People often turn to cosmetic enhancements with the hope of making a better impression—whether in dating, social settings, or the workplace. But how much do these changes in appearance actually influence how others see us? A new study published in the journal Perception suggests that while popular facial aesthetic treatments like Botox and filler injections can lead to slightly more favorable impressions in terms of attractiveness, the overall impact on how others perceive a person’s warmth, competence, or desirability as a long-term partner appears limited.
Across cultures, people engage in appearance-enhancing behaviors ranging from makeup to tanning to cosmetic procedures. These behaviors are often guided by the belief that a more attractive appearance will lead to better social or romantic outcomes. The research team behind this new study wanted to directly examine whether a single session of minimally invasive aesthetic treatment meaningfully shifts how people are judged by others.
Past research has often suggested that such treatments make people seem not only more attractive but also more competent or likable. However, many of those earlier studies suffered from methodological problems. Some presented pre- and post-treatment images side-by-side, making differences more obvious than they would be in daily life. Others relied on small numbers of participants or analyzed the data in a way that could exaggerate findings. The new research aimed to overcome those shortcomings by using larger sample sizes, standardized procedures, and more statistically sound methods.
“Aesthetic treatments have become much more popular in recent years, especially minimally invasive treatments with fillers and Botox. Many people opt for these treatments because they want to be perceived more positively by others – as more attractive, charismatic, or intelligent. We wanted to test how effective these treatments actually are,” said study author Bastian Jaeger, an assistant professor at Tilburg University.
Jaeger and his colleagues conducted two large-scale, preregistered studies involving a total of 3,201 participants. In both studies, participants viewed standardized photos of people who had received minimally invasive aesthetic treatment, such as botulinum toxin injections or dermal fillers. Each participant only saw either the pre- or post-treatment version of a given face, not both. This design allowed the researchers to estimate the real-world impact of treatment on first impressions without artificially highlighting the changes.
In the first study, 2,720 participants from North America rated photos of 114 individuals—80 percent of whom were women—on a range of traits. These included traits related to attractiveness (such as youthfulness and health), approachability (such as friendliness and trustworthiness), and capability (such as competence and intelligence). Participants also rated additional traits like charisma and whether they believed the person had undergone aesthetic treatment.
To avoid confounding factors, the researchers applied strict quality control. They excluded image pairs if there were differences in facial expression, lighting, makeup, hairstyle, or even subtle signs of positive affect. The remaining photos were aligned and standardized using facial landmark detection and preprocessing algorithms, allowing for an exceptionally controlled comparison between pre- and post-treatment images.
The results from Study 1 indicated that facial aesthetic treatment led to a small but statistically significant increase in perceived attractiveness. On a seven-point scale, the average rating for attractiveness rose by about 0.09 points after treatment. Among all traits tested, youthfulness showed the clearest boost, increasing by 0.13 points on average.
Changes on other social dimensions were even less apparent. The treatment had no significant effect on how trustworthy, honest, friendly, dominant, competent, or intelligent the targets appeared. In other words, while participants tended to view the treated faces as slightly more attractive and youthful, this did not extend to perceptions of moral character, sociability, or capability.
“We obtained carefully controlled images from people before and after facial aesthetic treatment,” Jaeger told PsyPost. “We did find that people were perceived as more attractive after the treatment, but this effect was very small. We found similar effects for perceived health and youthfulness, but no change in perceived charisma, intelligence, competence, friendliness, and many other dimensions.”
In the second study, the researchers shifted their focus to social desirability in a romantic context. Here, 481 heterosexual male participants from North America and the United Kingdom evaluated 81 female targets who had received minimally invasive treatments. Each participant saw profiles that included a photo (either pre- or post-treatment), a first name, an age estimate, and a pair of hobbies. They were then asked whether they would consider the person as a platonic friend, a casual short-term partner, or a long-term romantic partner.
The findings mirrored those from the first study. Participants showed slightly more interest in post-treatment individuals for casual romantic encounters and platonic friendships. Specifically, desirability ratings for casual dating increased by about 0.10 points, while friendship desirability increased by 0.08 points. There was no statistically significant change in how desirable participants found the targets as potential long-term partners.
This pattern suggests that the changes in appearance produced by a single aesthetic treatment session may be enough to influence judgments in lower-commitment contexts, such as casual dating or new friendships. However, when it comes to more serious romantic relationships, those surface-level changes may not carry much weight—at least not on their own.
To put these results into context, the researchers compared the effects of aesthetic treatment with other appearance-enhancing behaviors studied in previous research. For instance, using makeup can lead to a 0.6-point increase in perceived attractiveness, and digitally smoothing facial skin can result in a 0.7-point increase. Even simply smiling, as opposed to keeping a neutral expression, tends to boost attractiveness ratings by about 0.4 points.
Against these benchmarks, the 0.09-point bump in attractiveness seen after minimally invasive facial treatment appears modest. While such procedures may enhance a person’s appearance slightly, they do not seem to produce major shifts in how others judge their personality, capabilities, or potential as a committed partner.
Many people who opt for these treatments do so in the hope of making better first impressions, both socially and romantically. But the study suggests that people may overestimate the social impact of these procedures—at least when it comes to how they are judged by strangers in brief encounters.
“Previous studies often found much larger effects,” Jaeger explained. “But a big problem with many existing studies is that the photos were not sufficiently standardized. It is possible that there were systematic differences between the before and after photos. For example, if individuals are more likely to smile after the treatment (because the treatment gave them a confidence boost), we don’t know if any boost in attractiveness is due to the treatment or due to increased smiling. In our study, we were more careful in creating before and after images that differed as little as possible on dimensions like facial expression, makeup, tanning, etc.”
The researchers point out that this does not mean the treatments are without value. For some individuals, the perceived improvement in appearance might still be meaningful, especially when weighed against the relatively low cost and risk of minimally invasive procedures compared to surgical interventions. People also report feeling more confident after treatment, which could affect how they present themselves and interact with others—a possibility the researchers say is worth studying further.
As comprehensive as the studies were, they do come with some limitations. The sample of people who underwent treatment was drawn from clinics in the Netherlands, while the raters were based in North America and the United Kingdom. Cultural differences in beauty standards or attitudes toward cosmetic enhancement may have influenced the results. Additionally, the researchers could not always determine whether a given subject was undergoing treatment for the first time or had already received prior procedures.
The study also focused exclusively on minimally invasive interventions. More dramatic surgical changes might yield stronger effects on impressions.
“We tested the effect of a single minimally invasive treatment session, so is perhaps not surprising that changes in first impressions were small,” Jaeger noted. “An interesting question, which we could not address yet is if people who consider getting these treatments are aware of how effective they actually are, or if they are perhaps overestimating how much their appearance will change.”
A potential avenue for future research would be to investigate whether the small changes in appearance observed here lead to different social behaviors or outcomes in real-world interactions. Even if others do not judge someone as markedly more capable or trustworthy based on appearance alone, changes in the person’s own confidence or behavior might still improve social outcomes through self-fulfilling dynamics.
The study, “Face value: The effect of facial aesthetic treatment on first impressions and partner preferences,” was authored by Bastian Jaeger, Berno Bucker, Jacques van der Meulen, and Mark van Vugt.
