Show caption The ugly friend effect gained prominence in the 2015 film The Duff (‘designated ugly fat friend’). Photograph: Allstar/Lionsgate Shortcuts The ugly truth: unattractive friends make you look better Finally, scientists have tackled ‘the ugly friend effect’. If you don’t know what that is, it might be bad news ...



Sun 2 Oct 2016 11.00 EDT Share on Facebook

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Name: The ugly friend.

Age: Approximately 45,000 years old, dating to the period when Homo sapiens and Neanderthals first started hanging out.

Appearance: Unprepossessing, nearby.

What are ugly friends for? They make you look good.

How do they do that? Through the “ugly-friend effect”, wherein the proximity of your less attractive chum makes you more attractive to strangers by comparison.

I’ve never heard of this phenomenon. It’s nothing new, although the idea gained a certain prominence with the 2015 release of teen film The Duff (pictured above) – Duff being an acronym for “designated ugly fat friend”.

I find the whole notion callous, superficial and unscientific. It may well be the first two, but not the third. According to a new study published in the journal Psychological Science, the ugly-friend effect is real.

They sent scientists out on the pull? No. Study participants were asked to rate the attractiveness of faces in photographs. When they were later reshown those pictures flanked by photos of plainer folk, their original ratings went up.

I suppose there’s a brutal logic to that. In addition, the less attractive photo seemed to sharpen critical faculties all round. “We found that the presence of a distractor face makes differences between attractive people more obvious and that observers start to pull apart these differences, making them even more particular in their judgment,” said Dr Nicholas Furl, who ran the study.

So, in short, the company of an unsightly wingman – or wingwoman – is the key to dating success. That was, I believe, the study’s official finding.

What if all your mates are better looking than you? And asking for an ugly friend. Everybody is somebody’s ugly friend, but some of us have more ugly friends than others.

Do you mean I might have been deployed as an ugly friend without even knowing? That possibility cannot be ruled out.

I can’t help thinking there might be something vaguely unethical about the whole strategy. We can talk about that later. You just keep standing right where you are, and I’ll order us two more drinks.

OK. How does my hair look? For our purposes, it’s perfect.

Do say: “Hey Quasimodo, busy tonight? I thought we might hit a few clubs.”

Don’t say: “I’ve grown accustomed to your distractor face.”