Maybe you’re like me. (Sorry, it’s not always easy. Well, sometimes it is. But I digress.)
My point is that you might be a man who has basically been clean shaven his whole life.
And maybe in the early stages of the pandemic, when you were isolated from most of the world anyway, you decided: Hell, let’s see what happens if I just stop shaving.
Now that the world is back in the office (at least part-time), you’re trying to figure out what science says about the impressions your new look inspires.
This happened to me around March 2020. By April I was past the itching phase; by Memorial Day it was full of Grizzly Adams. Late in the summer, I went to my barber and said, Hey, how about you help me figure this out?
I love how it turned out. I have to keep up because I’ve found that probably the best look for me—the one I feel most comfortable and confident with—is when I’m trying to stop time by maintaining a steady state of about 10 to 14 days of growth.
No, “the guy who came in late last night and didn’t get a chance to shave;” not, “I’m trying to imitate Tom Hanks in Castaway,” but instead, “short beard, two weeks, I might decide to shave, I’m not sure.”
I don’t know if it’s pure coincidence or coincidence, but it turns out that the 10-day growth is exactly what science says most men should strive for in order to send the most positive messages, statistically speaking, to the people around them.
Let’s start with a study from the University of Queensland in Australia, in which researchers tried to determine to what degree different lengths of facial hair can change the perception of men in the eyes of heterosexual women.
The researchers collected women’s responses to photos of men whose beards fell into four categories: clean-shaven, light beards (5 days of growth), strong beards (10 days of growth), and thick beards (about a month of growth).
The study did categorize women’s responses based on the type of romantic relationship they were looking for.
In short, men with light stubble and thick stubble performed best in the “just looking for a little fun” category, while men with heavy stubble and full beards were the most attractive to women looking for a long-term relationship.
Men with clean-shaven faces were at the end of the line in all cases.
Another study from Brazil found fairly similar results for gay men, according to a New York Times report; if anything, they were more attracted to men with more facial hair.
I’m happily married now, so until my wife understands the beard, I think that box is checked. But I was also very interested in how people in social and business settings perceive men with beards, especially if there is any scientific research to back this up.
Here is perhaps the most interesting study. Yet another group of Australian researchers (must be a thing) asked 227 people to look at photographs of men with and without beards and with facial expressions indicating happiness or anger.
Overall, study participants were the fastest to identify angry, bearded men, leading to the conclusion that men with beards give off an aura of seriousness and aggression, regardless of other factors or expressions.
But the surprise was that in a follow-up study with 450 people, in which they were asked to rate the same photos as aggressive, masculine and/or prosocial, happy, bearded men were rated higher in all three categories. –including “prosocial.”
One theory: the very presence of a beard suggests aggression and masculinity, so a change in expression as a result of a smile or other sign of happiness results in an increased prosocial reaction from the other person.
Look, there are many reasons why men grow beards: pandemics, of course. But your culture or religion may encourage or even require them. Maybe I’d just like to see what it would look like.
Maybe you just got traded to the New York Yankees and want to let your freak fly a little.
Obviously, I’m not going to tell you whether or not a beard is a good idea for you. But if you can raise it, maybe knowing what science says affects other people’s perception of you will influence your choice.
Oh, and keep it clean. I don’t think we need scientific research to know that a chin with food stuck in it isn’t high on anyone’s list.
