation conveyed both the individual characteristics of a person's movements and their individual body shape. 
 
 Dr. Troje's team isolated these two areas and separately measured the attractiveness of individual movement styles as well as individual body shapes based on ratings obtained from his research participants. The researchers then combined the movement style of one person with the body shapes of another person and collected attractiveness ratings from these "hybrid walkers." 
 
 Based on this data, the researchers asked the question: Is the attractiveness of the isolated movement and the attractiveness of the isolated body shape sufficient to predict the attractiveness of the hybrid walker? 
 
 It is not; the hybrid walkers are deemed less attractive than predicted by the movement and the shape used to make them. 
 
 "We found that attractiveness depends on internal consistency -- whether the movement and the shape match each other or not," says Dr. Troje. "Our visual system is a sensitive lie detector that perceives even the slightest inconsistencies and responds negatively to them." 
 
 The results call for re-examination of earlier research that looked at attractiveness in a piecemeal way. 
 
 "They can also be used to formulate advice to people who are working on improving their own appearance," says Dr. Troje. "What works for one person may not work for another one. If in doubt, just be yourself." 

 A new study from the BioMotionLab just appeared in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior. We look at different features that contribute to the perception of sexual attractiveness of another person depicted as a point-light walker that consists of 15 moving dots. The representation is rich enough to convey both the individual, idiosyncratic characteristics of a person's movements and information about individual body shape. Isolating the two, we measured the attractiveness of individual movement styles as well as individual body shapes. Then, we can recombined movement and body shape in different ways to create hybrid walkers that contain movement of one person and the shape of another person. The question is whether the attractiveness of the pieces predicts the attractiveness of the whole. It does to some degree. But more important is the finding that attractiveness also depends on internal consistency, that is, whether movement and shape match each other or not. Hybrid walkers are rated less attractive than the original walkers which contributed to the hybrid. Our visual system is a sensitive "lie detector" which responds to even the slightest inconsistencies and perceives them negatively. The finding has methodological implications and calls for a re-interpretation of plenty of earlier research which looked at attractiveness in a rather piece-meal way. But it also can be used to formulate advice to people who work on improving their own appearance: Be careful! What works for one person doesn't work for another one. If in doubt then just be yourself. Here is a link to the paper.
– Your shapely derriere alone isn't what makes you attractive, or so suggests a new study. "Most previous work on attractiveness focused on the effect of isolated features," explains Canada's Queen's University professor Nikolaus Troje. As he and two German researchers explain in a study published in Evolution & Human Behavior, "evolutionary psychology states that sexual attractiveness has evolved to assess the reproductive qualities of a potential mate"—and as such, past studies have looked at individual traits that have ties to things like fertility. In their study, the researchers set out with the hypothesis that attractiveness doesn't just stem from those parts but from "the consistency of the whole appearance." A press release explains the set-up: Participants viewed "schematic point-light displays that depict a person using 15 moving dots." The dots gave participants a sense of both the person's body shape and their movements; that allowed the researchers to grade both the most attractive shapes and movement styles. They then made super-attractive hybrids by pairing the most attractive in both buckets. But participants found the hybrid walkers to be less attractive than the two individual walkers who made up the hybrid, Troje explains in a blog post. "We found that attractiveness depends on internal consistency—whether the movement and the shape match each other or not." If they don't, our visual system will respond negatively. One practical application of the results: "to formulate advice to people who are working on improving their own appearance," says Troje, who observes that what makes someone else good-looking may not work for you. (Here's what attractiveness has to do with love at first sight.)