Berno Bucker and Mark van Vugt: Navigating First Impressions: Evolutionary Psychology Meets Modern Technology

Doortje Smithuijsen: My name is Doortje Smithuijsen and in this podcast I will be investigating aesthetic capital because next the more known forms of capital like social capital and cultural capital there's also something that is called aesthetic capital. It captures the way we look and the way these looks sort of define our class and our chances in society. And well, due to the rise of social media and the increased visibility of our physical appearance, this aesthetic capital is becoming increasingly determinant for our social opportunities. Therefore I would really like to investigate this form of capital with all kinds of researchers, some are from the VU (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), some are from different areas of this society, and together in this podcast we will investigate what this aesthetic capital is and how it shapes our society today. Welcome, everyone, to this new episode of the connected world podcast for the food. My name is Doortje Smithuijsen, and with all kinds of guests, I will discuss the very broad, very interesting topic of aesthetic capital. And today I am joined by two guests, which is a first in this podcast. Very nice to have you Mark van Vugt and Berno Bucker. We will talk with both of you separately, and then later together, but maybe it's nice if you could maybe both introduce yourself, maybe Mark you first? Mark van Vugt: Yeah, so I'm a professor here at the VU in the Department of experimental and Applied Psychology, and I'm an evolutionary psychologist, Doortje: Okay, very interesting! And Berno, you? Berno Bucker: I'm the director of the demonstrator lab at the VU where we support startups. And next to that I'm an enterpreneur, in an aesthetic startup myself. Doortje: Alright, so while you are both very well suited to be here today, Mark, I would like to start with you. As you already said, you are a professor in evolutionary psychology and well, within that you do a lot of research to first impressions. Could you maybe tell me a little bit about this? And also about the way this has shaped our whole evolutionary system, so to say. Mark: Right so one of the things so we're focusing on in our lab is indeed on first impressions, and then particularly with regard to faces. And so one of the sort of important outcomes of this research is that facial attractiveness is a strong cue that people respond to. They respond to facially attractive people by hiring them first, for jobs, by being interested in them. And for romantic relationships. There seems to be generally a sort of attractiveness premium in all walks of life, and that's what we're studying. Doortje: And what is a facially attractive person? Has this person been looking basically the same throughout all times of man? Or does it change that the Neanderthalers had different attractive faces, then maybe we do now? Mark: Right well, there are some things that are biologically more fixed and then there are some things that are culturally more variable. So one of the things that is more fixed is the symmetry of the face. So symmetry of the face, and the body is an important cue to people's health and their genetic fitness. We often talk about fitness, but not in terms of going to the gym, but fitness in terms of reproductive success, or reproductive potential. So symmetric faces and symmetric bodies, they signal to us, Hey, this is a person who has had a normal developmental growth, okay, so they must have good genes. Doortje: So they're biologically in order so to say. Mark: Biologically in order, there is no not any major hazards that occurred during their growth, so they must have probably good genes. And, of course, from an evolutionary perspective, it's good to be interested in persons who possess good genes. If you want to have offspring with them. Doortje: Yeah and how does this sort of, well, this very biological way of looking at each other's faces- how does it shape our society so to say? Mark: well, in the sense that we are still very much geared to valuing and appreciating beauty and people. And beautiful people, we think that they're more competent in their jobs. We like them. We think they're warmer, they're more sociable people. And so there's this general, what we call a halo effect in psychology, surrounding people with beauty. And and it's everywhere, it's enhanced of course, we have all kinds of means to enhance our beauty. We spend a lot of money, especially women, on cosmetic products to enhance their beauty. And it seems to be that it's, well I wouldn't say more important than in our ancestral societies, but certainly as equally important in modern society as in the past yes. Doortje: I find this very interesting because, well actually the term already says it: first impressions. It has something very primal about it, right? Aren't we smarter than that? Aren't we smarter than to go about first impressions of people? Mark: Well I mean, there's two separate things here. One is, of course, the premium on attractiveness and the other is the importance of first impressions. Now, first impressions, and I think Berno can talk a little bit more about that as well. First impressions are shortcuts. So nowadays, we live in a society where we meet lots of people in work, when we walk on the streets, when we travel. And so, first impressions are as actually sort of shortcuts that we use in order to make quick and easy judgements of people and say "Hey, this is somebody who