The phrase ‘less is more’ doesn’t always add up, but recent research suggests that it is most definitely the case for baldness. In other words, men shouldn’t be too worried about losing their hair.
Men with a cleanly shaved head are seen as more mature, successful, masculine and more intelligent.
A scientific study in 2012 performed research on bald men, and how they’re perceived by people. Apparently, being bald also increases your perceived length by about an inch, and people with a lack of hair are seen as more socially dominant, without feeling threatening.
The study was performed at the University of Pennsylvania and also mentioned that women believe that balder men are more masculine and stronger. And if you just take a look at some top-grossing actors such as Bruce Willis, Jason Statham, Vin Diesel and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, we wouldn’t exactly debate those findings.
This specific study showed that people find bald men more attractive as well.
Just under 60 people were shown multiple comparison images of a couple of men. The first picture shows men with a normal amount of hair on their head, while the second one shows the same men completely bald.
The second comparison pictures were digitally altered but were a good representation of that person without hair. The majority of all test subjects found the bald picture to be more appealing and attractive.
As you can imagine, there have been plenty of other studies about baldness and the perception of it, and most of them share the same results and conclusions.
A number of researchers from Barry University in Florida were speculating why baldness was continually evolving.
“I speculated that male pattern baldness evolved as an appeasement signal and signaled benign, non-threatening dominance,” Dr. Frank Muscarella told the Daily Mail.
This specific study then once again focused on how baldness was perceived on a number of different scales, including physical attractiveness and social maturity including status, honesty, and intelligence.
The results? Bald men scored higher on almost all scales, which corresponds with the study at the University of Pennsylvania.
Physical attractive did seem to decline a bit, however, which contradicts the findings of the other study.
Nonetheless, the research team did mention in their study that the increased social maturity and dominance makes up for it and adds to the overall attraction of a bald man.
“It could be speculated that although the characteristic of baldness decreases a man’s perceived physical attractiveness, it increases his perceived social dominance,” Dr. Muscarella told.
“There is a large body of literature that shows that although women like physically attractive men, they are also very attracted to signs of high social dominance.”
Yet another paper written by a team of researchers at the University of Saarland concluded that women perceive bald men as wiser and more intelligent – which is in line with the other results.
And if shaving your head was a choice rather than necessity, it could be seen as attractive because you’re making a statement. At least, that’s according to successful entrepreneur Seth Godin, who also happens to be bald. A couple of examples of bald people who are pioneers in entrepreneurship are Jeff Bezos and Steve Ballmer, CEO of Amazon and former CEO of Microsoft, respectively.
“I’m not saying that shaving your head makes you successful, but it starts the conversation that you’ve done something active,” he said to the Wall Street Journal.
Do keep in mind that in these findings are for people who are completely bald. If a man has a couple of bald spots instead of no hair at all, that is perceived as weaker and less physically appealing as well.
If you know someone stressing about becoming bald – there’s no need to worry and they’ll soon reap the benefits according to multiple independent studies. In other words, the best is yet to come!
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