Musicians Are More Attractive, Study Says

There’s a new study coming out of Austria right now that is making the case that musicians are simply more attractive than everyone else in the world.

Now, before everyone starts getting angry and offended, may I please remind everyone that it’s not nice to argue with science. Also, it’s just one wacky study out of Austria making this claim—not the government, or something equally as scary.

But nonetheless, the study group Frontiers in Science issued their findings publicly in a paper entitled “Darwin’s sexual selection hypothesis revisited: Musicality increases sexual attraction in both sexes.”

If you need to read that again, don’t worry: so did I. A few times actually. So, if you’re just as confused as I am, hopefully this notation clears up things: “Music is part of every human culture. As music psychologists, we try to get a better understanding of how music affects our feelings and thoughts as well as our behaviour. Our research field keeps growing worldwide.”

Like I said, never argue with science. The study was conducted by showing participants faces of members of the opposite-sex alongside a soundtrack positioned as the person’s own music. Participants then rated the face based on a series of likely scenarios: one night stands, dating, LTRs, et al., and those responses were compared to the responses of a control group that rated faces independent of any musical suggestion.

Generally speaking, the study finds that “Musicality… can influence the perception of attractiveness of opposite-sex faces and dating desirability mostly among females. Males appear to be less influenced by music when rating female faces.”

Frontiers in Science is based in Austria, and the group conducts many studies based the origins of music and its interaction with principles of Darwinism and sexual attraction—you know, my old job. If you’d, like to read more of the groups’ findings, click here. And for all the non-musicians, don’t worry: we still think you’re beautiful, no matter what science says.