I'd like to work with" or "This is somebody who I'm interested in as a potential mate" or whatever. And these shortcuts serve a purpose, because we cannot go about assessing each individual we meet on a whole list of criteria. So we latch up on these things that are evolutionary, very important. And that includes facial attractiveness. Doortje: I'm also wondering, like when we talk about first impressions, we talk about the impressions we have from the other right. Are people also aware about the first impression they have on other people? Mark: Ah that's a really interesting question. So are people aware of what impressions they make on others? Yeah. You would hope they do. But we also know that people are quite unrealistically optimistic. People have a self-enhanced view of themselves: people think that they're better car drivers than average, that they're better husbands than average, that they're more moral than other people around them. And so there is the sort of general I suppose exaggerated view of oneself, which is only lacking in one group of people. And those are people with a depression, they have a very accurate self view. Doortje: They've accurate self view. But they are also have a more accurate view on their first impressions? Mark: Exactly yes. Doortje: That's quite a depressive fact. I'm very curious, because you also studied the relationship between facial appearance and leadership - leadership qualities that are maybe assessed to someone? Could you could you tell me what your findings are on this subject? Mark: So it's really important that the main cue here that people pick up on the face for making leadership judgments is not beauty, per se, or attractiveness per se, its dominance. Dominance is something that signals competence in leadership. And so for men, but also for women to a certain extent, having a sort of more masculine face is considered to be a cue to being a suitable leader for example. But it does depend a little bit on the context. So we have found in our research that for example at times of war we want a dominant looking leader. But in times of peace, we want a less dominant/a more trustworthy, a more feminine looking leader. So what we pick up on the face very much depends on on the context. Doortje: Well it's also quite cultural, right? Because it's very interesting that you say when when when people sort of well resemble a dominant figure or have a dominant face we see them as competent. But it shows a lot about our society that we think that dominance is the same as competence. I wouldn't, maybe, agree... Mark: In fact, we have done recently a study in 26 different nations across five continents, where we gave people a scenario "who would you vote for as your President?". Half of the people got to see the country is at war and the other half the country was at peace. And then we ask them, "which candidate do you prefer the more dominant looking or the more non-dominant, warmer looking?". And across these 26 societies they all favored the more dominant looking at times of war. Doortje: Both the countries in war and in peace? Mark: Oh, no only to countries at war. Apparently there is in our mind, what I call an algorithm or sort of decision rule/heuristic that says "hey, once we are in danger, we need protection from a dominant masculine looking leader". Doortje: This is super interesting. Well, I mean, you guys have been doing research together also on the subject. Maybe Berno, you could introduce yourself first and maybe you can tell me a little bit about this research that you've been doing? Berno: Yes so I'm Berno Bucker, I have a background in neuroscience. And here at the VU, I met Mark, and we were mostly studying faces together. It is very interesting to hear from Mark indeed, that dominance is this important and that he found that in war times you see in all different countries, that people have a preference for dominance faces. One of the exemptions for this is in the Asian culture. So I'm very curious how you saw that. But in more Eastern cultures, you see that people value competence as well. So from a face, there are three things that we immediately see. One is the attractiveness. The second thing is is the dominance to actually assess how strong is someone? And we also want to see how positive or negative someone is. We assess "should I approach this person? Yes or no?" Doortje: Yeah. So approachability. Mark: We also call it warmth. Berno: That's the same. And of course, that is because it's adaptive, like Mark says. It increases your chances to survive if you can quickly assess if someone is going to do you harm or not. If someone is healthy or not, is gonna be your friend or not. And I think this, what what science shows is that all these adaptive shortcuts that we made, we actually overgeneralize them. So because we have these concepts hardwired, in our brain, we start making shortcuts, and actually decisions that are not accurate anymore. So if someone looks looks very much as a babyface, for example, people think "Ah they're weak and soft and approachable." But this, this might not be the case... Doortje: I just wanted to ask you guys, how accurate are these assumptions? Does someone who triggers our dominance radar- are they always dominant? Do they turn out to be? Mark: That's a really interesting question, and I think there are two opposing camps in the literature. But I mean, the arguments is easy to follow. And that is: okay, in our ancestral society, we were with a small group of people and everyone knew each other by heart. So if you had a