The staff at Science Daily has some advice for Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, and it has nothing to do with his announcement today that he will take Playboy private. Hefner, Science Daily explains, would do well to surround himself with elderly gentlemen instead of young women.

The image of Hefner with two fellow octogenarians on either arm may strike you as odd. But according to a study at Jena University in Germany, it could make him look more youthful.

In the Jena experiment described by Science Daily, student volunteers who scrutinized elderly faces before viewing middle-aged people estimated that the middle-aged people were significantly younger than volunteers who first studied young faces.

The lead psychologist for the study, Stefan Schweinberger explained that his team was able to change "the subjective perception of a face," though Science Daily notes that it's unclear how long the effect lasts.

(h/t: Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution)

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Uri Friedman