To beard or not to beard? Scientists reveal the surprising reason why men including Brad
If you’ve been contemplating shaving your stubble, experts say it’s time to put the razor down.
From Brad Pitt to Prince William and Boris Johnson, many men look a lot better with a beard.
However, scientific evidence shows that this isn’t just a matter of personal taste.
According to scientists, there is an evolutionary explanation for the ‘beard glow up’.
Facial hair is what scientists call a ‘secondary sexual characteristic’, which means that it is one of the characteristics which distinguishes males and females of the species.
Just like the exaggerated antlers on a stag or the red behind of a baboon, human facial hair might have evolved to help men get more mates.
In our distant past, a bushy beard might have helped men signal their strength to potential mates.
And some scientists believe that the exact same process might still be at work today.
From Boris Johnson (left) to Prince William (right), countless men have undergone a ‘beard glow up’. Now scientists have explained why a beard makes men more attractive
Do beards really make people more attractive?
While the results can vary from person to person, the general rule is that facial hair improves men’s appeal to the opposite sex.
Dr Pech says: ‘On average – with big individual and cultural variation – beards tend to increase attractiveness.’
In one 2014 study, 1,453 women were shown pictures of men who had volunteered to grow out their facial hair from clean-shaven to full beards.
Overall, the women rated all types of beards, including light stubble, heavy stubble, and full beards, more attractive than clean-shaven.
Before you throw away the beard-trimmer for good, it’s worth noting that beards don’t have a uniform effect on how men are perceived.
Different types of beards subtly change the way women see men.
Previous research has shown that full beards make men appear more aggressive, mature, and stronger than clean-shaven men.
Studies have shown that a beard, particularly heavy to light stubble, can improve men’s ratings of attractiveness and approachability
By contrast, Dr Pech’s research has found that lighter beards have a strikingly different impact.
Heavy stubble, for example, scored highest for attractiveness, while a clean-shaven look made men seem more approachable.
The effects can also differ slightly based on your age and underlying facial shape.
‘Beards typically accentuate male-typical facial structure, which pushes judgements toward older, more dominant, or higher-status,’ says Dr Pech.
‘That suggests that their benefit will tend to be concentrated among younger males.’
So, depending on the type of impression you are trying to give off, you may need to change your beard accordingly.
Full beards often boost ratings tied to long-term partnering, such as maturity and parenting ability.
So for fatherly types such as Boris Johnson and Prince William, this might be the best beard to go for.
Different types of facial hair had different effects on women’s perceptions. Light stubble (right) increased perceptions of attractiveness, while a full beard (right) increased ratings of maturity and parenting skills
But for someone like Ryan Gosling or Tom Hardy, who may simply want to be attractive and approachable, a light or heavy face of stubble will be best.
Why do humans have beards?
In both animals and humans, traits like beards evolve because successive generations of individuals with them survive long enough to pass on their genes.
For characteristics like humans’ big brains or the thick fur of a polar bear, those traits can get passed on because they help the organism survive.
However, beyond trapping food, cultivating germs, and harbouring lice, beards essentially do nothing for the men that have them.
While some studies have shown that beards can keep men’s faces warm or even cushion incoming blows, this is certainly not why they evolved.
Instead, Dr Wesley Pech, of Seton Hall University, says that beards likely evolved due to ‘sexual selection’.
That means, instead of helping men survive, beards evolved because they helped men find a mate.
Men may have evolved to grow beards not because they offer any survival advantage, but because they help in securing a mate. Since men with beards reproduced more often in the past, those beard-growing genes are now common among modern men
Essentially, the existence of human beards comes down to the fact that men with beards were more successful at finding partners than their beardless counterparts.
Why are women attracted to beards?
Even if beards evolved because women are attracted to them, that doesn’t explain why women would be attracted to beards in the first place.
According to scientists, the reason isn’t necessarily about how beards look to women but about the signal that the beard sends out to other men.
In one study, researchers from the University of Northumbria asked 20 men to record themselves at four different stages of growing out their beards.
When women reviewed the different recordings, the beards didn’t universally improve attractiveness, but they did increase how dominant the men were rated to be.
Likewise, researchers at the University of Queensland have found that beards significantly increase perceived aggression in men.
Men making aggressive facial expressions were rated as more aggressive when they had beards.
Beards have been shown to increase perceptions of dominance and accentuate expressions of anger. That could be useful for bearded actors like Tom Hardy (left) and Jason Momoa (right)
Likewise, beards increased the speed and accuracy with which men and women recognised displays of anger but not displays of happiness.
Essentially, there are two ways in which beards could have evolved through sexual selection.
Either it is through ‘intersexual signalling’, in which beards advertise sexual maturity and masculine traits to potential partners.
Or it is through ‘intrasexual signalling’, which means they function as an aggressive display to ward off other men.
Since beards appear to promote perceptions of dominance and speed up recognition of anger, scientists now generally think that the latter scenario is the case.
That means a beard is more like the oversized claw of a male fiddler crab than the majestic plumage of a peacock.
What is the best time to grow a beard?
Interestingly, understanding what kind of signal a beard has evolved to show can also explain why beard fashions tend to ebb and flow so rapidly.
Studies have found that the more people have beards, the less of an advantage they offer. When everyone is bearded, the attractiveness-enhancing effects are diminished. Pictured Ben Affleck (right) and Jon Bernthal (left)
In crowded cities or at times when there is a greater proportion of single men, the number of beards tends to increase as men fight to stand out.
In one study of facial hair fashions between 1842 and 1971, conducted by the appropriately-named Nigel Barber, the popularity of beards and moustaches was found to peak when there were fewer women in the marriage market.
At the same time, research has shown that the attractiveness-boosting effects of facial hair fall off when more people sport stubble.
In fact, one study conducted by researchers at the University of New South Wales found that the rarer beards are, the bigger women liked those beards to be.
When women were first shown a group of men where beards were rare, they rated full beards and heavy stubble as more attractive in subsequent groups.
Dr Pech says: ‘Signals carry more information when few others display them.’
In nature, some variations become evolutionarily successful precisely because they are rare.
For example, guppies with rare colour patterns are more successful at finding mates.
Beards are considered most attractive when fewer men have them. That means the best time to grow a beard is before anyone else has the same idea. Pictured: A bearded Adam Sandler (left) and clean-shaven George Clooney (right)
This produces more guppies with that pattern until the colouration ceases to be rare, and the evolutionary pendulum starts to swing back another way.
Some scientists believe this may be the same reason that the number of beards tends to rapidly increase towards ‘peak beard’ before quickly falling away again.
‘When almost everyone is clean-shaven, a beard may communicate more about status, maturity, or identity than when beards are widespread,’ says Dr Pech.
‘The same logic applies to conspicuous consumption: if a Mercedes is used to signal wealth, the more people who own a Mercedes, the weaker that signal becomes.’
So if you are thinking of growing a beard, the best time to do it is before anyone else gets the same idea.
CHARLES DARWIN: THE BRITISH NATURALIST WHO INTRODUCED THE IDEA OF NATURAL SELECTION
Pictured: Naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, the fifth of six children of wealthy and well-connected parents.
One of his grandfathers was Erasmus Darwin, a doctor whose book ‘Zoonomia’ had set out a radical and highly controversial idea, that one species could ‘transmute’ into another. Transmutation is what evolution was then known as.
In 1825, Charles Darwin studied at Edinburgh University, one of the best places in Britain to study science.
It attracted free thinkers with radical opinions including, among other things, theories of transmutation.
Darwin trained to be a clergyman in Cambridge in 1827 after abandoning his plans to become a doctor, but continued his passion for biology.
In 1831, Charles’ tutor recommended he go on a voyage around the world on HMS Beagle.
Over the next five years Darwin travelled five continents collecting samples and specimens while investigating the local geology.
With long periods of nothing to do but reflect and read, he studied Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology, which had a profound impact.
The trip also began a life of illness after he suffered terrible sea sickness.
In 1835, HMS Beagle made a five-week stop at the Galapágos Islands, 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador.
There, he studied finches, tortoises and mockingbirds although not in enough detail to come to any great conclusions.
But he was beginning to accumulate observations which were fast building up.
On returning home in 1838, Darwin showed his specimens to fellow biologists and began writing up his travels.
It was then that he started to see how ‘transmutation’ happened.
He found that animals more suited to their environment survived longer and have more young.
Evolution occurred by a process he called ‘Natural Selection’ although he struggled with the idea because it contradicted his Christian world view.
Having experienced his grandfather being ostracised for his theories, Darwin collected more evidence, while documenting his travels, until 1851.
He decided to publish his theory after he began to suffer long bouts of sickness.
Some historians suggest that he had contracted a tropical illness while others felt that his symptoms were largely psychosomatic, brought on by anxiety.
In 1858, Darwin received a letter from Alfred Russel Wallace, an admirer of Darwin’s from reading about his Beagle Voyage.
Darwin was criticised by the Church and some of the press as people were shaken by the idea that humans descended from apes
Wallace arrived at the theory of natural selection independently and wanted Darwin’s advice on how to publish.
In 1858, Darwin finally went public giving Wallace some credit for the idea.
Darwin’s ideas were presented to Britain’s leading Natural History body, the Linnean Society.
In 1859, he published his theory on evolution. It would become one of the most important books ever written.
Darwin drew fierce criticism from the Church and some of the press. Many people were shaken by the book’s key implication that human beings descended from apes, although Darwin only hinted at it.
In 1862, Darwin wrote a warning about close relatives having children, he was already worried about his own marriage, having married his cousin Emma and lost three of their children and nursed others through illness.
Darwin knew that orchids were less healthy when they self-fertilised and worried that inbreeding within his own family may have caused problems.
He worked until his death in 1882. Realising that his powers were fading, he described his local graveyard as ‘the sweetest place on Earth’.
He was buried at Westminster Abbey.