Sure, you may have an adorable meet cute story where you met your significant other via a funny conversation at the coffeeshop, but to be honest, humans don’t always put personality first and are still pretty superficial when it comes to chemistry. What we’re trying to say is, most people find others attractive based on looks first (which makes sense, because we’ve become so wired to find partners and flings by swiping through dating apps). We didn’t make up this info — these statistics are coming straight from surveying other humans on their preferences in a potential mate.
The stats seems to prove that many people find the same traits and features in another person attractive because, of the facts of evolution. But in reality, it’s also true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and what anyone can find attractive is totally subjective— so we’re taking all of these findings with a grain of salt.
Here are five top features on a person that are most likely to be noticed first and create instant chemistry.
Smile
You can tell a lot by someone’s smile, and it turns out that it’s a very important and impressionable feature for people when they’re first meeting someone else. In an American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry survey, 48 percent of people ranked a smile as the most memorable feature upon meeting someone. This option surpassed what a person was wearing and what the other person smelled like as a first impression (not that you should not pay attention to how you smell on a first date!).
Lips
Along with smile, lips are another top feature that potential partners pay attention to when they meet someone new, understandably. 2018 research states that people of all genders appreciate full, “pouty” lips. In people identifying as female specifically, fuller lips compared to the width of the face are considered especially attractive.
The research makes sense, because people who are meeting you in a romantic setting might be paying special attention to the lips and imagining what it might be like to kiss you.
Eyes
Eyes are the windows to the soul, as the saying goes, and based on findings by FastLife.com, it’s clear that eyes do reveal a lot about people. In the site’s poll of more than 1,000 people to determine the biggest physical turn-ons and turn-offs, women and men agreed that “eyes were the most important facial feature in a potential partner.”
Of the participants who were surveyed, the majority of both men and women found blue to be the most attractive eye color. In regard to eye colors other than blue, the study found that men preferred women who had green eyes over those with brown eyes. Women, however, gave a slight edge to men with brown eyes over those with green eyes.
Stomach
When FastLife.com polled over 1,000 men and women in 2014 about the physical traits they find most attractive in the opposite sex, the stomach ranked very high for both.
Actually, it ranked as high as it could for women — a man’s stomach was deemed the most attractive non-facial feature for women, receiving an average score of 3.17 on a five-point scale of importance. Men also included the stomach on the list of non-facial features they find most attractive in a partner. So cuddling up with a cute tummy is something everyone’s into, apparently.
Hair
Maybe there’s actually something to the classic flirting techniques of hair-tossing and running your hands through your hair. When the PlentyOfFish Research team compiled data in 2014 from over 81,000 user profiles and nearly two million messages among those in the 25 to 35 age group, they found that the color of a man’s hair has a definite impact on whether or not he’ll get a message from females.
According to the research, men who have brown hair receive 20 percent more messages than men who have any other hair color, with the second most popular hair color being blond. As it turns out, not having any hair can work in a man’s favor as well — men who were bald received the third most messages. See? Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder, and people have so many different preferences, so there’s someone out there for everyone.
Before you go, check out a guide to the org*sms you didn’t even know you could be having:
