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Many, many people think that looks are the most important aspect of attraction between two people. I disagree.

There are supposedly seven (or so) intelligences (visual-spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, linguistic, logical-mathematical) and similarly I believe there are seven factors in interpersonal attractiveness.

The obvious one is Physical Attractiveness, made up of symmetry, feature type and distribution, body type and all the rest. Over time, the social agreement on what is physically attractive does change with fashion, so this is a bit of a moving feast. But in all eras certain aspects remain physically attractive (like symmetry of the face).

The less obvious dimensions of attractiveness are:

Intelligence – a sum of the seven intelligences above. There is no absolute scale here, but a person is typically less attracted to someone further away on this scale. At least in the context of looking for a mate (as opposed to a root).

Chemistry – this I believe is a proxy for a good genetic match, which some believe is a mix of physical appearance, pheromones and god knows what else. Its the collection of messages that makes one believe great offspring will result. This is mostly a result of subconscious thought processing.

Socio-match – when you drop someone new into your pond, i.e. your circle of family and friends, the pond can either love them or hate them. If they hate them this is like an biological antibody attack to an invader. The more attractive people to you are the ones that best fit into your circle.

Time and life – life is quite long and we are much more comfortable spending it with people that like doing similar things. And I don’t mean the odd trip overseas; I mean on a daily and weekly basis does your mate prefer to work all weekend in order to keep the house clean and tidy, or say ‘bugger that’ and spend the time down the pub instead. There is a dimension to attractiveness that is time well spent, together.

Greed – money, power and status; we all feel comfortable with a certain level of these in ourselves or a mate. It is often joked (by men) that all women are gold-diggers; this not true. Some women are gold diggers and I think they are a sub-set of the physically attractive minority with weaknesses in the other attractiveness dimensions.

Bad habits – we all have habits that are deemed on the negative side of ‘good’. From nose picking to snoring, laziness, a liking of junk food, a lack of empathy or awareness, loudness; no one gets away without developing what can be grating habits (to someone else). On this dimensions, some people simply don’t see another’s bad habits and these are then NOT an issue. This is an odd, and sort of ‘in the negative’, attractiveness – -a natural immunity to the bad habits of another.

When you add it all up, the seven dimensions of attractiveness give us the ‘vibe’ – the thing that makes each of us more or less attracted to someone else.

Strengths is some area seem to automatically lead to weaknesses in other areas, and the end result is that we are mostly, all of us, equally attractive enough to some others. Which is why there are more than 7 billion people on the planet. An example of this effect can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6ztq8nBfBU

The key message here is that attractiveness is subjective and relative, and not absolute. And when all seven dimensions are tallied the spread isn’t that great.

There is a flaw in current thinking that physical attractiveness trumps all others driven primarily by the marketing and media industries. But most smart men, by the time they are thirty or so, know that the most attractive women are the less physically attractive (in general) because they are far more attractive in the other six dimensions. This simply because these other dimensions have been developed. Of course there are exceptions to the rule (there always is) but so?