'Babies programmed to see beauty'

Newborn babies challenge the view that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", it has been revealed.

Infants just a few hours old show they prefer attractive faces, researchers found.

Placed before photos of a fashion model and a plain-looking woman, a newborn will be drawn to the prettier face.

The finding undermines the theory that people develop an idea of attractiveness from the experience of mixing with different individuals.

Instead, it appears that everyone is born with a pre-programmed understanding of what makes a person attractive.

Dr Alan Slater, Reader in Developmental Psychology at the University of Exeter, who led the study, said: "Attractiveness is not simply in the eye of the beholder. It's in the eye of the infant right from the moment of birth, and possibly before birth."

The Exeter team tested infants averaging two days old, but the group included some born only a few hours earlier.

Each baby was held in front of the pictures and closely watched by "off stage" researchers to the left and right.

The observers followed the baby's eyes and pressed a button whenever the infant looked at the image on their side.

Generally babies would flick their gaze between one picture and another. But the experiment found that they spent significantly more time looking at the fashion model.

link : http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040905/344/f1z6t.html