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Apart from being a professional psychologist, Dr Wilson trained as an opera singer at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and still undertakes professional engagements as an actor, singer and director. Professor Glenn Wilson. Science and love might seem strange bedfellows.
One is cold and analytical, the other warm, cuddly and mysterious. This may be why, until the last few decades, commentary on love has been left largely to poets, philosophers, and Hollywood film-makers. However, now scientists are getting in on the act, with their experimental procedures, questionnaires, brain-scanners and evolutionary theories.
What have they found? First, they have analysed what makes a person attractive. In the case of women, it is babyfacedness women seem to have borrowed infant signals to evoke male protectiveness and a low waist-hip-ratio signalling high oestrogen and fertility.
In the case of men it is mainly the tall, rugged, swarthy look signalling testosterone and power although certain feminine traits also appeal to the maternal instinct in women and signal personality traits like 'sensitivity', making a man more altruistic and easier to live with. For both sexes, symmetry and clear skin are attractive as markers of health and youth, hence reproductive fitness. Actually, youth is particularly important for women, because it connects more strongly with fertility.
