Advice for Hefner, hang out with elderly

JENA, Germany, Jan. 6 (UPI) -- A way to look younger without plastic surgery is to hang out with older people because they make people look younger in comparison, German researchers say.

Study leader Dr. Stefan R. Schweinberger and Dr. Holger Wiese, both of the Jena University in Germany, said volunteer study subjects were systematically wrong at estimating other people's ages after looking at faces of people of a specific age group on a computer.

For example, if many faces of elderly people were shown on the computer first, followed by the face of a middle-age person, they estimated the middle-age person as substantially younger. However, after the study subjects studied younger faces the middle-age face was considered older, the study found.

"The age of the person next to you is one of the most important characteristics for our perception of other people," Wiese said.

The findings may surprise Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, who chooses to surround himself with much younger women -- which makes him look older. For Hefner to appear younger he should surround himself with elderly gentlemen, the researchers suggest.