The Research Behind Beauty Overstimulation

Have you ever heard of sensory adaptation? To put it simply, it refers to the phenomenon of your senses adjusting to a stimulus in your environment after constant exposure. Imagine going to a dimly lit restaurant with candles as your only source of light. When you first go inside after walking around in the sun, it’s going to be impossible to see. But if you linger for a few minutes, your eyes will eventually adjust to the change in the darkness and you’ll be able to see your surroundings. As much as you can with candles as your guide, at least. That is sensory adaptation.

In this way, whatever we’re exposed to for long periods becomes the new standard. If you work at a coffee shop, after several hours of smelling coffee, you won’t even register that you’re smelling coffee. You’ll have to open up a new, stronger-scented bag of coffee beans or walk outside to reset your olfactory senses. 

This, of course, applies to the content we consume daily from different social media platforms. In particular, the amount of beautiful people we see on apps like TikTok is mind-numbing. If you’re familiar with the app, you’re probably no stranger to how the For You page is crammed with conventionally attractive faces, especially young and pretty women. But can scrolling through all the beautiful faces affect us outside the screen? 

Douglas T Kendrick, a psychology professor from Arizona State University, wrote a book titled “Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life” where he describes his research regarding society being overexposed to beauty. His main claim is that being overexposed to beauty twists our perception of it so much that it harms our relationships and idea of love. 

Kendrick created an experiment where participants watched a group of conventionally attractive men and women run by a regular crowd of people. They were then asked to estimate the number of beautiful women in that crowd. Kendrick found that male participants overestimated the number of beautiful women even though their estimates of handsome men weren’t affected. The female participants also overestimated the number of gorgeous women but did not overestimate the number of handsome men. 

Then in another experiment with his colleague Sara Gutierres, he divided the participants into two groups once more. He asked both groups to judge an average-looking woman after being exposed to different stimuli. Half of the participants were exposed to a series of beautiful-looking women before being asked to rate the original average-looking woman, while the other half were exposed to a series of regular, average-looking women. No surprises here: the group that was continually exposed to the beautiful-looking women rated the average-looking woman as much uglier than the group that was exposed to a series of normal-looking people. 

As the final nail in the coffin, yet another study found that disproportionate exposure to beauty mucks up people’s expectations. In this study, a group of men was shown centerfolds from both Playboy and Penthouse magazines, while women were exposed to men from Playgirl. Afterward, they were asked to rate their feelings about their partners — and the results showed that men reported being less in love with their partners than women after seeing the photos.

While the findings were disheartening, not all hope is lost. This harmful habit loop is something we can rewire. Suggestions on how to do so include taking breaks from scrolling through our social media feeds, going outside and speaking to people within our community, watching documentaries, and resetting our senses. If all that was difficult to digest, I suggest looking at this quick Youtube short as it provides an overview of what I spoke about. For more details on the studies, this article covers all the research from Professor Kendrick mentioned above. 

• beauty
• research
• social media
• social media addiction
• social media break