dominant face that was okay, but what kind of behaviors were you showing? Yeah, we could immediately detect that if we met each other for long enough. But in today's society, where with millions of people, and we have to vote for maybe the next president of the US, well, how do we know how this person really is at home? We haven't interacted with them ourselves. So these kinds of superficial cues like a face or a body, get more important, we attach more weight to them. And so that's the one camp which says we indeed overgeneralize from superficial cues. But the other camp, and I'm more of a functionalist myself, I think well maybe that's true but... If you have the face of Trump and the body of Trump, maybe it also pays to come across as dominant in your behaviors, because there's also some sort of positive feedback loop from your face. Or if you're an attractive woman, physically attractive, well maybe you behave in a different way that suits your needs. Doortje: Yeah. So you would say it's like, in Dutch we would say "Kip en ei verhaal" I'm not sure if there's a correct English, chicken and egg story. Berno: In the scientific literature, they call this the self-fulfilling prophecy. So actually, it has been shown that mostly if we attribute certain personality traits to a person based on only seeing their face for one second, that they don't correlate with their actual personality. So if you look very charismatic or friendly to me, by seeing you only one second, it doesn't mean that you are actually also a very friendly person. Doortje: And you mean that you would know this if you would see someone one second, you would not immediately assume "They're charismatic". Berno: I could judge you already, but it doesn't correlate; if you will fill in a personality questionnaire, it wouldn't correlate with your actual personality or your behavior. Yeah, what Mark says it's... Mark: That's one camp... Okay, hockey players, ice hockey players in the US, their faces have been measured in terms of their masculinity. And then they looked at the fouls they commit and the sending offs of the pitch, and they were highly correlated with the dominance of the face. So they are more aggressive apparently. Speaker 1 But it's interesting, right? Because it's also about the way society treats you. If you look very dominant... Mark: So that's the chicken and the egg Doortje: Yeah, exactly. Like, well, the self fulfilling prophecy, I guess. So for example, if you're very attractive you will always be treated nicely, maybe you will be nicer to others, and you will become even more attractive. Berno: And what I think is the interesting and important part, then is, if I see you and I judge your face in the first only on the first encounter on the first second, I make assumptions and these assumptions will still strongly bias how we interact with each other. So the longer we talk I make more assumptions, or I can falsify some of them. But still, these initial biases will have an influence on behavior. Doortje: So actually, you're saying like this first impression will never leave your head? Berno: I think it will never- it can be nuanced. But I think it will definitely still have an influence on some decisions. And from science, we have seen that in political voting, but also in death sentencing of people, that your facial structure can have a bias on a decision that others make, because of you. Doortje: Really, when it comes to death sentence? People have gotten death sentence because of their face? Berno: That has been shown that the typicality of the face looking more aggressive or more criminal-like and that there was a higher chance on someone getting a death sentence because of that. And controlled for a lot of factors. And the same holds for bank loans. For example, if you have a more trustworthy face then you were more likely to get a bank loan, compared to someone else who had exactly the rest the same except for this face. Doortje: Also really think about, you know, when you have to cross the border with the car, and you have to open your window and look out and this is like a total random... People who are being checked and people who aren't I feel like this is like a total first impression kind of thing. Mark: Yeah they look at the license plate first, probably... Doortje: And then yeah the car... Mark: And they make judgment. But it's interesting what Berno says. And it is true. And I'm just reminded of the "The Voice of Holland". I think the program is no longer on television... Doortje: No there were some complications. Mark: Of course, it was the voice of Holland. So the judges didn't see the people when they were making a judgement about how suitable is this person as a singer? Doortje: This is interesting research material for you guys. Because of course the public did see the singers. So there are two udgments there. Could you maybe tell me a little bit about the research you guys have been doing together? Berno: So we are actually currently doing the research together. The first part is, is about attributions that we make to face. So we show a face, we present the face very shortly to participants, and then we ask them to judge the face on all kinds of factors: how attractive is the face, how trustworthy is this face? But for example, also how charismatic is this face, or how leader-like is this face? And what we see then if we ask enough people there is a common consensus about this judgment. So how we judge people, there is a commonality in this. If it would be completely random, if we would see a face and