In the first of a kind study, plastic surgeons found that when a man chooses to have plastic surgery on his face, it significantly increased the perception of attractiveness, liking, social skills or trustworthiness. The study shows that men benefit from cosmetic facial surgery in much the same way as women:other people like that new face more. However, the study showed no significant effect on perceptions of gender (masculinity), while a similar study with women in 2015 showed a significant increase in femininity scores.
In this study, 24 men underwent facial treatments. The men had one or more of the following surgeries:eyelid lift (upper eyelid correction), lower eyelid reduction (lower eyelid correction), facelift, brow lift, neck lift, rhinoplasty (rhinoplasty) and/or a chin implant.
These men, who paid for their own surgery, agreed to use their before and after photos for research purposes. Six surveys were designed, each containing eight photos (4 pre-operative, 4 post-operative. No survey contained one person).
More than 150 participants (aged 25-34, and with university degrees) who rated the photos were not made aware of the purpose of the study. They were asked to rate their perception of each patient's personality traits (aggressiveness, extroversion, attractiveness, risk-seeking, sociability, trustworthiness, niceness, and masculinity.
The research team built a complex multivariate linear mixed model to assess participants' response to a specific surgical procedure — rhinoplasty (rhinoplasty), for example — while controlling changes by additional procedures performed on other parts of the face.
Researchers found that chin augmentation was the only procedure that had no effect on perceived attractiveness, masculinity or personality. The authors believe this is due to the low number of study patients undergoing this procedure. The other procedures showed the following changes, including:
Upper lid – increased attractiveness and reliability
Lower lid – decreased risk-taking
Brow lift – improved perception of extroversion and risk-taking
Face lift – increased attractiveness and trustworthiness
Neck lift – increased perceived extroversion and masculinity
Nose – improved attractiveness
The statistically significant findings generally reflected increases in attractiveness, liking, social skills and reliability.
