It is believed that undergoing cosmetic surgery will make you look younger and attractive but a new study proves that it may not be the case for attractiveness.
Study researcher Dr. A. Joshua Zimm of the Lenox Hill Hospital and Manhattan Eye, Ear & Throat Institute of North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System said in LiveScience, “Patients come to us because they want to look younger. They want to look refreshed. But we typically avoid telling patients, 'We are going to make you look X amount younger or more attractive.’ We don’t want to create false or unrealistic expectations."
The researchers recruited raters from the community to look at photos of 49 patients ages 42 to 73 who underwent facial cosmetic surgery. The raters were asked to guess the age and rate that person's attractiveness on a scale of one to 10 in the photo. No rater saw both the before and after photographs of the same patient.
It is then concluded that, according to the raters, the patients achieved to look three years younger but were not rated to look more attractive.
On average, raters estimated patients to be 2.1 years younger than their actual age before the surgery and 5.2 years younger than their actual age after the surgery.
Most patients were rated 4 to 6 out of 10 and it showed no difference when it comes to pre and post surgery attractiveness.
The researchers carried out the study to attempt to objectively quantify enhancements in attractiveness after surgery, which are often subjective and based on sketchy reports.
On the other hand, issues on increased attractiveness post-surgery needs further research, Zimm stressed. The study conducted was fairly small, so maybe a bigger research might display a notable difference in attractiveness scores pre and post surgery. Since the study focused on plastic surgery for aging, it did not include patients who'd had nose jobs or non-surgical lip or winkle injections, the researchers said.
This study was published in the August 1 issue of the online journal JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery.
