Dolly Parton was right.
Botox may increase face value for a growing number of Americans, including celebs like Nicole Kidman and Meghan Trainor — but when it comes to making yourself desirable to a prospective partner, researchers say smiling can be even more effective.
New research suggests that the popular cosmetic injections do increase users’ curb appeal — but when respondents in a survey were asked to rate an array of strange faces, those with upturned lips beat those who merely plumped them up.
Scientists at Tilburg University in The Netherlands also reported that Botox users were likely to be seen as one-night stand prospects — and that getting the costly jabs weren’t necessarily useful to those hoping to be taken more seriously as viable life partners.
The illusion-shattering findings, published in the journal “Perception,” come amid a worldwide uptick in Botox usage.
Usage of the injectable “tweakment” has become so frequent that people are actually developing an immunity.
Researchers set out to test if people who undergo Botox and other filler treatments are perceived “more positively by others,” per study co-author Dr. Bastian Jaeger, who claimed that “existing research on the effectiveness of these treatments is not very strong.”
To see if it’s worth literally putting one’s money where their mouth is, the scientists followed 114 participants who underwent Botox and dermal filler treatments, the Times Of London reported.
They then asked around 3,000 people to rate their before and after pics on a 7-point attractiveness scale.
After reviewing said snaps, which were shot carefully to keep the lighting, expression and other factors consistent across the pics, participants overwhelmingly found that Botox does indeed boost people’s visual appeal.
“This difference was rather small: a 0.07-point change in our 7-point attractiveness scale on average,” explained Dr. Jaeger per the Daily Mail. “This means that on average, a person who was rated a 4 out of 7 on attractiveness before the treatment might be rated a 4.07 out of 7 after treatment.”
There was also an increase of 0.13 with regards to how youthful the participants were thought of.
However, this paled in comparison to another, less expensive way of enhancing one’s attractiveness: smiling.
Researchers found that turning one’s frown upside down — and not cosmetically — caused one’s so-called hotness to soar by 0.4 points, six times more than Botox.
Meanwhile, applying makeup gave people’s perceived looks a boost of 0.6 points compared to the filler treatment, which starts at around $300 for a simple forehead injection and involves obstructing nerve signals to muscles, relaxing them and curbing wrinkles.
There was another major caveat to alleged Botox-enhanced hotness.
While the aesthetic accelerant increased people’s desirability as a short-term fling prospect and as a platonic pal — a rise of 0.09 in both categories — there was no statistical improvement in how they were seen as long-term partners.
It’s unclear why Botox didn’t up people’s image as soulmate material, but scientists noted that the jabs had no effect on the perception of character traits either.
“We did not see any benefits of treatment on how competent, intelligent, charismatic, friendly or trustworthy people were perceived to be,” said Jaeger.
Interestingly, while small amounts of botox did not significantly enhance physical appeal, many people report that, “after treatment, they find it easier to make friends and that they make a better impression on others,” per Jaeger.
Dr. Jaeger attributed this phenomenon to a placebo effect of sorts.
“It is plausible that people have more success socially, not because they look different and people treat them differently, but because they think they do and act more confidently around others (sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy),” he said.