you would judge it as one I would just as as a five and Mark would judge it as a 10 there would be no meaning in the concept of judging it. But apparently, if we see a face as a society, we kind of have the common idea of this face. Doortje: Have you guys ever been tempted to put your own face into this metric? To have people react to your own face? Aren't you curious? Berno: So maybe for later in this podcast because... We make an application... I have to say, since we make that application there is no one who I've met who was not curious to put their face on it. So everybody who you meet wants to know their score, wants to know how they look. Doortje: Well we love to put ourselves through all kinds of benchmarking, facts, we love them. So you already touched upon your, I think it's a startup right? And it's called "Real Face Value". And your startup actually uses all these research, all this data that you are creating, for what exactly? Could you tell me? Berno: Yeah, that's correct. So we're real face value, we make an application for in the aesthetic practice, where doctors can use the application together with clients to make better decisions about the treatments that they want to do. And the application uses the science of first impressions as a basis. Because we show people how a certain treatment would influence their first impression and their appearance. So currently, in, in beauty clinics, people go for a beauty ideal: so they want to have a Kylie Jenner face or this face. So everybody approaches one standard being more beautiful or looking younger. And what actually one of our founders Jacques van der Meulen, he's a plastic surgeon himself for a long time in the Netherlands already. What he noticed is that there's also a lot of people coming in the clinic with social questions. So what I've noticed myself when I'm in a clinic with him or with other doctors is that there are, for example, widow's females, 50 years old, they come in and they say "Every time I'm at the grocery store I meet my family, people say "Aw you look so sad, why are you so sad?" and they're really angry because they're not sad anymore. But because of their face looks sad they are treated sad. So we have this self fulfilling prophecy again. And you'll see that they seek aesthetics, cosmetics, not to look younger or more beautiful but actually to gain back their life to gain more confidence to match their look with how they feel inside. And with our application we try to provide those tools. So the treatment goals, like if you want to look less sad these are the treatments you can do. If you want to look more masculine; so for men, for example, there are a lot of men that say "On the work floor, I'm not taken seriously because I'm not dominant enough. Or I look too tired." Berno: We gave them the Andrew Tate treatment. Doortje: Yeah. Like jaw implants. Berno: No that's a joke. But yeah it's interesting to think about these issues as well. Doortje: I mean I think it's super interesting. Actually, I think about this thing that people often say "You get the face you deserve". Mark: Oh, do people say that? Doortje: Yeah. When it comes to this widow example, she looks sad because she's been through a lot of grief. It's not maybe weird, or even out of place that people want to comfort her right? Mark: It's a difficult thing that you bring up because I mean, there's a lot of genetics involved as well. I mean, if you have physically attractive parents, there's a high likelihood that you're physically attractive as well. And so the face you deserve sounds a little bit Doortje: Sounds a little bit meritocratic when it comes... Berno: But I think maybe "you're the face you live", it has been shown that, for example, certain muscles that you use, or certain gestures that you make very often, that they can also influence how your face changes over time. So when we get older we have more dosis or our skin starts to hang more and we lose fat, etc. But also if we smile a lot, if I smile a lot, then you would see all the smiling lines around my eyes. So also the way you behave can influence the way you look. Doortje: Yeah, of course. I mean, this makes sense. But but then when it comes to, for example, this potential client or patient, I'm not sure. I'm never sure how to call it. Berno: We call them clients. Doortje: Right. So this potential client that says "My face is not masculine enough. And I don't get the respect or people don't see me as dominant because of this. And how can we change that?" When I hear this I also think shouldn't we maybe change what we see as competence right? Shouldn't we sort of immediately assume that someone who has masculine or masculine looking is competent? And don't you serve this sexist way of looking at each other by telling him "Don't worry, we will make you look more masculine and you will get that promotion."