Beauty and appeal
 

It's quite odd to me when I look at things that are beatuiful to my culture but repulsive to another (butterflies for example, the koreans see them with an eye we may attribute to bats in the USA). Yet this ideal of appeal or this eye for beauty does have many situations where a significant ratio of different cultures would consider appealing. I have a simple hypothesis that each person's idea of beauty is brought about through their own experiences. Many people in this world have similar experiences through life as we have the same natural tendancies (hunger, fatigue, labdo), physical demands (eating, sleeping, breating), as well as similar experiences (we drink water, we tend to eat similar(ish) foods, we strive for things that make us happy, and we listen to what others say to us (to a point)). Because of this I believe that a person's personal experiences determines what it is that we desire in life. People that grow up poor grow up wanting lots of money and if they obtain it they are possibly only satisified when they are getting more money, no matter how much they already have.

This idea of desire and beauty falls under many catagories and is usually used by people in marketing to slide what it is that they are trying to sell into a person's allready flowing river of desire.

My question is, how does one determine what most people find attractive to them? I've been doing research with seduction in religion as well as in human interaction and have found that not everything works for every person but some things work for most people. I realize that there may be some outlyre experiences that push one away from the mainstream ideal but most people (no matter how hard they try) still fit into what I'm going to call a desire catagory with many other people.

I'm asking this out of sheer curiosity. Someone once said that if you make something SOMEBODY is bound to like it. But, what if you didn't have to shoot in the dark and assume that people like all things that you like. What if you could, through a series of questions about someone's experiences, determine what it is that they liked or found attractive. What if you could determine this for an entire group of people that have had similar experiences?

The basic motives of people as you describe them are correct, but they don't take into account the many variables that come into play literally town to town, region to region, country to country. That's why, even in the states there are regional cuisines.

When you look between the wings, butterflies are kind of ugly. Basically moths with better skin and pretty wings.

Even in my home state of North Carolina, there are differing factions on what barbecue is supposed to be. the western NC version, or the eastern version (the ENC version of course is correct, duh).

Taste and beauty are greatly formed by how the world's communities developed.

Then there's the individual factors such as intelligence and maturity. There are some people that never get past the shiny/bouncy/red allure. A perfect film example of this is in "Defending Your Life" when Bob Diamond, the defender who uses 47% of his brain offers a forkfull of what looks like horse poop to Danial Miller, the defendee who uses 3%. The dish is optimal to Diamond because it's the best vehicle for him to use his brain the realize the best possible taste.

I have seen a show about what determines "attractiveness" . there were certain facial characteristics commonly found as more attractive. the show used the example of babys responding more positively to faces shown to them which had features commonly deemed attractive. the idea being the baby's hadn't been biased yet due to cultural conventions. it was quite a while back. maybe Discovery channel.

What gives us the propensity for anything? Everything we're exposed to from a given point in time to any primordial genetic memories. Just like behavior, there's genetic input, social input (including marketing/media) and free will or choice.

I think they've been trying this for years in Hollywood, it's called a test audience, and more often than not it produces terrible movies. See for example - Transformers.