Parting hair consciously?
Every day you wake up, shower, and try to style that wet head of yours. If you are a man, you usually wear your hair short and have always parted it on the left since you think it looks better that way.
To be more specific, even though you’re kind of embarrassed to admit it, you think it makes you look more manly.
As popular belief would have it, you’d be right: more manly and, you’ll be pleased to hear, more competent. A right hair part, on the other hand, supposedly makes you look more feminine and come across as a warmer person.
Look at the pictures
But could there possibly be any truth to this? Enter researcher Jeremy Frimer. He figured he’d put science to good use to figure out whether the way you part your hair affects your looks.
To do this, he had about 3,800 people look at pictures of men and women with either a left or right hair part.
The photos were digitally altered, so basically, the only thing that changed was how the man or woman parted their hair.
Pick and choose
The participants’ task was to rank the people in the pictures for attractiveness, and also to say whether they seemed warm, competent, and more feminine or masculine.
Once all the data was in, the results were clear: your hair part makes no difference whatsoever when it comes to attractiveness. Nor does it affect how you come across - whether that’s warm, competent, masculine or feminine.
This seems to be the case for both men and women and it doesn’t make a difference if they’re smiling or serious.
Universal truth?
But Frimer did point out that all the models were white and from the United States so the findings of the study can’t necessarily be generalised to people in other parts of the world.
There is, however, one important factor that could make a difference when it comes to the effect of your hair part on your looks.
Namely, does it matter if you stick to your natural part versus switching sides? Doing so could change the way your hair looks, for example by making it seem thicker, which could make it - and you - more attractive.
Reference: Does the Left Hair Part Look Better (or Worse) Than the Right? Social Psychological and Personality Science. Published online March 23, 2018.
*To protect the identity, names have been changed and the person/s in the picture is/are models.
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