? Berno: As Mark said that's hard-wired. Mark: Yeah, it's a really difficult one. So yes, people have been enhancing their appearance for, well, since the we exist. I mean, through all kinds of means. So that is a universal, people want to enhance the way they look in all sorts of ways. We have the cosmetic industry, we have the hairdressers, and now we also have the opportunity for surgery. So, then we say "Okay, as researchers we can at least give the best advice on what to do given your motivations in life." And that's going beyond beauty, which I think is already a good step forward. So it's not all about beauty and youthfulness, but also things about, "Okay, I want to look more warm or more competent, more trustworthy". But of course, as an evolutionary psychologist, I also know that if the whole world starts enhancing their appearance and you cannot trust no longer what you see on a picture or whatever then people will start losing interest because the signal is not reliable anymore. Doortje: Are we there already? Mark: Maybe in South Korea yes. Because there all the women have had plastic surgery, even young women. They all look alike, essentially. And they're very young with their 18th birthday they get their first cosmetic treatment paid for by their parents and what have you. And so when all people start to look alike, I think we lose interest. Doortje: Do you already see this in your research, that people start to look more alike? Mark: Hmm, interesting question. Berno: I think we didn't study that explicitly. Speaker 1 Well, because you already said- and this is also the slogan for Real Face Value, to go beyond beauty. And you already touched upon Kylie Jenner a little bit. And also, I think the common idea that everyone wants to look younger now, or at least not old. What does this do with our first impressions? I'm actually wondering: so suppose we all look younger than we are, or we all use Botox to make our wrinkles go away, does it change our first impressions, or maybe also the evolutionary function it has? Berno: I have to nuance a bit what Mark just said, because a first impression... You can say the first impression is the first 10 milliseconds, the first second or the first minute, right. So the very first time you see a face, so the first second you see a face, all of these judgments that you make, they are automatic and inevitable. So these are more primary processes. A quarter of our brain is dedicated to visual information. So we rely on visual information a lot. We have special brain area, the fusiform face area that is there to register faces. And in this first second, you make all these judgments automatically and inevitably. If you stretch the first impression longer for the second, or you hear someone's voice, you see more, then you can of course change this first impression and it will get more nuanced. So I think the longer you see someone, the more information you gather, the more it matters if you look the same or not. But for that very first impression, I think it doesn't matter. And then looking beautiful, more beautiful or more younger... Mark: I disagree. So if you're on Tinder... Doortje: Yeah, I just wrote down Tinder. Mark: So say you're on Tinder and you develop the knowledge based on all kinds of studies that everyone is changing their physical appearance: the picture via AI tools or whatever, filters... That knowledge should help you update the validity of the information you get from the face. Because then you say "Well, I don't trust this anymore. And then Tinder will go away, disappear. And there will be probably a new medium. Doortje: But it's interesting, right because through dating apps you will have two first impressions actually: you will have the impression online with the pictures who are probably more beautiful than reality, and then you meet each other maybe. But then you've already probably been chatting online or whatever. So you already formed a little bit of an emotion or whatever. This this must be very interesting material for you. Berno: One thing that's important that we say indeed is the norm and beauty standards or maybe beauty trends. So, when Mark and myself when we do research, we don't say "This is beautiful or this is trustworthy" we actually ask 100 people "What do you think about these faces?". So it is the society, in a way, that decides the concept instead of us deciding the concept and the framework. And I can see if society changes, if all the faces changes then we might also change these kinds of concepts. So, what is beautiful shifts? Or we were talking in advance of this podcast with Mark, is a beauty ideal, is it still ideal or is it more of a beauty trend? Because- Doortje: Because this is what you said, there is some common ground like symmetry, etc, facial symmetry. When you, for example, look at, you touched upon Kylie Jenner (once you do that I will bring her up again and again, of course) but then she is someone who really sort of shapes her own body and face, I guess, to what the internet tells her that beauty is right now. So she used to be like, full of fillers and and with like big. What's it called, like a duck lip, duck face, she used to have a duck face. But now 10 years later she has gotten rid of all that. And she's actually quite, you know, lean and less sort of extreme looking face. And this is so interesting to me because is she?... Mark: Setting a trend or following that? Doortje: Yeah exactly. And did the first impression of her change maybe? Mark: I think Berno agrees as well, there are still biological constraints to that all day. So I'm reminded of a little experiment that I did when I was a PhD student in Maastricht. We had a conference and I was sitting down with a Japanese PhD student, a male, a Danish PhD student and somebody from, I think Nigeria, so different cultures. And we were rating the women that were passing us on the terrace, in terms of beauty just blindly, independently, scoring them with the four of us. Doortje: As a game or as a scientific curiosity experiment? Mark: A scientific curiosity experiment. And we were very much aligned in our judgments. And so this was 30 years ago. So without maybe the exposure that was there in place that Nigeria and Japan to the Western beauty, we