Introduction
The article written by Langlois et al. (1990) represents an important research project where the results of visual preferences among infants were associated with various social contexts and human reactions to beauty. Overall, it was proved by the researchers that infants reacted differently to beautiful men or women and their not-good-looking counterparts.
Discussion
The dimensions of various stimuli were also investigated to gain better insight into how future studies could improve the existing knowledge base. Langlois et al. (1990) ultimately came up with the idea to assign certain beauty ratings to human faces and compare them to find crucial correlations across available data. It was found that attractiveness played an important role in the cultural transmission of various norms related to beauty, so all of the mechanisms of identifying an unattractive face were found to be established as early as infancy. It was also interesting for Langlois et al. (1990) to go beyond their findings and investigate the actual reasons behind infants distinguishing between attractive and unattractive faces. Hence, social behaviors and visual preferences were both hypothetically linked to the human beauty coefficient.
After getting acquainted with the findings of the study carried out by Langlois et al. (1990), I am certain that there is specific information stored in the human brain that is pulled from the “database” when an infant looks at other people. The methodology presented by Langlois et al. (1990) was rigid and transparent enough for other researchers to replicate the study and acquire their own results. The findings presented by researchers are crucial because they provide additional insight into the role of one’s physical appearance and how humans tend to react to beauty from an early age.
The main strength of the article written by von Soest et al. (2020) revolves around how the second half of human life is often overshadowed by loneliness. The researchers were interested in investigating the nature of loneliness and various measures of the latter. It was crucial to find out that loneliness-related gender differences were substantial, with men becoming significantly more unstable. Another crucial finding was that personal traits, such as extraversion, also contributed to individual perception of loneliness (von Soest et al., 2020).
With emotionally unstable people being much more prone to loneliness, it was concluded by von Soest et al. (2020) that the main sources of isolation during the second half of life were social relationships, physical health, and socioeconomic variables. The investigators recommended replicating the proposed study for more detailed results and offered to add more heterogeneous sample members to the research. Hence, the hypothesis was validated successfully, hinting at the fact that individuals with particular personal traits can reflect on loneliness in a more positive manner.
Conclusion
The findings presented by von Soest et al. (2020) are comprehensive and thought-provoking because loneliness was addressed as a complex phenomenon, with few to no steps being taken away from the main topic. I think that the researchers also carefully addressed each of the limitations that affected their research while pointing out the lack of data generalization (von Soest et al., 2020). Overall, the findings can be considered incomplete because several samples were absent from the study completely. The limitations have to be removed in future reiterations of the research project conducted by von Soest et al. (2020) because they left several important questions unanswered. The parallel between age and loneliness relates to how people tend to react to their social circles and interactions.
References
Langlois, J. H., Roggman, L. A., & Rieser-Danner, L. A. (1990). Infants’ differential social responses to attractive and unattractive faces. Developmental Psychology, 26(1), 153-159. Web.
von Soest, T., Luhmann, M., Hansen, T., & Gerstorf, D. (2020). Development of loneliness in midlife and old age: Its nature and correlates. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 118(2), 388-407. Web.