also Caucasian women, and we made the same judgments and ranking in terms of the beauty. So there is something not just culturally different, but something that is more universal, I would think. But within that I mean, I don't know this Jenner person, Kylie, but I mean, she's also older than she was, in a way. Doortje: Yeah, well, she's still 24. Mark: All right. But things also changed depending on your age of what you want to signal. And at some point, you want to signal maybe maturity more than youthfulness, or what have you. Doortje: I'm really curious to know what kind of world you guys visualize when it comes to first impressions and the way we can manipulate them. Because you've been telling me how important this all is, but also where with a company like real face value, could be people can change their first impression, or maybe change it a little bit. I'm just wondering how would this go about. For example, if you would be a client at Real Face Value you would come in and you would say "I want the better first impression" how would this conversation go? Berno: It's a very interesting question. And, to me, I'm new to the aesthetic world I entered three years ago, when we were founding the startup. And it's a different world from the scientific world, or the previous tech world that I come from. So for me I really had to also have my ethical compass work a lot. And we work in a tech company. So there are also a lot of developers and I think you have a stereotypical idea of a developer now when I talk about it. So we are very diverse team diverse nationalities, males, females, and we discuss about this a lot. Like what does it mean the product that we make? What does it mean for society? And I think that you see this trend in society that more and more people start enhancing their beauty because it's possible. So fillers, neurotoxins like Botox or plastic surgery, it is just more accessible, and it's more accepted. So more and more people do it. And I think what is important for me is that we now try to make an application or platform in which we can inform people better and in which they can make a decision that make themselves more happy. Like some people should go to a psychologist instead of going to get filler treatment. But I also see, and I didn't expect that maybe initially, that some people that go in there they are really happy with what they come out with. It's also a bit of a chicken and egg problem: if you cannot change your inner emotions and if you're really depressed and you cannot work it from the inside, but then if you change something from the outside you can maybe change the inside again, that really made an impact to me while working with these with several doctors and seeing their clinics. Doortje: In the same way as going to a hairdresser makes you feel better. Berno: So we are not a cosmetic clinic, we provide a tool for all cosmetic clinics. We do have something that we have the concept of a natural face. So what we do with our app, we provide a preview of how a treatment would look like. So Doortje if you would go to one of our clinics and you will see the application, we could show you all the versions of yourself with all types of facial treatments. And you would see how it will change your first impression. But all the treatments would be within a boundary that is still perceived as natural by society. Doortje: So you've done research on how much Botox you can take before people start to notice it. Berno: We kind of calibrated it by having asking 1000s and 1000s of people having to make judgments to see okay, what our lips in a normal range. When does it start to look ridiculous. Because you know what these been mentioned Kylie Jenner but for example Madonna, she has a lot of treatments done already. And at some point, it's just unbelievable that she is, I don't know how old she is, but she wants to look like 30 while she is 60. And then our brain indeed is in some kind of, uncanny valley what we say, that you cannot match any more with what you know of her and how she looks. And then things start getting weird. And then we actually dislike this. So then all of the judgments we make are more negative than positive. Doortje: I do think Madonna is quite an interesting case, actually. Because, like you said, people do seem to well, let's say they do not react very positive on the way she looks now. But I also feel like this is what you get, right? If you live in a society in which beauty and looking youthful is being made so important, then people will go very far to live up to that standard. Mark: Yeah, but this is I think the research we do, why it is so important. Because we we think we know that people have different motivations not just beauty and youthfulness, that's just one thing. And that makes your face look in a certain way and be treated in a certain way by because of the beauty ideal. But of course, if your motivation is to get more friends, for example, then maybe you should look a little bit more warmer. Or if you want to land the top job you should look a little bit a little bit more competent. Mark: And this is the kind of motivation that people bring to Real Face Value? Berno: Definitely we see that more than 50% of the people actually come in with a social motivation at the clinic. But doctors are not trained to look for this. So doctors are trying to change something, anatomically, to fix something. And you see that with the application that we provide or with certain training for doctors that they learn how to ask the question behind the question and to learn about treatment motivations. And then you see also that the clients they open up. So they don't want the standard treatment that is out there. But then they want the treatment that they can still remain natural, they can still remain their own identity. But that they gain more confidence and they are happier in their in their lives. Mark: And this is really important for another reason. I mean, you are talking what does the future of this look like? But there is this incredible story, I think it's funny and sad at the same time, of this guy who married a woman, I think it was in China, a beautiful woman. And he was very happy until they got a child and he saw what the baby looked like. Well the baby didn't look anything like his attractive wife because she had all these operations and surgeries done and so he sued her. So this is of course the the other side of this. A dystopian future where if people are not what you think that they. Doortje: This is actually my final question, and it's quite a big question so we can elaborate. Mark: So the natural is very important to stick within the boundaries of what we think... Berno: But also the identity. So sometimes you really see people that you're not, it doesn't look like the same person anymore. And I think there's also positive trend with body positivity or with models that they look always look a bit strange. So diversity, being yourself, your own identity is also more embraced in this society, or at least there's a focus on it. And if you combine the both, and you can be yourself but the best version of yourself. So I think there is no stop to aesthetics, or beauty: friends go together to the hairdresser, and in the future they both together go to a Botox clinic... Doortje: This is quite interesting, of course, because well this podcast is about aesthetic capital which is well as a form of capital, just like social capital, cultural capital. It's a way to determine your class or your position in society. And you say this, in the future maybe people will go together, I think they already do, to the cosmetic surgeon or the clinic and get some treatments done. But of course, this is not for everyone. Not everyone can afford this, especially right now. So this is also something that I'm well that I'm sort of thinking about: how does this concern Real Face Value? Because of course by making some people change their first impressions in the way they want, right? So they want the promotion or they want more friends, like you said. And you can say like "Okay, when you use our app, and you go to the clinic, you can you can make that happen". But this is not accessible for everyone. So how do you guys look at that? The inequality that it could maybe sort of enlarge? Berno: So that is why on purpose, we now make the app available for doctors only. So we don't have a b2c not a customer version yet. So the app is in control of the doctor, and the doctor is still the professional who should assess what the goal of the client is. And then together due to the app, they can make a better decision to a treatment that suits the client more. I think that you're right with Instagram filters or those kinds of things. It is made accessible to to a larger public which can, on social media with things going viral, indeed enlarge these these differences that are there. Doortje: Yeah, but I actually meant, like not everyone can afford these doctors that use real face value also. Berno: Yeah, I think the facial treatments will will get more accessible, more accepted. Like plastic surgery is in the order of 1000s of euros. But injectables like fillers or neurotoxins like Botox are in the order of hundreds of euros. And you also see different type of clinics. There's also a big difference between the Netherlands, when you spoke to Tom Decates, for example, in the Netherlands we have very high standard and very trained doctors. In other countries, you can do a course for three months or you can be an injectable nurse and you can already start injecting. So we are here on the safe side at least of things. But yeah, as all things that cost money it can create more of a split in society, so to say. Doortje: Yeah. How do you look at this mark? Doortje: Yeah it is a concern, a societal concern, but I have no illusion that we can regulate it in some ways. And what often happens is that the sort of elite take on an innovation and then when it sticks, it spreads through the whole of society and everything becomes cheaper and more accessible and it could be that this becomes something like that. In the same way that we've seen it with makeup, cosmetics, fashion 15/16th century that probably was prohibitively expensive and now everyone is using it. Because the prices have gone down tremendously. Doortje: So you guys, to conclude you, you do hope that through your research and maybe through Real Face Value lightly push people in the right direction with their treatments by not only focusing on youth but more on first impressions and evolutionary psychology. Mark: And diversity because people have different motivation throughout their lifetime, different goals that they want to achieve. And having a more tailored approach in terms of what people can do within the sort of natural boundaries. I think it's entirely helpful and also, I think ethical, yeah, it's the right way the right thing to do. And I have no commercial interest in the company. Doortje: Thank you. Thank you so much. And, well, I'm very curious to see how this all develops in the future. Transcribed by https://otter.ai